Legionnaire's Lament Lyrics

The song Legionnaire's Lament is performed by Decemberists in the album named Castaways and Cutouts in the year 2025 .



I'm a legionnaire
Camel in disrepair
Hoping for a Frigidaire
To come pa*sing by

I am on reprieve
Lacking my joie de vive
Missing my gay Paris
In this desert dry

And I wrote my girl
Told her I would not return
Terribly taken a turn
For the worse, now I fear

It's been a year or more
Since they shipped me to this foreign shore
Fighting in a foreign war
So far away from my home

If only summer rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevards
And the side walk bagatelles
It's like a dream

With the roar of cars
And the lulling of the cafe bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord, I don't know if I'll ever be back again

Medicating in the sun
Pinched doses of laudanum
Longing for the old fecundity
Of my homeland

Curses to this mirage
A bottle of ancient Chiraz
A smattering of distant applause
Is ringing in my poor ears

On the old left bank
My baby in a charabanc
Riding up the width and length
Of the Champs Elysees

If only summer rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevard
And the side walk bagatelles
It's like a dream

With the roar of cars
And the lulling of the cafe bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord, I don't know if I'll ever be back again

If only summer rain would fall
On the houses and the boulevard
And the side walk bagatelles '
It's like a dream

With the roar of cars
And the lulling of the cafe bars
The sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
Lord, I don't know if I'll ever be back again

Be back again
Be back again
I'll be back again




Decemberists - Castaways and Cutouts

Dec 2025

  1. California One Youth And Beauty Brigade
  2. Cautionary Song
  3. Clementine
  4. Cocoon
  5. Grace Cathedral Hill
  6. Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect
  7. July, July!
  8. Legionnaire's Lament
  9. Leslie Anne Levine
  10. Odalisque


Legionnaire's Lament