Harry Chapin Anthem Lyrics

She wasn't very pretty,
She wasn't very smart,
But everything she said to him came strait from her heart.

Write a song about me,
Sing a song that's of my day,
Everybody special in there ordinary way.

CHORUS:
Looking for an anthem,
He was looking for a song,
Looking for a melody singing brings the world along.

He was strumming his guitar,
He was searching their eyes,
If he can't find his anthem will he buy the compromise.

One child was brown and hungry,
One a red injun girl,
One child was black and angry,
One from the other half the world.

And as he heard their silent screams,
That they have sounded there for years, It had been lost among the whispers,
And drowned out by their tears.

CHORUS

He kept looking for a story,
Looking for a plot.
He kept on looking in the wonder,
If he was blind or not.

All he found was bugle fragments,
That he'd left there in his youth.
But he never found the music,
To accompany the truth.

Now the old man had been young once,
The old man had been strong.
He once had a family, but they'd grown up and moved a long.

The old man told him loneliness, is what the years would bring,
But the old man couldn't tell him,
How to make the long years sing.

CHORUS