When I was seventeen,
It was a very good year.
It was a very good year for small town
Girls and soft summer nights.
We'd hide from the light on the village
Green when I was seventeen.
When I was twenty-one,
It was a very good year.
It was a very good year for city
Girls who lived up the stairs
With perfume hair that came undone
When I was twenty-one.
When I was thirty-five,
It was a very good year.
It was a very good year for blue-blooded
girls of independent means.
We'd ride in limousines.
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five.
But now the days are short,
I'm in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage
Wine from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs.
It poured sweet and clear.
It was a very good year