The Ark & The Tinderbox - The Stupendium.mp3

[00:00.000] 作词 : Greg Holgate
[00:01.000] 作曲 : Quinlan Stuwe
[00:11.337]Heave lads! Ho lads!
[00:13.066]Forget the comfort of home – you’re a nomad
[00:15.915]We’ve lost so much since we first started
[00:18.838]Are our hearts cold – or are we cold hearted?
[00:21.724]So pray to your lord or your foreman
[00:24.532]That the sun might rise in the morning
[00:27.275]They told us hell was warm
[00:29.316]But our empire fell for shelter from the -
[00:32.046]Storm’s coming. Storm came. Storm will come again.
[00:34.879]Tempest upon tempest till what’s left to let the tundra claim?
[00:37.519]Useless to dispute should you be hoping for someone to blame
[00:40.119]Hubris from the day those walls arose – by any other name
[00:42.771]We burned the very best of us to cast us into flame
[00:45.268]And when the skies denied us we still marched on all the same
[00:48.010]Through night and day we’d fight to stay alight against the ice’s reign
[00:50.714]And blindly claim the price we’d pay was worth what we became
[00:53.340]We sacrificed and sacrificed and what have we to show?
[00:56.030]A barren land of arid ice where not a seed will grow
[00:58.787]When Mother Nature came for us, took Fahrenheit below
[01:01.417]We sanctioned plights of matricide and blackened skies with smoke
[01:04.144]We grafted our salvation – Twisted iron into spires
[01:06.679]Through disaster and starvation – bled her veins to light the fires
[01:09.486]Each building block a tinderbox - how fitting it transpire
[01:12.137]The ending of an empire be reduced to just the pyre
[01:14.728]Autumn leaves – on the ground
[01:16.818]Auburn, green, golden brown
[01:19.483]Lost to freeze – stories now
[01:22.173]Just as we – fallen down
[01:24.825]Stoke the fires, give your last, keep the flame of all we’ve known
[01:30.076]For when heaven left us helpless, we built shelter of our own
[01:35.420]But the heart and hearth are darkened where an endless storm has blown
[01:40.736]Cling to every dying ember and remember warmth of home
[01:46.044]May we all rise together – lest we all fall apart
[01:51.434]May our city stand – our promised land – our refuge from the dark
[01:56.699]May we survive the weather – though the forecast be stark
[02:02.667]So heavy hang the many hands we pledge to steer the ark
[02:07.348]Through the storm
[02:18.905]United in conviction – forge a path at any cost
[02:21.451]A future for our children built no matter what was lost
[02:24.157]Yet perfidious of vision left that mission to attrition
[02:26.772]Fetid grip of man’s ambition rearisen from the frost
[02:29.433]"Come my sisters, come my brothers! Some respect amongst your kin!
[02:32.073]Why, for all this air and bluster, we’re no better than the wind!
[02:35.087]For the ice beneath this tundra is getting all too thin
[02:37.116]And lives outside of this rotunda hang on what’s declared within!"
[02:40.145]"To each the spoils of grit and toil – the worthiest shall rise!"
[02:42.718]"But each on earth has equal worth when seen through heaven’s eyes!"
[02:45.293]"Time honoured ways are what shall take us all to warmer skies"
[02:48.100]"The path we took is past - through new ideas salvation lies!"
[02:50.844]"The right of man’s to fight the land – rebuild the world that fell!"
[02:53.510]"The world we knew was born anew – so must we be as well!"
[02:56.095]"His guiding hand – divine of plan – seeds hope in every knell"
[02:58.591]"What seeds will grow in bed of hope? We must progress ourselves!"
[03:01.558]A future born in fruitless scorn – such human flaw would leave
[03:04.134]Disputes so worn as uniform, should feuds so thaw the freeze
[03:06.654]When schools of thought make rules of law make tools of war decreed
[03:09.354]What hubris wrought when boon it bought’s a rubric for debris?
