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 locus was silenced by the playing 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 love When the circus came to town
We ate candy-cones and corndogs 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 The place where I belonged Where I first held the hand of the one I love 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 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 The place where I belonged Where I last held the hand of the one I love When the circus came When the circus came When the circus came to town