The Mad Hatter's Song lyrics

Song information

Artist: The Incredible String Band
Album: The Chelsea Sessions 1967

Lyrics

Oh seekers of spring how could you not find contentment
In a time of riddling reasons in this land of the blind
By the joke of fate alone
It's sure that as the loved hand leaves you
You clutch for the slip-stream, the realness to find

But do what you like, do what you like, do what you like
Do what you like, do what you like, do what you can
Do what you can, live till you die
My poor little man
For jesus will stretch out his hand no more

But in the south there's many a waving tree;
Oh would that musky fingers move your pain;
In the warm south winds the lost flowers bloom again

And if you cried, you know you'd fill a lake with tears
Still wouldn't turn back the years
Since the city has took you
Mad hatter is on my mind

So sad, sad to see the way it grew
Those other people that I knew
That have either fell or faltered
Mad hatter is on my mind

And you must have to see clear some time

Prometheus the problem child
Still juggling with his brains
Gives his limping leopard's visions
To the miser in his veins
Within the ruined factory is the normal soul insane
As he sets the sky beneath his heel
And learns away the pain

But I am the archer the lover of laughter
And mine is the arrowed flight

I am the archer, and my eyes yearn after the unsullied sight
Born of the dark waters of the daughters of night
Dancing without movement after the clear light
Oh perithian fate be kind in the rumbling and trundling rickshaw of time
Hooked by the heart to the king fisher's line
I will set my one eye for the shores of the blind