On the platform of an old railway station I enter a dream
And a couple are saying good-bye through the noise and the steam
But it's just "Brief Encounter" my mind is trying to rerun
And I wait for the poignant finale but the dream has moved on

And the train has turned into a ship that is sailing away
And the platform is a beach full of shells under silvery grey
And the girl on the beach is an English Prime Minister's daughter
And she watches the ship disappear at the edge of the water
And it feels like the pain in her heart will be never-ending
And everyone feels this way in the beginning

And she watches the ship disappear for the length of a sigh
And the maker of rhymes on the deck who is going to die
In the corner of some foreign field that will make him so famous
As a light temporarily shines to illumine his pages

Then the scene has changed once again; now it's moonlight on wire
And the night is disturbed by a sudden volcano of fire
And a skull in a trench gazes up open-mouthed at the moon
And the poets are now Wilfred own and Siegfried Sassoon
And nobody talks anymore about losing and winning
And everyone feels that way in the beginning

And I'm up in the air looking down at a girl on a bed
She's lying asleep on her side with a book at her head
And it's someone who left long ago
Was it something I said?
And I hope that she's reading "King Lear", but it's "Twelfth Night" instead.

Now the girl and the beach and the train and the ship are all gone
And the calendar up on the wall says it's ninety years on
I go out into the yard where the newspaper waits
There's a man on the cover we all know, defying the fates
And he seems very sure ashe offers up his opinion
Well everyone feels like this in the beginning

When you feel that the pain in your heart will be unending
Everyone feels this way in the beginning

If you feel that the pain in your heart will be never-ending
Well everyone feels that way in the beginning