To lay me down
once more
To lay me down
with my head
in sparkling clover1
Let the world go by
all lost in dreaming
To lay me down
one last time
To lay me down
To be with you
once more
To be with you
with our bodies
close together
Let the world go by
like clouds a-streaming
To lay me down
one last time
To lay me down
To lay me down
To lay me down
To lay me down
One last time
To lay me down
To lie with you
once more
to lie with you
with our dreams
entwined together
To lie beside you
my love still sleeping
to tell sweet lies
one last time
and say goodnight
to lay me down
to lay me down
to lay me down
one last time
to lay me down
to lay me down
one last time
to lay me down
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
Trifolium, with many species. Usually three-leaved (as implied by the Latin name)—rarely four-leaved. Its flowers can be red, purple, pink, yellow, or white.
Lyric written in London, 1970. Studio recording: Garcia (January 1972).
First performance: July 30, 1970, at the Matrix in San Francisco. The song’s subsequent performance history is fairly unusual among Dead tunes, dropping from the repertoire for the space of two hundred to three hundred shows at a time, several times.
Hunter’s liner notes for the Garcia box set All Good Things:
“To Lay Me Down” was written a while before the others [on the Garcia album], on the same day as the lyrics to “Brokedown Palace” and “Ripple”—the second day of my first visit to England. I found myself left alone in Alan Trist’s flat on Devonshire Terrace in West Kensington, with a supply of very nice thick linen paper, sun shining brightly through the window, a bottle of Greek Retsina wine at my elbow. The songs flowed like molten gold onto the page and stand as written. The images for “To Lay Me Down” were inspired at Hampstead Heath (the original title to the song) the day before—lying on the grass and clover on a day of swallowtailed clouds, across from Jack Straw’s Castle [a pub], reunited with the girlfriend of my youth, after a long separation.