Skip to content
Lyric
Dive
Public playlists
My playlists
Search
Sign in
The Life And Death Of A Plant Hunter
François Ribac
Popularity · Low
+
🇬🇧 English · Original
0
0
Listen
YouTube
1
2
3
0:00 / 0:00
Loading YouTube player...
Lyrics offset
Synced
Lyrics
Original
Translation
Bilingual
Hokkaido blooms in the rains of Kew
Trees grace the garden
Tall cedars and the yew
These were my world
Dreams, like seeds must be
Sown if they are to flower
Far I’d go, as the ocean would roll
Just to say I had known them
Seas of species I sailed all alone
If unseen, how could we
Grow them at all?
Golden pine, magnolia, bamboo
From Shanghai, east to Kyushu
Latinised, my name
Shall be a fragile fame
For my crowded hours
Spent on these gems
Their stamens and stems
Live lived among their flowers
China tea – terrace to samovar
I introduced to India
Sail and trade
Empires were not made, but grown
Underneath my gaze
Europe waits like a child at the gate
Eager for what I’ve brought him
Crysanthemum, the azalea or plum
Bay of Shimoda and Pagoda
Brought back here by botany
Green oceans away
When the ship sails back home
I may not be with her
But you’ll see on this quay
Europe, all I give her:
Species recovered from Edens unseen
Let this be my inscription
And if in all the years to follow
Wind still blow
Then all the world shall know
What I have seen
And if the ships still sail
From west to east, and home
My spirit will be with them
In the wind
And when the tea is brewed
And flowers bloom outside
My spirit will be with them
In the rain
Only this – not my name
Is all you need remember
All my crowded hours
Spent on these gems
Their stamens and stems
Life lived among their flowers