Big Big Train Roman Stone Lyrics

[Part One: Foundation]

Mark out the ground
Lay claim to the land
Level the valleys
Build a bridge across the water
New walls for the city
New roads through the hills
New stories to be written
And legends to be made

Now look upon their works
Under a different sky
Half a world away

Farmers and soldiers
From the fields to the frontline
Return home with new gods
Taken from another
The last day of kings
Broken made whole again
Made stronger with stone
And blood and bone

Now look upon their works
Under a different sky
Half a world away
A wall across the land
Ruins made by giants
Still standing after storms

[Part Two: Rise]

[Instrumental]

[Part Three: Ne Plus Ultra]

Sail the rivers and the seas
Cross the mountains and the plains
Explorers and soldiers
Merchants of fire
Bring peace of a kind
An absence of war

Fetching water from the hills
Throwing buildings up to the skies
Make iron for the ploughshares
And weapons of war
Trade new gods for old gods
Make them their own
All things must pass
Dawn down to dusk
All stories have an ending
The first and the last

Eagles taking flight
Carriers of light
Three thousand miles
From the wall to the water
The generals of empire
Bring riches of war

All things must pass
Dawn down to dusk
All stories have an ending
The first and the last

Outside of these walls
Great armies will rise
New orders are born
And cities will fall

[Part Four: Fall]

[Instrumental]

[Part Five: Legacy]

Here at the end of all roads
Broken in a scatter of stone
A thousand years have passed
Lights are dimmed and fires burn cold
Time has weathered the walls
As rain is the ruin of snow

Far now from the centre of it all
Distant from the highways and heartlands
An eagle gone to ground
With the better part of mankind
Now shadows that shelter behind
Fifty feet of all
Twelve miles and more

Here were legends born
Here were stories made and told
In one city the whole worlds ends
As a tumbledown of alls
Its stones the bedrock of us all