Well, I kissed the day, I was on my way   From those cold gray blocks of stone   For seventeen years of squalor filled tears   A time now with innocence lost      As the sun split the room   With its rays filled with gloom   Turnin' all hope to despair   And the only thing left was to flee from the nest   That was life in a Tenement Square      I remember the song where the rats sang along   And danced for their daily bread   While the damp washed the walls that were twenty feet tall   Not a child in the house was fed      On the porter filled face, of the men left a trace   Of the coin they had already spent   While our mothers asked God, "What was Hell ever for   When you lived in a Tenement Square?"      Grab what's left of the coal from the ol' cubbyhole   These cinders need more to be a fire   While the ghosts of the soldiers that lived there before us   Laugh with their guns by their side   I hear them laugh with their guns by their side      Now politicians they dwell in that forgotten hell   Our misery's been turned into mews   Where the fat of the land, now hog, hand-in-hand   A crime now of life was ever true      As the sun split the room with its rays filled with gloom   Turnin' all hope to despair   And the only thing left was to flee from the nest   That was life in a Tenement Square