| Song | A Headlong Stretch |
| Artist | Peter Hammill |
| Album | Roaring Forties |
| Passage assured | |
| on the good ship Goodbye... | |
| dare I raise up my eyes | |
| to stare into the rigging? | |
| (Preparing to go/come home...) | |
| All we could have done | |
| we're at pains to explain | |
| but all our might in the main | |
| is only empty promise | |
| unfulfilled at last | |
| still no-one can be blamed | |
| for breaking daily bread, | |
| thinking ahead. | |
| Blessed with strange grace | |
| and reluctant to face | |
| ineluctable fate, | |
| I say I saw the future | |
| I said forget the past | |
| but I'll not hear the last | |
| of lives I've never led, | |
| thinking ahead. |