Existence is a stage on which we pass
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a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart:
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it's hopeless, I know,
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but onward I must go
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and try to make a start
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at seeing something more than day to day
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survival, chased by final death
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if I believed this the sum
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of the life to which we've come,
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I wouldn't waste my breath
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Somehow, there must be more. There was a time
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when more was felt than known
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but now, entrenched inside my sett,
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in light more mundane,
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thought rattles round my brain:
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we live, we die...and yet?
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In the beginning there was order and destiny
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but now that path has reached the border,
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and on our knees
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is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
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Though the forces which hold us in place
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last through eons in unruffled grace
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we, too, wear the face of creation.
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As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
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the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead,
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all space is living history.
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It seems as though time must betray us,
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yet we're alive
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and though I see no God to save us,
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still we survive
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through the centuries of progress
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which don't get us very far.
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All illusion! All is bogus -
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we don't yet know what we are...
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Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man!
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with lowered eyes but lifting hearts,
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we're grains of sand
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and though, in time, the sea
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may claim us for its own
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we are the rocks which root the future -
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on us it grows!
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We might not be there to share it
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if eternity's a jest
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but I think that I can bear it
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if the next life is the best.
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Even if there is a heaven when we die,
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endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
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that always comes as answer to the question,
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"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"
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Adrift without a course,
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it's very lonely here,
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our only conjecture
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what lies behind the dark.
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Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
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think of a lifetime which means more
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than my own one -
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dreams of a grander thing than we are.
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Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders:
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when all life is over who can say
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no mutated force shall remain?
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Though the towers of the city are denied
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to we men of clay
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still we know we shall scale
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the heights some day.
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Frightened in the silence -
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frightened, but thinking very hard,
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let us make computations of the stars.
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Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
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faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes:
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colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
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towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate,
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The universe now beckons
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and Man, too, must take His place...
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just a few last fleeting seconds
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to wander in the waste,
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and the children who were ourselves move on,
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reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
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and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.
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All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies
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and slavers too,
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all the throng who have danced a merry tune -
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human we can all be,
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but Humanity we must rise above,
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in the name of all faith and hope and love.
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There's a time for all pilgrims,
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and a time for the fakers too,
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there's a time when we all will stand alone
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and nude,
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naked to the galaxies -
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naked, but clothed in the overview...
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as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.
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And though dark is the highway,
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and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
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for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
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believing that what waits for us
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is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past...
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In the death of mere humans life shall start!
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Childlike Faith In Childhood's End
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Van Der Graaf Generator |