Lyrics to Bastille Day - Decade Lyrics

This version of Bastille Day was released by Rush in 1975.

Our Decade Lyrics Rush profile has all of the Bastille Day lyrics from 1975 and many more songs from the Rush discography that we have on file.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to Rush or about the 1970s in general.

There’s no bread, let them eat cake
There’s no end to what they’ll take
Flaunt the fruits of noble birth
Wash the salt into the earth

But they’re marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Free the dungeons of the innocent
The king will kneel and let his kingdom rise

Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace
Naked fear on every face
See them bow their heads to die
As we would bow as they rode by

And we’re marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Sing, oh choirs of cacophony
The king has kneeled, to let his kingdom rise

Lessons taught but never learned
All around us anger burns
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn’t all that money buys

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Rush has released many songs over the years besides Bastille Day. Rush released songs from 1974 to 2007 spanning across albums like Rush, Fly By Night, Caress Of Steel, 2112, A Farewell To Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Power Windows, Hold Your Fire, Presto, Roll The Bones, Counterparts, Test For Echo, Vapor Trails, Feedback, and Snakes & Arrows. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Rush.

If you're a fan of 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1975 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Bastille Day by Rush

The lyrics to Bastille Day are the words, verses and chorus for the song released by Rush in 1975. Elements of the lyrics to Bastille Day are both direct in meaning and also metaphorical with the real meanings of the song only known by Rush and any collaborating writers working on the lyrics for Bastille Day back when it was created.

See also Tell Everybody

Some people have an interest in the etymology behind words and phrases. You can take apart the lyrics to Bastille Day by Rush in a number of ways. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Bastille Day" means the words set to the music of Bastille Day, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Rush. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Bastille Day and the lyrics to Bastille Day are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Rush who came here looking just for the lyrics to Bastille Day, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.