Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End Songtext
von Van der Graaf Generator

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, yet 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

Though 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 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