Nights in White Satin
Best slow dance song of my high school days.
Album: Days of Future Passed
Year: 1967
Band: The Moody Blues
Song by Justin Hayward (when he was 19 years old)
Nights in white satin
Never reaching the end
Letters I've written
Never meaning to send
Beauty I'd always missed
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I can't say any more
'Cause I love you
Yes I love you
Oh how I love you
Gazing at people, some hand in hand
Just what I'm going through they can't understand
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be, you will be in the end
And I love you
Yes I love you
Oh how I love you
Oh how I love you
Nights in white satin
Never reaching the end
Letters I've written
Never meaning to send
Beauty I've always missed
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I can't say any more
'Cause I love you
Yes I love you
Oh how I love you
Oh how I love you
'Cause I love you
Yes I love you
Oh how I love you
Oh how I love you
Who cares to speculate on the meaning of these lyrics?
And if this wasn’t enough, there is an actual poem at the end of the song on the album entitled
Late Lament
Poem by Graeme Edge (the Moody Blues drummer, he gives the poem in the video below).
Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bed sitter people look back and lament
Another days useless energy spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior citizens wish they were young
Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion
Personal Comment: Regarding “Senior citizens wish they were young” line. I think the majority of those who qualify as senior citizens are happy not to return to life as it was in high school and college.
We don’t want to lose some valuable life lessons beat into us since then. Just sayin.
I agree Ben. I appreciate the lessons learned in my teens & twenties; but I have no desire to repeat the experiences that were the teachers.
A person he loved who he could not or was afraid to communicate with, letters written, she must have moved on and left him emotionally and spiritually destroyed. I had a friend in college -- this was his favorite song -- he committed suicide at the age of 19 -- he must have had a love that the rest of us didn't know about.