Lyrics to
Heavy Horses

This version of Heavy Horses was released by Jethro Tull in 1978.

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Iron-clad feather-feet pounding the dust
An October’s day, towards evening
Sweat embossed veins standing proud to the plough
Salt on a deep chest seasoning
Last of the line at an honest day’s toil
Turning the deep sod under
Flint at the fetlock, chasing the bone
Flies at the nostrils plunder.

The Suffolk, the Clydesdale, the Percheron vie
with the Shire on his feathers floating
Hauling soft timber into the dusk
to bed on a warm straw coating.

Heavy Horses, move the land under me
Behind the plough gliding — slipping and sliding free
Now you’re down to the few
And there’s no work to do
The tractor’s on its way.

Let me find you a filly for your proud stallion seed
to keep the old line going.
And we’ll stand you abreast at the back of the wood
behind the young trees growing
To hide you from eyes that mock at your girth,
and your eighteen hands at the shoulder
And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry
and the nights are seen to draw colder
They’ll beg for your strength, your gentle power
your noble grace and your bearing
And you’ll strain once again to the sound of the gulls
in the wake of the deep plough, sharing.

Standing like tanks on the brow of the hill
Up into the cold wind facing
In stiff battle harness, chained to the world
Against the low sun racing
Bring me a wheel of oaken wood
A rein of polished leather
A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky
Brewing heavy weather.

Bring a song for the evening
Clean brass to flash the dawn
across these acres glistening
like dew on a carpet lawn
In these dark towns folk lie sleeping
as the heavy horses thunder by
to wake the dying city
with the living horseman’s cry
At once the old hands quicken —
bring pick and wisp and curry comb —
thrill to the sound of all
the heavy horses coming home.

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Jethro Tull has released many songs over the years besides Heavy Horses. Jethro Tull released songs from 1968 to 2003 spanning across albums like This Was, Stand Up, Benefit, Aqualung, Living In The Past, Thick As A Brick, A Passion Play, Warchild, Minstrel In The Gallery, Too Old To Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young To Die!, Songs From The Wood, Heavy Horses, Stormwatch, A, The Broadsword And The Beast, Under Wraps, Crest Of A Knave, Rock Island, Catfish Rising, Nightcap, Roots To Branches, J-Tull Dot Com, and The Jethro Tull Christmas Album. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Jethro Tull.

If you're a fan of the music of the 1970s looking for more songs from 1978 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull

The lyrics to Heavy Horses are the words, verses and chorus for the song released by Jethro Tull in 1978. Elements of the lyrics to Heavy Horses are both direct in meaning and also metaphorical with the real meanings of the song only known by Jethro Tull and any collaborating writers working on the lyrics for Heavy Horses back when it was created.

Some people have an interest in the etymology behind words and phrases. You can take apart the lyrics to Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull 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 Heavy Horses" means the words set to the music of Heavy Horses, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Jethro Tull. 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 Heavy Horses and the lyrics to Heavy Horses are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Jethro Tull who came here looking just for the lyrics to Heavy Horses, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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