Song Lyrics: Lorraine, Lorraine (St. Germaine)

The Church Against the World, & "Love in the Ruins"

An icon of Saint Germaine Cousin, a pious French virgin of the Middle Ages

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Below are the lyrics to an old song I wrote in my late teens or early 20s. For the life of me, I can’t find any recordings, although I know I made at least one years ago.

The acorn of an idea from which the lyrics sprouted was a Christian love song set at the end of the world. More specifically, a singer surviving the Apocalypse does not want to live alone, and so he tries to woo a young woman, whose virtue reminds him of a long dead saint, one who became famous for her devotion to God and suffering with dignity and grace.

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Lorraine, Lorraine (Saint Germaine¹)
By Tyler Morrison

Don’t you know, Lorraine, Lorraine,
The world is chasing the wind in vain?
And this young song might do the same, 
If you don’t come soon
And sing the refrain:

I love you. Do you love me too?

Can’t you see, Lorraine, Lorraine,
The world’s already flung into flames?
And this guitar might burn the same,
If you don’t come soon 
And sing the refrain:

I love you. Do you love me too?

Oh, come, my love, and sing with me.
We’ll crack our voices 
And snap these strings.
We’ll learn to love the sorrows
Of the Psalmists and Job
And the author of Ecclesiastes.

I think of you as Saint Germaine.
I hope you know I don’t profane
When I pray and I pray and I
Pray that you love me, 
That you’ll bring us all home 
With this last refrain:

I love you. Do you love me too?

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Read More Poetry from the Author?

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1. Saint Germaine Cousin - “Born in 1579 of humble parents at Pibrac, a village about ten miles from Toulouse; died in her native place in 1601. From her birth she seemed marked out for suffering; she came into the world with a deformed hand and the disease of scrofula, and, while yet an infant, lost her mother. Her father soon married again, but his second wife treated Germaine with much cruelty. Under pretence of saving the other children from the contagion of scrofula she persuaded the father to keep Germaine away from the homestead, and thus the child was employed almost from infancy as a shepherdess. When she returned at night, her bed was in the stable or on a litter of vine branches in a garret. In this hard school Germaine learned early to practise humility and patience. She was gifted with a marvellous sense of the presence of God and of spiritual things, so that her lonely life became to her a source of light and blessing. To poverty, bodily infirmity, the rigours of the seasons, the lack of affection from those in her own home, she added voluntary mortifications and austerities, making bread and water her daily food. Her love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and for His Virgin Mother presaged the saint. She assisted daily at the Holy Sacrifice; when the bell rang, she fixed her sheep-hook or distaff in the ground, and left her flocks to the care of Providence while she heard Mass. Although the pasture was on the border of a forest infested with wolves, no harm ever came to her flocks.”

…

“Her father at last came to a sense of his duty, forbade her stepmother henceforth to treat her harshly, and wished to give her a place in the home with the other children, but she begged to be allowed to remain in the humbler position. At this point, when men were beginning to realize the beauty of her life, God called her to Himself. One morning in the early summer of 1601, her father finding that she had not risen at the usual hour went to call her; he found her dead on her pallet of vine-twigs. She was then twenty-two years of age.”

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