i'm a legionnaire
camel in disrepair
hoping for a frigidaire
to come passing by

i am on reprieve
lacking my joie de vivre
missing my gay paris
in this desert dry

and i wrote my girl
told her i would not return
i've terribly taken a turn
for the worse now I fear

its 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 sidewalk bagatelles, its 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 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 boulevards
and the sidewalk bagatelles, its 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 boulevards
and the sidewalk bagatelles, its 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..