Lyrics Pompeii - Peter Hammill

Pompeii

The golden dream, the seat of all decorum
A satellite to match the light of Rome;
Its silver children chatter in the Forum
The bath-house, and the brothels, and their homes
About the latest fashions for their clothes
Across the Tyrrhenian Sea comes drifting
A song that none of them have ever known
The golden dream that holds back all the hours
For the ladies in their Dionysian rites
Blonde heads all garlanded with flowers
Wine and love and laughter through the night
In constant masque and pageant, constant flight
The ground below them whispers in a murmur
Of passion which is hotter yet than white
The golden dream, the city of all cities
Its towers piercing into azure sky
Whose hand is dealt, regardless of all pity
Condemned to martyrdom, but not to die
Two lovers look up from their hidden bower
The wine has stood too long and it turns sour
I see the tall and bending of your streets
But now they echo only leather tourist feet
And waking, ashen, grey-blue blinding death
Your sudden winding-sheet