Lyrics Childlike Faith In Childhood's End - Van Der Graaf Generator

Childlike Faith In Childhood's End

Existence is a stage on which we pass
A sleepwalk 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 bear 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 hang 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 computations 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 free 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 nude
Naked to the galaxies… naked, but clothed in the overview:
As we reach Childhood’s End we must start anew
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!