Lyrics to
Sunrise

This version of Sunrise was released by Grateful Dead in 1977.

Our Decade Lyrics Grateful Dead profile has all of the Sunrise lyrics from 1977 and many more songs from the Grateful Dead discography that we have on file.

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

Gazing at the fire, burning by the water
Before he speaks the world around us quiets.

With eyes as sharp as arrows and turning to the fire
He clears the air and cuts it with a feather.

Many in a circle slowly ’round the fire
When he is gone I want to know him better.

No one is forsaken, no one is a liar,
He plants the tree of life on our foreheads with water.

He hums, there are drums, four winds, rising suns,
We are singing and playing, I her him saying.

I remember breezes from winds inside your body
keep me high, like I told you, I’ll sing to them this story and know why.

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Grateful Dead has released many songs over the years besides Sunrise. Grateful Dead released songs from 1967 to 1989 spanning across albums like The Grateful Dead, Anthem Of The Sun, Live / Dead, Aoxomoxoa, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses), Europe '72, History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice), Wake Of The Flood, Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel, Blues For Allah, Steal Your Face, Terrapin Station, Shakedown Street, Go To Heaven, Reckoning, In The Dark, and Built To Last. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Grateful Dead.

If you're a fan of the music of the 1970s looking for more songs from 1977 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Sunrise by Grateful Dead

When you decide to study the lyrics to Sunrise, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1977 song by Grateful Dead. Some of the lyrics to Sunrise have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Grateful Dead and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Sunrise if you take apart the structure of the words. 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 Sunrise" means the words set to the music of Sunrise, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Grateful Dead. 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 Sunrise and the lyrics to Sunrise are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Grateful Dead who came here looking just for the lyrics to Sunrise, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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