So sad Galileo

So sad Galileo You looked through a sailors spyglass see the mountains on the moon Religion wasn’t ready for you, you were born to soon For forty years you studied the sky To see the moons around Jupiter fly To see the spots upon the sun That golden orb that gave us life An action that would end in strife So sad Galileo Discovering that the earth and planets followed their own circles around the sun You put a spanner in the works of fourteen hundred years of church So sad Galileo So sad Galileo The Inquisition knocked you down upon your knees And forced you to tell a lie About your discoveries You said ‘and still it moves’ under your breath So they put you in house arrest for your last nine years To stop you looking at constellations And hide away your illustrations Not to publish, not to teach, not to leave Yet he did not grieve So sad Galileo So sad Galileo And so he wrote a book the starry messenger And gradually went blind The man who had seen further than anyone in history had lost his sight but not his mind So sad Galileo So sad Galileo Some men are silenced by the powerful Truth is silenced by no-one So sad Galileo So sad Galileo You gave us the world We’re glad Galileo