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:
“Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane of the grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad. Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Song of Solomon 4:16.