Lime Tree

**Lime Tree** is the thirteenth and final song on the Bright Eyes album Cassadaga.

## Lyrics

I keep floating down the river but the ocean never comes

Since the operation, I heard you're breathing just for one

Now everything's imaginary, especially what you love

You left another message, said it's done

It's done

When I hear beautiful music, it's always from another time

Old friends I never visit, I remember what they're like

Standing on a doorstep full of nervous butterflies

Waiting to be asked to come inside

Just come inside

But I keep going out

I can't sleep next to a stranger when I'm coming down

It's 8 a.m., my heart's beating too loud

Too loud

Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much

I felt something that I had never touched

Everything gets smaller now the further that I go

Towards the mouth and the reunion of the known and the unknown

Consider yourself lucky if you think of it as home

You can move mountains with your misery if you don't

If you don't

It comes to me in fragments, even those still split in two

Under the eaves of that old lime tree, I stood examining the fruit

Some were ripe and some were rotten, I felt nauseous with the truth

There will never be a time more opportune

So I just won't be late

The window closes, shock rolls over in a tidal wave

And all the color drains out of the frame

So pleased with a daydream that now living's no good

I took off my shoes and walked into the woods

I felt lost and found with every step I took

## Credits

* Conor Oberst - voice, guitar, synthesizer
* Stacey DuPree - voice
* Sherri DuPree - voice
* Z Berg - voice
* Rachael Yamagata - voice

Strings arranged by Nate Walcott

Conducted by Bill Meyers

## Comments from Bright Eyes

* Oberst acknowledged that those lines are indeed about an abortion. "Like most songs, it's a composite sketch, a drawing from a lot of different experiences, some my own and some from people close to me, stories I heard that affected me and entered my subconscious to find a place in a song." (The Omaha Reader interview)
* "...I'm deeply into the string parts on Lime Tree. Nate Walcott, who is in our band, wrote the string arrangements and I think that song in particular is amazing because it actually makes me feel nauseous, the strings on that song... and I think that that's sort of an untapped field of music that makes you feel sick when you listen to it." (Track by track Cassadaga)

## Notes and references

* The song most likely references the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem *This Lime-tree Bower my Prison.* The poem was written when Coleridge was staying at a friend's home to recover from an injury, unable to join his friends and wife, who were traveling across the Quantock Hills. Coleridge feels a great sense of loss towards his friends "whom [he] never more may meet again", but through his imagination, he is able to transcend the physical prison of the lime tree and his surroundings and partake in his friends' journeys. The poem is seen as an ode to the sublime power of nature. Most saliently, it was written after Coleridge's wife suffered a miscarriage, though this is not discussed in the poem; this clearly parallels the woman and her abortion in this song.

## Sources

**B-sides:** "Reinvent the Wheel" • "Smoke Without Fire" • "Stray Dog Freedom" • "Cartoon Blues" • "Tourist Trap" • "Endless Entertainment" • "Susan Miller Rag"