The Greatest Show On Earth

Song The Greatest Show On Earth
Artist Nightwish
Album Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Deluxe Version)

Lyrics

[03:42.590] Archaean horizon
[03:54.060] The first sunrise
[04:05.680] On a pristine gaea
[04:17.310] Opus perfectum
[04:23.140] Somewhere there, us sleeping
[05:21.660] "After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life.
[05:32.340] Within decades we must close our eyes again.
[05:35.580] Isn't it a noble and enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?"
[06:29.060] The cosmic law of gravity
[06:31.950] Pulled the newborns around a fire
[06:36.140] A careless cold infinity in every vast direction
[06:43.380] Lonely farer in the Goldilocks zone
[06:46.720] She has a tale to tell
[06:50.210] From the stellar nursery into a carbon feast
[06:55.850] Enter LUCA
[06:57.540] The tapestry of chemistry
[07:04.050] There's a writing in the garden
[07:09.820] Leading us to the mother of all
[07:15.200] We are one
[07:18.300] We are a universe
[07:22.240] Forebears of what will be
[07:25.280] Scions of the Devonian sea
[07:29.370] Aeons pass
[07:32.410] Writing the tale of us all
[07:36.390] A day-to-day new opening
[07:39.440] For the greatest show on Earth
[07:43.430] Ion channels welcoming the outside world
[07:47.730] To the stuff of stars
[07:50.460] Bedding the tree of a biological holy
[07:53.460] Enter life
[07:57.500] The tapestry of chemistry
[08:03.930] There's a writing in the garden
[08:09.870] Leading us to the mother of all
[08:15.110] We are one
[08:18.300] We are a universe
[08:21.940] Forebears of what will be
[08:25.380] Scions of the Devonian sea
[08:29.270] Aeons pass
[08:32.320] Writing the tale of us all
[08:36.110] A day-to-day new opening
[08:39.460] For the greatest show on Earth
[09:11.780] We are here to care for the garden
[09:18.710] The wonder of birth
[09:21.460] Of every form most beautiful
[09:30.480] Every form most beautiful
[09:39.910] We are one
[09:42.910] We are a universe
[09:46.800] Forebears of what will be
[09:50.090] Scions of the Devonian sea
[09:54.030] Aeons pass writing the tale of us all
[10:00.770] A day-to-day new opening
[10:04.040] For the greatest show on Earth
[12:18.990] After a billion years
[12:20.630] The show is still here
[12:22.230] Not a single one of your fathers died young
[12:25.270] The handy travelers
[12:26.970] Out of Africa
[12:28.570] Little Lucy of the Afar
[12:31.560] Gave birth to fantasy
[12:33.110] To idolatry
[12:34.750] To self-destructive weaponry
[12:37.950] Enter the God of gaps
[12:39.440] Deep within the past
[12:40.940] Atavistic dread of the hunted
[12:56.200] Enter Ionia, the cradle of thought
[12:59.600] The architecture of understanding
[13:02.590] The human lust to feel so exceptional
[13:05.980] To rule the Earth
[13:08.830] Hunger for shiny rocks
[13:10.470] For giant mushroom clouds
[13:12.020] The will to do just as you'd be done by
[13:15.210] Enter history, the grand finale
[13:18.250] Enter ratkind
[13:21.250] Man, he took his time in the sun
[13:25.440] Had a dream to understand
[13:28.630] A single grain of sand
[13:33.720] He gave birth to poetry
[13:37.910] But one day'll cease to be
[13:41.100] Greet the last light of the library
[14:48.490] Man, he took his time in the sun
[14:52.730] Had a dream to understand
[14:55.860] A single grain of sand
[15:00.950] He gave birth to poetry
[15:05.140] But one day'll cease to be
[15:08.400] Greet the last light of the library
[15:13.420] Man, he took his time in the sun
[15:17.730] Had a dream to understand
[15:20.820] A single grain of sand
[15:25.950] He gave birth to poetry
[15:30.190] But one day'll cease to be
[15:33.300] Greet the last light of the library
[15:43.020] We were here!
[15:55.580] We were here!
[16:08.000] We were here!
[16:20.430] We were here!
[18:11.350] "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
[18:15.350] Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
[18:21.650] The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.
[18:28.650] The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.
[18:35.650] Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats,
[18:38.650] scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
[18:46.550] scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
[18:53.850] In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I,
[18:56.150] in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few,
[19:02.950] who won the lottery of birth against all odds,
[19:08.050] how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from
[19:12.950] which the vast majority have never stirred?"
[21:27.430] "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
[21:36.130] having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
[21:41.230] and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity,
[21:46.630] from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been,and are being, evolved."