Anthem lyrics

Song information

Artist: Harry Chapin
Album: Last Protest Singer

Lyrics

She wasn't very pretty
She wasn't very smart
But everything she said to him came strait from her heart

Write a song about me
Sing a song that's of my day
Everybody special in there ordinary way

Chorus:
Looking for an anthem
He was looking for a song
Looking for a melody singing brings the world along

He was strumming his guitar
He was searching their eyes
If he can't find his anthem will he buy the compromise

One child was brown and hungry
One a red injun girl
One child was black and angry
One from the other half the world

And as he heard their silent screams
That they have sounded there for years
It had been lost among the whispers
And drowned out by their tears

Chorus

He kept looking for a story
Looking for a plot
He kept on looking in the wonder
If he was blind or not

All he found was bugle fragments
That he'd left there in his youth
But he never found the music
To accompany the truth

Now the old man had been young once
The old man had been strong
He once had a family, but they'd grown up and moved a long

The old man told him loneliness, is what the years would bring
But the old man couldn't tell him
How to make the long years sing

Chorus