The dancer slows her frantic pace In pain and desperation Her aching limbs and downcast face Aglow with perspiration Stiff as wire, her lungs on fire With just the briefest pause The flooding through her memory The echoes of old applause She limps across the floor And closes her bedroom door The writer stares with glassy eyes Defies the empty page His beard is white, his face is lined And streaked with tears of rage Thirty years ago, how the words would flow With passion and precision But now his mind is dark and dulled By sickness and indecision And he stares out the kitchen door Where the sun will rise no more Some are born to move the world To live their fantasies But most of us just dream about The things we'd like to be Sadder still to watch it die Than never to have known it For you, the blind who once could see The bell tolls for thee, bell tolls for For you, the blind who once could see Bell tolls for thee, bell tolls for thee