Lyrics Harry Chapin

Harry Chapin

She Is Always Seventeen

She has no fear of failure

She's not bent with broken dreams

For the future's just beginning

When you're always seventeen

It was nineteen sixty-one

When we went to Washington

She put her arms around me

And said, "Camelot's begun"

We listened to his visions

Of how our land should be

We gave him our hearts and minds

To send across the sea

Nineteen sixty-three

White and black upon the land

She brought me to the monuments

And made us all join hands

And scarcely six months later

She held me through the night

When we heard what had happened

In that brutal Dallas light

Oh, she is always seventeen

She has a dream that she will lend us

And a love that we can borrow

There is so much joy inside her

She will even share her sorrow

She's our past, our present

And our promise of tomorrow

Oh, truly she's the only hope I've seen

And she is always seventeen

It was nineteen sixty-five

And we were marching once more

From the burning cities

Against a crazy war

Memphis, L.A. and Chicago

We bled through sixty-eight

Till she took me up to Woodstock

Saying with love, it's not too late

We started out the seventies

Living off the land

She was sowing seeds in Denver

Trying to make me understand

That mankind is woman

And woman is man

And until we free each other

We cannot free the land

Oh, she is always seventeen

She has a dream that she will lend us

And a love that we can borrow

There is so much joy inside her

She will even share her sorrow

She's our past, our present

And our promise of tomorrow

Oh, truly she's the only hope I've seen

And she is always seventeen

Nineteen seventy-two

I'm at the end of my rope

But she was picketing

The White House chanting,

the Truth's the only hope!

In 1975, when the

crooked King was gone

She was feeding starving children

saying the Dream must go on!

Oh, she is always seventeen

She has a dream that she will lend us

And a love that we can borrow

There is so much joy inside her

She will even share her sorrow

She's our past, our present

And our promise of tomorrow

Oh, truly she's the only hope I've seen

And she is always seventeen