Ballad of the Struggle

Lyrics

Amid melted-down candles and twilight-time prayers Among trophies of war and the peace-fire's glow Lived the children of books, far from battle's despairs Crushed by crises too tiny for grown men to know They were vexed by their age By their world, by their fate — And we fought to the edge Of unbearable hate But our mothers would patch Every tear, every hole While we drank every batch Of the lines that made soul Sweaty hair on our brows, and the thrill in our guts Words would sting us with sweetness, as sharp as a blade And the scent of the fight, like a wind filled with guts Blew from yellowed old pages where stories were laid We, who'd never known war Tried to grasp, tried to feel Why the battle-cries roar Why the war-chariots wheel; What the order commands What a border might mean — And the song of the land Where the steel had once been In the stews of the past — full of chaos and flame — We found food for our minds in the tales of the dead And in games we assigned every coward a name Every traitor and Judas received what we said We would chase every trace Of the villainous men And we swore to embrace All the heroines then And while loving our kin With a boyish delight We would cast ourselves in As the heroes of fight But we cannot escape into dream-worlds too far — Fun is brief, while the pain in the world always grows Try and prise the dead hands that still cling to the spar Take the weapon they gripped, feel the weight of their blows Dare to fight, sword in hand While it's still burning warm Put on armor and stand — Face the cold of the storm! Find your truth in the cost In the fear, in the flame — Are you hero, or lost? Are you worthy of name? When your comrade falls near, and your scream breaks the air And your soul is laid bare by the grief, raw and wild — When you feel that it should have been you lying there And you're skinned by the death of another man's child — You will know, you will see You will find and compare By the grin of the steel — That's death smiling there Look at evil and lies — See how brutal they are! And behind them, the cries And the coffin, and spar… If you've never once torn Off a piece of raw meat If you watched with your scorn From a comfortable seat If you never stepped in To strike down what was wrong — Then your life was a sin — You've been nothing all along! But if, cutting your path with your father's old blade You have tasted the cost and the blood in the flame If the truth of the fight in your soul has been laid — Then you read all the right books and earned your own name!