Pictures at an Exhibition: B. The Gnome Songtext
von Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Lead me from tortured dreams
Childhood themes of nights alone
Wipe away endless years
Childhood tears as dry as stone

From seeds of confusion
Illusions dark blossoms have grown
Even now in furrows of sorrow
The dance still is sung

My life′s course is guided
Decided by limits drawn
In charts of my past ways
And pathways since I was born

I carry the dust of a journey
That cannot be shaken away
It lives deep within me
For I breathe it every day


You and I are yesterday's answers
The earth of the past came to flesh
Eroded by Time′s rivers
To the shapes we now possess

Come share of my breath and my substance
And mingle our streams and our times
In bright, infinite moments
All our reasons are lost in our rhymes

Come forth from love spire
Born in life's fire
Born in life's fire
Come forth from love′s spire

In the burning, all are yearning
for life to be
And the pain must be gain
New life

Stirring salty streams
And dark hidden seams
Where the fossil sun gleams

They were sent to the gates
Ride the tides of fate
Ride the tides of fate
They were sent to the gates


In the burning, all are yearning
For life to be

They were sent to the gates
Ride the tides of fate
Ride the tides of fate
They were sent to the gates

In the burning, all are yearning
For life to be
Oh, to be

There′s no end to my life
No beginning to my death
Death is life