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Talisman Lyrics
Trinket worn with colours matching saddened eyes has lost its magic touch
People from a distant hill have crossed an ever-stretching sea of sand
Artificial flowers cannot die for life within them is illusion
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
Figures made of pedigrees control the non-existent soul of John Smith
Walk the creature let it run but slacken not the rope to which it’s bound
Ships in bottles cannot sail and neither can a tombstone kill a feather
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
Kings are nothing more without the glory and the wealth behind their thinking
Let me feel the choice of seeing dawn or setting sun before I die
Myriads of painted faces rush behind the eye of the uncertain
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
(Recitative)
Let me live only to do
And let me do only to live
My steel image comes with the sun
And that’s where it slumbers now.
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
People from a distant hill have crossed an ever-stretching sea of sand
Artificial flowers cannot die for life within them is illusion
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
Walk the creature let it run but slacken not the rope to which it’s bound
Ships in bottles cannot sail and neither can a tombstone kill a feather
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
Let me feel the choice of seeing dawn or setting sun before I die
Myriads of painted faces rush behind the eye of the uncertain
Talisman, talisman grace my hand
Talisman grace my hand.
Let me live only to do
And let me do only to live
My steel image comes with the sun
And that’s where it slumbers now.
Talisman grace my hand.
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this song has such an awesome piano solo at the end. burton is an amazingly talented pianist.
I think it's a look back at the past, and how science exploded the old views about magic. The narrators opines about such things as "the non-existent soul of John Smith" and then falls back on the familiar...
Talisman, talisman grace my hand...."
The thing about the purple berries seems to indicate a new settler who is depending upon the natives to stay alive.
At any rate, it's a brilliant song, and indicative of where the Guess Who were going before Randy Bachman was fired/quit.
This song was Burton's interpretation of a poem written by one of his high school classmates. Some lines are unchanged from the original poem, while others are molded to fit around Randy Bachman's guitar doodles and Burton's tinkering piano. It acknowledges that collections of material things can shape the status of a man, but there are dreams of a future time when the man himself defines the man.