John Cale - The High & Mighty Road Lyrics

Before the end of the beginning
Before the finish credits role
There is a brief but brutal truth along
The high and mighty road

Faces tend to run together
Names be lost and legends told
Of the ways to be forgiven
On that high and mighty road

There is a will to test the power
There is the struggle for control
Of the basic rights of passage
Along the high and mighty road

It is a journey for the taking
It is a choice that can be made
It is the soul that may be shaken
It is the spirit to be sane

There is hypocrisy and wonder
When fortunes pale and empires
Home to an ancient way of magic
Along a high and mighty road

Money changers seeking payments
For the privileged to be so bold
To say the train is not too crowded
For a high and mighty road

And the courage may be tested
By judgment harsh and cold
From the monitors of progress
Along that high and mighty road

There are the words that have been spoken
There is the life that's been portrayed
It is a promise to be broken
It is the joy that dies in vain

Pale treasure, fragile beauty
Or the messages set in coal
We delivered as nostalgic on that
High and mighty road

Sacrifice and deprivation
Are spiteful paradoxes sold
As begrudging restitutions
Along that high and mighty road

And yet the faces, oh God the faces
They seldom change from young to old
They only seem to grow more brazen
Along the high and mighty road

It is the future we are trading
It is the prices that we pay
It is the mind that is mistaken
It is the heart we give away