Childlike Faith In Childhood's End (2005 Digital Remaster)

Childlike Faith In Childhood's End (2005 Digital Remaster) - Van Der Graaf Generator

Written by：Peter Hammill/P Hammill

Existence is a stage on which we pass

Asleep walk trick for mind and heart

It's hopeless I know

But onward I must go

And try to make a start

At seeing something more than day to day

Survival chased by final death

If I believed this the sum

Of the life to which we've come

I wouldn't waste my breath

Somehow there must be more

There was a time when more was felt than

Known

But now entrenched inside my sett

In light more mundane thought rattles

Round my brain

We live we die and yet

In the beginning there was order and

Destiny but now that path has reached the

Border and on our knees is no way to face

The future whatever it be

Though the forces which hold us in place

Last through eons in unruffled grace

We too wear the face of creation

As anti matter sucks and pulses

Periodically the bud unfolds the bloom

Is dead all space is living history

It seems as though time must betray us

Yet we're alive

And though I see no god to save us still we

Survive

Through the centuries of progress

Which don't get us very far

All illusion all is bogus we don't yet

Know what we are laughing hoping

Praying joking son of man

With lowered eyes but lifting hearts

We're grains of sand

And though in time the sea may claim us

For its own

We are the rocks which root the future

On us it grows

We might not be there to share it if

Eternity's a jest

But I think that I can hear it

If the next life is the best

Even if there is a heaven when we die

Endless bliss would be as meaningless

As the lie that always comes as answer to

The question 'why do we see through the

Eyes of creation'

Adrift without a course it's very lonely

Here our only conjecture what lies

Behind the dark

Still I find I can cling to a lifeline

Think of a lifetime which means more than

My own one dreams of a grander thing

Than we are

Time and space hand heavy on my

Shoulders

When all life is over who can say

No mutated force shall remain

Though the towers of the city are denied

To we men of clay

Still we know we shall scale the heights

Some day

Frightened in the silence

Frightened but thinking very hard

Let us make computation of the stars

Older wiser sadder blinder watch us

Run faster longer harder stronger now

It comes colour blisters image splinters

Gravitate towards the centre in final

Splendour disintegrate

The universe now beckons

And man too must take his place

Just a few last fleeting seconds

To wander in the waste

And the children who were ourselves

Move on

Reincarnation stills its now perfected song

And at last we are freed of the bonds

Of creation

All the jokers and gaolers all the junkies

And slavers too

All the throng who have danced a merry

Tune human we can all be

But humanity we must rise above

In the name of all faith and hope and love

There's a time for all pilgrims and a time

For the fakers too

There's a time when we all will stand alone

And ni**a

Ni**a to the galaxies

Ni**a but clothed in the overview as

We reach childhood's end we start a new

And though dark is the highway

And the peak's distance breaks my heart

For I never shall see it still I play my part

Believing that what waits for us is the

Cosmos compared to the dust of the

Past

In the death of mere humans life shall

Start