Childhoods End?

[Track Info] [The Lyrics] [Explanation]

Childhoods End? - Track Info

1. Album version (04:33) [Misplaced Childhood (1985)]
2. Live (London, England - "Hammersmith Odeon", January 9/10th '86) (02:48) [The Thieving Magpie - La Gazza Ladra (1988)]
   
   Notes: This song is joined to Blind Curve (which comes before) and White Feather (which comes after). Live version is shorter, it lacks the entire ending strophe and refrain from the verse "Hey you, you’ve survived...".
   
   Lyrics by Derek William Dick (Fish)
   Performed Live for the first Time: September 4th 1985
   
   Published by Marillion Music, Charisma Music Publishing Co. Ltd., Chappell Music Ltd.

Childhoods End? - The Lyrics

And it was morning.
And I found myself mourning,
for a childhood that I thought had disappeared.
I looked out the window,
And I saw a magpie in the rainbow, the rain had gone
I'm not alone, I turned to the mirror,
I saw you, the child, that once loved.
The child before they broke his heart,
Our heart, the heart that I believed was lost.

Hey you, surprised? More than surprised,
to find the answers to the questions,
Were always in your own eyes.
Do you realize that you give it on back to her?
But that would only be retraced in all the problems that you ever knew,
So untrue.
For she's got to carry on with her life,
and you've got to carry on with yours.

So I see it's me, I can do anything
And I'm still the child,
'Cos the only thing misplaced was direction
And I found direction.
There is no Childhood's End.
There is no Childhood's End.
Cos' you are my childhood friend.
Cos' you are my childhood friend.
Oh lead me on.

Hey you, you've survived.
Now you've arrived,
to be reborn in the shadow of the magpie.
Now you realize, that you've got to get out of here.
You've found the leading light of destiny,
burning in the ashes of your memory.
You want to change the world.
You'd resigned yourself to die a broken rebel,
But that was looking backward.
Now you've found the light.

You, the child that once loved,
The child before they broke his heart.
Our heart, the heart that I believed was lost
So it's me I see, I can do anything.
I'm still the child.
'Cos the only thing misplaced was direction, and I found direction.
There is no childhood's end.
There is no childhood's end.
There is no childhood's end.
I am your childhood friend.
Oh.. lead me on.

Copyright © 1997 Fraser Marshall, Matthew Anderson & Bert ter Steege.

Childhoods End?

‘Childhoods End?’
Childhood's End was an Arthur C Clarke novel concerning a race of beings that had grown from its infancy and ascended to a higher lever of evolution. It was a theme that he was to develop further in his classic '2001, a space oddessy'. Childhood's End itself served as the inspiration for the Genesis track 'Watcher of the Skies' from 1972's seminal Foxtrot.

‘Magpie’
A superstition holds that there are various portents depending on the number of magpies seen at any one time.

• One for Sorrow
• Two for Joy
• Three for marriage
• Four for a boy (etc).

You will notice how many ever appear on a Marillion cover.

Sources:

Last Modified: 27 Jul 2000