When the Circus Came to Town

Well, the days are long and the work is hard

When your childhood is spent in the fields

And summer seemed to last million years

One day when I was just a boy

During one of those hot summer swells

The locusts were silenced by the clanging of bells

And there was the thing for which I longed

A place where I belonged

Where I first held the hand of the one I loved

When the circus came to town

We ate candy-corns and corn dogs

Cotton candy and candy-canes

And we shared a caramel apple by the arcade

And when night fell and the stars rose

And light bedazzled the fair

We rode the Ferris wheel

Up into the air

And there was the thing for which I longed

A place where I belonged

Where I first held the hand of the one I loved

When the circus came to town

And later, in the funhouse,

Our bodies looked so strange

And the mirrors made our faces seemed deranged

And the snake-man in the freak-show

He got you so alarmed

That you ran and ran and ran

Right into my arms

Oh, oh, oh

The next morning I got up

Wrapped my clothes up into a ball

And I ran and ran to run away with the fair

But when I arrived, to my surprise,

All the tents and wagons were gone

And they'd stolen all that happiness from the air

And gone was the thing for which I longed

That place where I belonged

Where I last held the hand of the one I loved

When the circus came

When the circus came

When the circus came to town