Ada my rarest bud from the desert valley

Your hair of fire and skin of snow

Have coursed me to the heights of the desert mountains

In search of the cure for a rampant fever

Your beauty's power it plagues me now

I come and scour the land for the desert flower

For beauty and perfume I'd stake my house and my lands

The gold is sleeping in the river

But the flower's in my hand

With a paler leaf and a broken petal

I'll paint the king and queen

And to the goldsmith with my flower

I'll buy your wedding ring

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

Oxen sheep and wheat and rye and land on the north seaside

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

The finest dresses man can buy and a pearl for to pay my bride

Then with my rarest bowl to her father's garden

Like gold for lamb or wool for clam

I gave that man a bowl for his daughter Ada

Your heart is mine and it's mine forever

And she replied "My fate that lies on

'Yon horizon's tethered me to the sky"

The match arranged and vows exchanged and the dove flew away

The bells spilled out the hollow canyon on our wedding day

To me she gave her hand and to death do us part

But the bird will nest with one that she has promised her heart

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

The bed from which our sons will rise and the window where she cries

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

The next to catch the birds that fly from the window where she cries

He reaches out and I withdraw

Spilling the flowering bribes from his paw

The broken petals climbing the walls

Stealing my oxygen no air at all

From the bed I hear him call

But I answer cooing when the night falls

The cotton sword is storming the hall

Cutting my vision to no sight at all

I tied the tulip around her neck like a red lead sinker

And blindfold and spin around and 'round and 'round

To the banks of the river

And then walk my true love into the rushing water

And by her long hair bleeding red

Hair-pulled my love there under until she drowned

For beauty and perfume

I'd stake my house and my lands

My love is sleeping in the river

But the flower's in my hand

With a paler leaf and a broken petal

I'll keep her all to me

And to the river with my flower

I'll hear my true love sing

Your water is still in my friend ready to drown

Water water oh water my kin carry me out

This Eine River is mercy at last die as she laughs

For he's waiting with a dove's nest my true love

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

A veil that parted o'er my bride and the breath as my true love died

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

A veil that parted o'er my bride and the blue from the bluest eye

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

A veil that parted o'er my bride and the breath as my true love died

Tulip tulip with one word I'd a-buy

A veil that parted o'er my bride and the breath as my true love died