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House of Cards Lyrics
When Graves came up from Charterhouse last May
I met him on the train and we hit it off straight away
We took a look round and made up our minds to stay
There with Cromwell's arms on the chapel house door engraved
There were motes on the river and dust on our decadent daze
Long nights en amour on the scaffolding planks emblazed
We'd roll home at dawn in mourning with our arms linked through
Beggared by the bottle and a thin white muse
With the Devil's spit and polish on our dancing shoes
Fourth floor rooms we shared and a chest full of colourless clothes
And though we worked on similar lines there were separate goals
Until we came by different paths to the same crossroads
Then finding clues between the lines of his letters and prose
And acrostics hanging on the spines of his lyrical poems
I learned to know him better than you might suppose
How much gold for your honour are you willing to take
Or am I tempting a serpent with apples and cakes
What our hands won't deliver then our hearts won't break
Four things better than all things are
In all things better much better by far
Than the sun and the wind and the shining stars
Your rivers of gold run deep and the currency's hard
But it won't pay the rent on your house of cards
To the long-cold Caradoc's hills now the birds have flown
On the westbound train all the crowd went quietly home
Slipping outside they left before the end of the show
Now the dust's long settled and the worms and the carrion crows
In deadlock struggle where the grass through the flagstones grows
And the parks and the lawns and the terraces are overthrown
When Heaven makes me an offer should I give it a chance
Adam came a cropper now they need a good man
Or will the Devil pay me better for my idle hands
I met him on the train and we hit it off straight away
We took a look round and made up our minds to stay
There with Cromwell's arms on the chapel house door engraved
There were motes on the river and dust on our decadent daze
Long nights en amour on the scaffolding planks emblazed
Beggared by the bottle and a thin white muse
With the Devil's spit and polish on our dancing shoes
And though we worked on similar lines there were separate goals
Until we came by different paths to the same crossroads
Then finding clues between the lines of his letters and prose
And acrostics hanging on the spines of his lyrical poems
I learned to know him better than you might suppose
Or am I tempting a serpent with apples and cakes
What our hands won't deliver then our hearts won't break
In all things better much better by far
Than the sun and the wind and the shining stars
Your rivers of gold run deep and the currency's hard
But it won't pay the rent on your house of cards
On the westbound train all the crowd went quietly home
Slipping outside they left before the end of the show
Now the dust's long settled and the worms and the carrion crows
In deadlock struggle where the grass through the flagstones grows
And the parks and the lawns and the terraces are overthrown
Adam came a cropper now they need a good man
Or will the Devil pay me better for my idle hands
Song Info
Submitted by
slam On Dec 21, 2011
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The song documents an imagined friendship between the narrator and the poet Robert Graves (a frequent subject of songs by Blyth Power). Charterhouse is an English private school, where Graves was educated.
The song suggests a college friendship, but in fact Graves did not go directly from Charterhouse to university, enlisting instead in the army to fight in the First World War.
One of Graves's close friends during his time at Oxford University (where he eventually went after being badly wounded in the war) was T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), who is also the subject of a Blyth Power song. It's possible that the narrator is intended to be Lawrence.
The line "Four things better than all things are" is a variant of the first line of a couplet from Kipling's "Ballad of the King's Jest", which reads "Four things greater than all things are/Women and Horses and Power and War".