Lyrics to
Who By Fire

This version of Who By Fire was released by Leonard Cohen in 1974.

Our Decade Lyrics Leonard Cohen profile has all of the Who By Fire lyrics from 1974 and many more songs from the Leonard Cohen discography that we have on file.

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

And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of may,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?

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Leonard Cohen has released many songs over the years besides Who By Fire. Leonard Cohen released songs from 1967 to 2004 spanning across albums like Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Songs From A Room, Songs Of Love And Hate, New Skin For The Old Ceremony, Death Of A Ladies' Man, Recent Songs, Various Positions, I'm Your Man, The Future, Ten New Songs, and Dear Heather. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Leonard Cohen.

If you're a fan of lyrics from 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1974 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Who By Fire by Leonard Cohen

The lyrics to Who By Fire are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that Leonard Cohen used when the song was created in 1974. The lyrics to Who By Fire have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only Leonard Cohen and any collaborators know all of the inspirations for the song.

If you like etymology or breaking apart phrases and words, it is easy to understand the lyrics to Who By Fire by Leonard Cohen. 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 Who By Fire" means the words set to the music of Who By Fire, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Leonard Cohen. 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 Who By Fire and the lyrics to Who By Fire are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Leonard Cohen who came here looking just for the lyrics to Who By Fire, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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