Cover art for The Last Living Rose by PJ Harvey

The Last Living Rose

Producers

Flood, Mick Harvey &
Feb. 14, 20111 viewer13.4K views

The Last Living Rose Lyrics

Goddam' Europeans! Take me back to beautiful England
And the grey, damp filthiness of ages and battered books
And fog rolling down behind the mountains
On the graveyards and dead sea captains

Let me walk through the stinking alleys
To the music of drunken beatings
Past the Thames River glistening like gold
Hastily sold for nothing, nothing


Let me watch night fall on the river
The moon rise up and turn to silver
The sky move, the ocean shimmer
The hedge shake, the last living rose quiver

How to Format Lyrics:

  • Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
  • Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
  • Use italics (<i>lyric</i>) and bold (<b>lyric</b>) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
  • If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

To learn more, check out our transcription guide or visit our transcribers forum

About

This song bio is unreviewed
Genius Annotation

Harvey told NME that this hymn to England is, “A reflection on this country, seeing it up against other countries. I was very pleased with the words of that song because it does feel very picturesque, very filmic, in a way.”

Unlike almost all her other videos, which are made by her lifelong friend Maria Mochnacz, the video for this song (and all the other songs on the album) is by Seamus Murphy, a British photographer who has documented wars all over the world.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Credits
Writer
Vocals
Mixing Engineer
Recording Engineer
Assistant Mixing Engineer
Saxophone
Trombone
Backing Vocals
Recorded At
Eype Church - Dorset, United Kingdom
Release Date
February 14, 2011
Songs That Sample The Last Living Rose
The Last Living Rose Interpolations
View The Last Living Rose samples
Tags
Comments