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