You can lock up the bold men.
\nGo and lock up your bold men and hold them in tow.
\nYou can stifle all adventure for a century or so.<\/p>\n
Smother hope before it is risen,
\nwatch it wizen like a gourd,
\nbut you cannot imprison the Word of the Lord.
\nNo, you cannot imprison the Word of the Lord.<\/p>\n
For the Word,
\nfor the Word was at the birth of the beginning,
\nit made the heavens and the earth and set them spinning.
\nAnd for several million years,
\nit withstood all our quorums and fine ideas.
\nIt’s been rough,
\nit’s been rough but it appears to be winning.<\/p>\n
There are people who doubt it.
\nThere are people who doubt it and shout it out loud.
\nThere are local, vocal, yokels who we know collect a crowd.<\/p>\n
They can fashion a rebuttal that’s a subtle as a sword,
\nbut they’re never going to scuttle the Word of the Lord.
\nNo, they’re never going to scuttle the Word of the Lord.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
All you big men of merit,
\nall you big men of merit who ferret out flaws,
\nyou rely on our compliance with your science and your laws.<\/p>\n
Find a freedom to demolish while you polish some award,
\nbut you cannot abolish the Word of the Lord.
\nNo you cannot abolish the Word of the Lord.<\/p>\n
For the Word,
\nfor the Word created mud and got it going.
\nIt filled our empty brains with blood and set it flowing.
\nAnd for thousands of regimes,
\nit endured all our follies and fancy schemes.
\nIt’s been tough,
\nit’s been tough and yet it seems to be growing.<\/p>\n
Oh you people of power,
\noh you people of power, your power is now.
\nYou may plan to go forever but you never do somehow.<\/p>\n
So you wait in silent treason until reason is restored,
\nand we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord.
\nWe await the season of the Word of the Lord.<\/p>\n
We wait,
\nwe wait for the Word of the Lord.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I hope that is right, I wasn’t sure about a couple of words. I was working from the 1971 recording, I hear that the newer one on the video is slightly different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, Music by Leonard Bernstein You can hear (and see) it sung here—the song is in English despite the narrative being in German. You can lock up the bold men. Go and lock up your bold men and hold them in tow. You can stifle all adventure for a century or so. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-fi","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/west-penwith.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}