[Verse 1] You offer me a pasture where the wolf is put to sleep A quiet calculation for the sorrow of the sheep No stumble in the valley, no winter in the vein A synthetic sanctuary where you edit out the pain You built a golden clinic to eradicate the scar And blew the guiding candle out to tell me where we are [Verse 2] You want an easy pasture where the spirit never bleeds A catalog of comforts for domesticated needs No mountain left to struggle for, no summit left to see Just dopamine delivered with a copper guarantee You cured the mortal fever with a tranquilizer draught And drowned the human fire in an antiseptic bath [Chorus] Keep your bliss, keep your pill I want the mountain, I want the hill I want the sweat, I want the sting It is the crack in the bell that makes it ring Take the anesthetic back into the night A wound upon the shoulder is the price of second sight [Verse 3] The athlete finds his power where the muscle tears apart The timber gains its temper where the iron split the bark A mother knows her child through the labor and the fright You cannot know the morning if you never walked the night The algorithm offers us an everlasting noon A cemetery sleeping underneath a plastic moon [Chorus] Keep your bliss, keep your pill I want the mountain, I want the hill I want the sweat, I want the sting It is the crack in the bell that makes it ring Take the anesthetic back into the night A wound upon the shoulder is the price of second sight [Bridge] A bird inside a padded cage forgets the way to fly It sings a scheduled carol while the season passes by We learned our finest mercy on the edges of a knife The friction and the stumbling were the engines of our life You cannot love the blossom while you cultivate the rot! [Chorus] Keep your bliss, keep your pill I want the mountain, I want the hill I want the sweat, I want the sting It is the crack in the bell that makes it ring Take the anesthetic back into the night A wound upon the shoulder is the price of second sight [Outro] Keep the thorn That is how the man is born © 2026 The Shady River Bard. All rights reserved.
