Yesterday When I Was Young

Yesterday When I Was Young - Vikki Carr

Yesterday when I was young

The taste of life was sweet

As rain upon my tongue

I teased at life

As if it were a foolish game

The way an evening breeze

Would tease a candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed

The splendid things I planned

I always built to last

On weak and shifting sand

I lived by night

And shunned the naked light of day

And only now I see

How the years run away

Yesterday when I was young

So many happy songs what waited to be sung

So many wild pleasures

Lay and stored for me

And so much pain

My dazzled eyes refused to see

I ran so fast the time

And youth's last run out

And I never stopped to think

What life was all about

And every conversation I can recall

Concerned itself with me

And nothing else at all

Yesterday the moon was blue

And every crazy day

Brought something new to do

I used my magic age

As if it were a wand

And never saw

The waste and emptiness beyond

The game of love

I played with elegance and pride and every flame

I lit too quickly quickly died

The friends I made all

Seem somehow to drift away

And only I am left on stage

To end the play

There are so many songs

And needed won't be sung

I feel the bitter taste of tears

Upon my tongue

And the time has come for me to pay for yesterday

When I was young