The Spider's Face

(album: The Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls: Behind The Musical - 2018)

There's a world outside of these crumbling walls
Where the weak men hide under battles and brawls
And the only pride is a spider that crawls
Into the cracks and calmly waits
For the flies to realize
As they're sitting in the shit and dirt
That their heads all ache
And their bellies all hurt
And there's nothing that can save
Neither drink nor skirt
For the disease has proven fatal and spreading

But the spider knows and will generously give
And he promises the flies that they all shall live
Though the cost of a drop of the cure is dear
How the penny doth flow when it's death they fear

And he cast his web so prodigiously wide
That he snared the whole sniveling world inside
And the lot who couldn't pay him, well, they bloody died
But that's all for the best
Puts the terror in the rest
For you fear the man who can save your life
And your bastard child, and your blithering wife
And the petty little people with their petty strife
So have a cough? Have a chair
For the spider's there!

And the spider sees how to bring them all in line
How to keep them very quiet, how to herd the swine
Though the cost of a drop of the cure is dear
How the penny doth flow when it's death they fear

Now, the spider thinks, what a glorious game
But it's not the gold, and it's not the fame
It's the fear the fools are feeling when they praise his name
For in their prayers they'll say, "he who gives can take away"
And they never ask, not in any last case
Where this plague came from in the very first place
And the spider smiles with a spider's grace
For he knows when all humanity for centuries to come
Envisions God, they will see the spider's face!