Van Der Graaf Generator - Childlike Faith in Childhood's End lyrics

Existence is a stage on which we pa** 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 d**h 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 s**s 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 d**h of mere Humans Life shall start!