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