Lyrics to
Race Among The Ruins

This version of Race Among The Ruins was released by Gordon Lightfoot in 1976.

Visit the Gordon Lightfoot Lyrics profile at Decade Lyrics - it has the Race Among The Ruins lyrics as well as the rest of the songs by Gordon Lightfoot.

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

You think you had the last laugh
Now you know this can’t be true
Even though the sun shines down upon you now
Sometimes you must feel blue
You make the best of each new day
You try not to be sad
Even though the sky falls down upon you
Call it midnight feelin’ bad

When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin’ true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin’
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow
Do it soon

The road to love is littered
By the bones of other ones
Who by the magic of the moment
Were mysteriously undone
You try to understand it
But you never seem to find
Any kind of freedom comin’ clean
Is just another state of mind

When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin’ true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin’
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow
Do it soon

So take the best of all that’s left
You know this cannot last
Even though your mother was your maker
From her apron strings you pass
Just think about the fool
Who by his virtue can be found
In a most unusual situation
Playin’ jester to the clown

When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin’ true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin’
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow
Do it soon

When you wake up to the promise
Of your dream world comin’ true
With one less friend to call on
Was it someone that I knew
Away you will go sailin’
In a race among the ruins
If you plan to face tomorrow
Do it soon

---

Want more lyrics and songs by Gordon Lightfoot?

Gordon Lightfoot has released many songs over the years besides Race Among The Ruins. Gordon Lightfoot released songs from 1966 to 2004 spanning across albums like Lightfoot!, The Way I Feel, Back Here On Earth, Did She Mention My Name, Sunday Concert, Sit Down Young Stranger / If You Could Read My Mind, Summer Side Of Life, Don Quixote, Old Dan's Records, Sundown, Cold On The Shoulder, Summertime Dream, Endless Wire, Dream Street Rose, Shadows, Salute, East Of Midnight, Waiting For You, A Painter Passing Through, and Harmony. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Gordon Lightfoot.

If you're a fan of the music of the 1970s looking for more songs from 1976 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Race Among The Ruins by Gordon Lightfoot

The lyrics for Race Among The Ruins are made up of the words, verses and background chorus for the popular 1976 song by Gordon Lightfoot. Like a lot of songs, the lyrics to Race Among The Ruins have both direct meanings and metaphorical context hidden within the song's words. All of the meanings are only truly known by the creators of the lyrics for Race Among The Ruins - Gordon Lightfoot and any of the writers who worked with them on the song.

If you have an interest in the structure of words and phrases, you can dissect the lyrics to Race Among The Ruins by Gordon Lightfoot in multiple 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 Race Among The Ruins" means the words set to the music of Race Among The Ruins, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Gordon Lightfoot. 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 Race Among The Ruins and the lyrics to Race Among The Ruins are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Gordon Lightfoot who came here looking just for the lyrics to Race Among The Ruins, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

More Songs & Lyrics by Gordon Lightfoot

Visit our Gordon Lightfoot profile for more Gordon Lightfoot songs, lyrics & info!

)