"The Windmills of Your Mind" is a song with music by French composer Michel Legrand and English lyrics written by Americans Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman. The French lyrics, under the title "Les moulins de mon cœur", were written by Eddy Marnay. The song (with the English lyrics) was used as the theme for the 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair. The opening two melodic sentences were borrowed from Mozart's second movement from his Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, K. 364.

 

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon

Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

 

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own

Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone

Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream

Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

 

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head When did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said? Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand? Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song

Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong? When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!

 

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find in

The windmills of your mind!

 

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head When did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said? Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand? Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song

Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong? When you knew that it was over in the autumn of good-byes

For a moment you could not recall the color of his eyes!

 

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find in

The windmills of your mind!