A sad song about a woman breaking a man's heart, written by Will Holt, but made famous by The Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, or by Soul Coughing depending when you were born. The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary each recorded a cover of the song. M. Doughty had a nervous female friend sing the chorus into an answering machine at the beginning of his forlorn love song Janine.
When I was just a lad of ten my father said to me,
"Come here and take a lesson from the lovely lemon tree.
Don't put your faith in love my boy," my father said to me,
"I fear you'll find that love is like the lovely lemon tree:"
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The lemon tree is very pretty,
and the lemon flower is sweet,
but the fruit of the poor lemon
is impossible to eat.
One day beneath the lemon tree my love and I did lie--
A girl so sweet that when she smiled the stars rose in the sky.
We passed that summer lost in love beneath the lemon tree.
The music of her laughter hid my father's words from me:
chorus
One day she left without a word, she took away the sun.
And in the dark she'd left behind I knew what she had done:
She'd left me for another, it's a common tale but true.
A sadder man, but wiser now, I sing these words to you:
chorus
chorus, and out