[03:12.112]Autumn leaves – on the ground
[03:14.152]Auburn, green, golden brown
[03:17.064]Lost to freeze – stories now
[03:19.654]Just as we – fallen down
[03:22.315]Stoke the fires, give your last, keep the flame of all we’ve known
[03:27.462]For when heaven left us helpless, we built shelter of our own
[03:32.769]But the heart and hearth are darkened where an endless storm has blown
[03:38.175]Cling to every dying ember and remember warmth of home
[03:43.518]May we all rise together – lest we all fall apart
[03:48.729]May our city thrive – our people strive for futures we might chart
[03:54.046]May we survive the weather – though the forecast be stark
[04:00.120]But discord thrives when laws decide which thoughts must guide the ark
[04:04.642]Through the storm
[04:11.127]Each citizen’s resilience was given with the lie
[04:13.455]That each shiver would deliver us deliverance in time
[04:16.327]But dissonance and dissidence have driven us to schism,
[04:18.917]Just like Sisyphus, the myth of us v never ending clime
[04:21.736]No fillibuster preserves us from temperature's decline
[04:24.026]No division cut so deep as those down lines where laws are signed
[04:26.767]So the Militant, the Penitent, entrenched against their fellow men
[04:29.301]Forgetting that the elements care not how you align
[04:32.161]Without the heart the blood will start to freeze at but a chill
[04:34.775]The ichor piped to give us light will cease at colder still
[04:37.673]But if we were to summary our great and grand discoveries
[04:40.208]The nub would be we found the freezing point of human will
[04:43.080]There's not the time for tears when all that's dear's against the wall
[04:45.590]They streak the face and freeze in place 'fore they've the grace to fall
[04:48.321]If each a flake unique in shape is beauty framed in squall
[04:50.945]What leap of faith to dream our place was not beneath them all?
[04:53.573]For what is man but animal in all but face and name?
[04:56.392]No fang but sharp of mandible when chanced to stake a claim
[04:58.772]We rage and fight against the night but sun still fades the same
[05:01.478]So each convinced of rite and right we buck from fate in vain
[05:04.153]Feed the strong that they may prosper – feed the weak may they revive
[05:06.766]Loose the gates to save the lost or keep the heat for those inside
[05:09.769]Crush dissenters, hush and censor or let free expression thrive
[05:11.981]Just to let it flourish – end up one more creed to wrench the knife
[05:14.540]LET IT BURN, I SAY!
[05:16.880]Rend it all to ash and dust
[05:19.470]For as fools we are as fuel
[05:22.133]It is our nature to combust
[05:25.373]Man – so blessed engine
[05:27.504]Grinds and churns and screams and lusts
[05:30.051]Its lustre faded now since autumn eve
[05:33.430]That God did leave to rust
[05:35.796]Autumn leaves – on the ground
[05:38.110]Auburn, green, golden brown
[05:40.843]Lost to freeze – stories now
[05:43.427]Just as we – fallen down
[05:46.107]Has the branch cause to grieve
[05:48.834]As leaves dance on the breeze?
[05:51.855]Who so cast, mourn the tree
[05:54.016]When autumn leaves
[05:56.068]OUTRO('Nature, red in tooth and claw' excerpt from In Memoriam section LVI)
[05:57.094]"So careful of the type?" but no.
[05:59.721]From scarped cliff and quarried stone
[06:02.204]She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
[06:05.324]I care for nothing, all shall go."
[06:08.197]"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
[06:10.420]I bring to life, I bring to death:
[06:13.306]The spirit does but mean the breath:
[06:15.659]I know no more." And he, shall he,
[06:18.795]Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
[06:21.521]Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
[06:24.148]Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
[06:26.358]Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
[06:28.970]Who trusted God was love indeed
[06:31.726]And love Creation's final law —
[06:34.031]Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
[06:36.874]With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
[06:39.695]O life as futile, then, as frail!
[06:42.453]O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
[06:45.350]What hope of answer, or redress?
[06:47.757]Behind the veil, behind the veil.