The Decemberists - The Legionnaire's Lament lyrics

I'm a legionnaire camel in disrepair
Hoping for a frigid air to come passing 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
La la la la dam la la la low

Medicating in the sun
Pinched doses of laudanum
Longing for the old fecundity of my homeland
Curses to this mirage!
A bottle of ancient Shiraz
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