Dying slowly on the water
with your paper wings all wet.
Floating limply after flying
in the clouds, soon you'll be dead
as your colours fade away.
It's over now, there's no more playing.
No more resting on the flowers,
no more hiding from the showers.
Day will end, the sun is red,
now all those things you can forget,
now you know there's not much to forget.
Dying slowly on the water
with your paper wings all wet.

Let me be a happy butterfly
after whom the children run.
Let me be a happy butterfly
always searching for the sun.
I know my life will end tomorrow,
there's no time for feeling sorrow
for I still see all the flowers
under which I hid from showers.
But I can't get up that high
so I dream that I can fly
and those dreams will have
to take me to the sun.
Let me be a happy butterfly
after whom the children run.

It would be a lie if I thought
a man had need of coloured wings,
to fly away from all the pain
that living seems to bring.
But today I've changed my mind
because I find that I have been blind.
I couldn't see that even you
could have life's pain and trouble too.
Now I see that all my flying
really means I wasn't trying
to find other ways to meet what life can bring.
To be alive I had not need
to use your coloured wings.