Valediction

I watched death's shadow darken over you

Gather you silently under its jealous view

While I could only look on distraught

Fighting to hold your live form in thought

Knowing we will never meet again

Knowing that time will never come again



Safe times grow distant, days of few fears

Intangible memory mockingly leers

Once faceless, now death stares me in the eyes

With this Earth I have lost another tie

Knowing we will never meet again

Knowing that time will never come again



A valediction to those friends now lost and gone

We've fought bravely but time has always won

All that we can seek is dignity in retreat

Acceptance of the fact of certain defeat

I feel so mortal and as fragile as you

Dust claims dust and that way we will all go

Innocence is lost and can never be regained

The act draws to its close

The play will start again



In youth we imagined ourselves as gods

All could be achieved, no matter the odds

Immortal and worthy of sacrifice

In our favour the Fates loaded the dice

And they poured libations to our folly

The pride of ever more distant glory



For us was slaughtered the fatted calf

When the heavens thundered, we did laugh

The whole world was ours for the taking

The tension in the air of our own making

And they poured libations to our folly

The pride of ever more distant glory



A valediction to those friends now lost and gone

We've fought bravely but time has always won

All that we can seek is dignity in retreat

Acceptance of the fact of certain defeat

I feel so mortal and as fragile as you

Dust claims dust and that way we will all go

Innocence is lost and can never be regained

The act draws to its close

The play will start again



So all is vanity

Remember we are dust

Everything we are and all we do must

Surely atrophy, collapse, and fall

Though now we may stand so strong and tall

The old alliances are soon forgotten

With Olympian indifference the gods look on



Soon upon us comes the death of dreams

The rising dawn of the end of our time

With it this mourning valediction

And the deadening loss of all conviction

The old alliances are soon forgotten

With Olympian indifference the gods look on