Childlike Faith In Childhoods End chords by Van Der Graaf Generator

from the album Still Life (1976).
Transcribed by Cory (coryp23@gmail.com), 2010

[G C D    C  B D     C  B]   F#dim Abdim
Existence is a stage on which we pass,
[Ab A   B   C     B   A    B]  D
a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart;
     D           G                      F
it's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go
 F                E
and try to make a start

n.C.
at seeing something more
            E                             D
than day to day survival, chased by final death.
                       G                              F
if I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come,
                    Em
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Am
Somehow, there must be more.

Bm    G

C     Csus4       C                       E
There was a time when more was felt than known
                           D
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
              G                                 F
in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain:
                      Em
we live, we die...and yet?


Riff 1:
  D C   D C   D C E  C  D C A
--------------------------------|
--------------------------------|
--7-5---7-5---7-5-9--5--7-5-2---|
--7-5---7-5---7-5-9--5--7-5-2---|
--5-3---5-3---5-3-7--3--5-3-0---|
--------------------------------|

Riff 1
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.

Am                G                F
Though the forces which hold us in place
             Am        G       F
last through eons in unruffled grace
F                  E
we, too, wear the face of creation.

Riff 1
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


Dm                           A7
through the centuries of progress
Dm                     Bb
which don't get us very far.
A7   Dm                      A7
All illusion! All is bogus...
Dm                     Bb     Gm    A
we don't yet know what we are.

Riff 1
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!

Dm                             A7
We might not be there to share it
Dm              Bb   A7    Dm                    A7
if eternity's a jest but I think that I can bear it
Dm                      Bb     Gm    A
if the next life is the best.

(riff 1 with solo's)

4:17
| C# | F# | C# | F# |
| F  | Bb | C  | F

G    Am            G               F
Even if there is a heaven when we die,
        Am                G                  F
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
            Am             G
that always comes as answer to the question
F                          E7
"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"


Bm  D  F#sus F#m  [D E] Bsus4 [D C] Asus4


Bm               F#m
Adrift without a course,
     [D E] Bsus4  Bm
it's very lonely here,
          Asus4
our only conjecture
     A               Bm          F#m
what lies behind the dark.
F#m                Em
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
Bm                              Esus4             Em
think of a lifetime which means more than my own one,
Esus4        Em        Bm7         Bm
dreams of a grander thing than we are.

[C# D]   F#m        Em
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders...
Bm                    [G  A]  E7sus4
when all life is over who can say
       Em                Bsus4     B        E
no mutated force shall remain?


E                        B7 F#m     B7
Though the towers of the city
E                B7  F#m B7
are denied to we men of  clay
E                      B7    F#m B7      F#m  Ab7
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Ab7               (E)
Frightened in the silence, frightened, but
A        E/G# E    B
thinking ve - ry   hard,
E                B7 F#m  B7     E
let us make computations of the stars.


E B E

[Instrumental section]


Riff 1
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.

Dm                  A7
The universe now beckons
Dm                       Bb
and Man, too, must take His place;
A7     Dm                  A7
just a few last fleeting seconds
Dm               Bb    Gm      A
to wander in the waste,

        Am                G               F
and the children who were ourselves move on,
       Am                 G             F
reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
     Am            G            F        Bsus4   B
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.

E                  B        E                   B
All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
E                        B             Ab7
all the throng who have danced a merry tune...
Ab7          E                    A       E/G# E    B
human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above,
E                  B                  E
in the name of all faith and hope and love.


E                      B         E                  B
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
E                    B                          Ab7
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude,
Ab7          E                     A   E/G# E     B
naked to the galaxies...naked, but clothed in the overview:
E                       B            E
as we reach Childhood's End we start anew.

         E             B
And though dark is the highway,
E                       B
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
E                 B                       Ab7
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
                       E
believing that what waits for us
              A          E/G#      E      B
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past.
E                    B                 E