Mourning the loss of a world we've never known
Once there lived dragons, where there are none now
Dwarf and remnant fauna in a state of extreme depletion
As its size and abundance decline, so to do our expectations

Our memories have been wiped as clean as the land
These barren treeless wastelands perceived as wilderness
The aftermath of disaster perceived as nature
Where once there was forest, only sheep, grouse and heather

Shifting baseline syndrome
Merrie England doesn't exist
We're just mourning the loss of our childhoods, an idyll and a myth
Nothing left untainted by invasive industrial hands
A landscape distorted, no green and pleasant land

Born into a land of open festering wounds
That we cannot see, because it's all we know
The wounds stay open and get infected in the name of conservation
A complex living system, beaten into submission

The balance is upset, keystone species gone
The smog spreads far and wide, monoculture and ecoside
The plants devoid of insects, a sky devoid of birds
A land that has been stripped of diversity and life

Shifting baseline syndrome
Merrie England doesn't exist
We're just mourning the loss of our childhoods, an idyll and a myth
Nothing left untainted by invasive industrial hands
A landscape distorted, no green and pleasant land