Oh, the traveller moving on the land, behold I give you, I give you the travelling man.
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And he's very heavy laden with the questions in his burden.
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Lo, and I give you the travelling man.
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He has crossed the mountains, he has forded streams.
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He has spent a long time surviving on his dreams.
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Many times he's tried to lighten up his heavy load.
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But his compromises fail him and he ends back on the road.
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Oh the traveller he is weary, the travelling man he is tired.
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For the road is never ending in his fear he has cried aloud for a saviour
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And in vain for a teacher, someone to lighten up the load
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And he's heard the sounds of war in a gentle shower of rain
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And the whisperings of despair that he could not explain.
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The reason for his journey, or the reason it began
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Or was there any reason for the travelling man.
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At last he reached a river so beautiful and wide
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But the current was so strong he could not reach the other side
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And the weary travelling man looked for a ferryman strong enough to row against the tide,
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And the ferryman was old but he moved the boat so well,
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Or did the river move the boat? The traveller could not tell.
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Said the ferryman, "You're weary and the answers that you seek,
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Are in the singing river, listen humbly it will speak."
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Oh, the traveller closed his eyes and he listened and he heard
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Only the river murmuring and the beating of his heart.
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Then he heard the river laughing, and he heard the river crying
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And in it was the beauty and the sadness of the world
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And he heard the sounds of dying, but he heard the sounds of birth
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And slowly his ears heard all the sounds of earth.
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The sounds blended together and they became a whole
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And the rhythm was his heartbeat to the music his soul.
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And the river had no beginning, as it flowed into the sea
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And the seas filled the clouds and the rains filled the streams
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And as slowly as the sunrise, he opened up his eyes
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To find the ferryman had gone, the boat moved gently on the tide.
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And the river flowed within him, and with it he was one
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And the seas moved around the earth, and the earth around the sun.
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And the traveller was the river, was the boat and ferryman,
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Was the journey and the song that the singing river sang.
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The Ferryman
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| Ralph McTell |
