The Song
The song involves a man telling the singer/narrator, at a bar, how he went down to St. James Infirmary (hospital) and tragically found his girl (the so-called "baby") dead.
Like most such folksongs, there is much variation in the lyrics from one version to another. This is the first stanza as sung by Louis Armstrong:
- I went down to St. James Infirmary,
- Saw my baby there,
- Stretched out on a long white table,
- So cold, so sweet, so fair.
- Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
- Wherever she may be,
- She can look this wide world over,
- But she'll never find a sweet man like me.
Read more about this topic: St. James Infirmary Blues
Famous quotes containing the word song:
“Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky—
So this winged hour is dropped to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.”
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
“Marlowe went muttering to death
When he had done with song and lust.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)