Favorite Marillion Track Lyrically?

This thread applies to both the Fish and Hogarth eras of the band. My favorites are:

Fish- Script for a Jester's Tear and Hotel Hobbies/Warm Wet Circles/That Time of the Night

H- A toss up between This Strange Engine, The Great Escape, and The King of Sunset Town

so many good ones to choose.
#1 of all of theres is probably Bitter Suite-III. Blue Angel is excellent "It was bible black in Lyon..." but so many are so excellent such as:

Fish- Scipt for a Jesters Tear, Forgotten Sons, Childhood's End?, Lavender,  Fugazi, Jigsaw, Warm Wet Circles

H- A Collection, Cover My Eyes, Gazpacho, Hard As Love, The Party

So many more, so hard to choose.  These guys do lyrics right, one of my favorite qualities of the band.

There can be only one...

FUGAZI

Fish era - Chelsea or Script

Hogarth era (but I payed much less attention to their lyrics as well as their music during those years) - King or Estonia

I always found Chelsea monday way under-rated by fans on their debut album

Fish era ...  Blind curve  

incubus:

When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion forewarned
My audience leaves the stage, floating ahead perfumed shift
Within the stammering silence, the face that launched a thousand frames
Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career
You played this scene before, you played this scene before
I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye
A misplaced reaction

The darkroom unleashes imagination in pornographic images
In which you will always be the star, always be the star, untouchable
Unapproachable, constant in the darkness
Nursing an erection, a misplaced reaction
With no flower to place before this gravestone
And the walls become enticingly newspaper thin
But that would be developing the negative view
And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic colour
The public act, let you model your shame
On the mannequin catwalk, catwalk
Let the cats walk, and the cat walks

I've played this scene before, I've played this scene before
I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye
A misplaced reaction, satisfaction

You can't brush me under the carpet, you can't hide me under the stairs
The custodian of your private fears, your leading actor of yesteryear
Who as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity
Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity
You who I directed with lovers will, you who I let hypnotise the lens
You who I let bathe in the spotlights glare
You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask
Just like a greasepaint mask

But now I'm the snake in the grass, the ghost of film reels past
I'm the producer of your nightmare and the performance has just begun
It's just begun

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets
As you stutter paralysed with rabbits eyes, searing the shadows
Flooding the wings, to pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips
Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary
My cue line in the last act and you wait in silent solitude
Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt

You've played this scene before

fugazi:

Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
Baptised in the tears from the real
Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat race
Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress Ophelia's hand with breathstroke ambition
An albatross in the marrytime tradition
Sheathed within the Walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
She turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
She hung herself around my neck

From the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles
Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
Nine to five with suitable ties
Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm bestill, bewitch, drowning in the real

The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now
Praying deportation for his sacred cow
A legacy of romance from a twilight world
The dowry of a relative mystery girl
A Vietnamese flower, a Dockland union
A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs
Magdalenes contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat

A son of a swastika of '45 parading a peroxide standard
Graffiti conjure disciples testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is Brixton chess

A knight for Embankment folds his newspaper castle
A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin
He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease stained roll call
And linger with the heartburn of Good Friday's last supper

Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high fibre ignorance
Cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows
Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens
Waiting, the season of the button, the penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes, for the fashionably, for the terminally insane, insane
Do you realise? Do you realise?
Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi

Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary

emerald lies:
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To be the prince of possession in the gallery of contempt
Suffering your indiscreet discretions and you ask me to relent
As you accumulate flirtations with the calculated calmness of the whore
I am the harlequin - diamonded costume dripping shades of green
I am the harlequin - sense strangers violate my sanctuary
Prowl my dreams
Plundering your diaries, I'll steal your thoughts innocence
Ravaging your letters, unearth your plots innocence
To don the robes of Torquemada, resurrect the inquisition
In that tortured subtle manner inflict questions within questions
Looking in shades of green through shades of blue
I trust you trust in me to mistrust you

Through the Silk Cut haze to the smeared mascara
A 40 watt sun on a courtroom drama
And the coffee stains gather till the pale kimono
Set the wedding rings dancing on the cold linoleum

And accusations moths that circle on the light
Char their wings and spiral senseless suicidal flight
You packed your world within a suitcase, hot tears melt this icy palace
Dissolve a crystal swallowed by the night
Looking in shades of green through shades of blue
Looking in shades of green through shades of blue

assassin:

I am the assassin, with tongue forged from eloquence
I am the assassin, providing your nemesis
On the sacrificial altar to success, my friend
Unleash a stranger from a kiss, my friend
No incantations of remorse, my friend
Unsheathe the blade within the voice, my friend

Who decorates the scarf with the fugi knot
Who camouflaged emotion in a thousand yard stare
Who gouged the notches from the family tree
Who hypnotised the guilt in career rhythm trance

Assassing, assassing, assassing, assassing

Listen as the syllables of slaughter cat with calm precision
Patterned frosty phrases rape your ears and sow the ice incision
Apocalyptic alphabet casting spell the creed of tempered diction
Adjectives of annihilation bury the point beyond redemption
Venomous verbs of ruthless candour plagiarise assassins fervour
A friend in need is a friend that bleeds
Let bitter silence infect the wound

You were a sentimental mercenary in a free fire zone
Parading a Hollywood conscience
You were a fashionable objector with a uniform fetish
Pavlovian slaver at the cash till ring of success
A non com observer - I assassin the collector - defector

So you resigned yourself to failure, my friend
And I emerged the chilling stranger, my friend
To eradicate the problem, my friend
Unsheathe the blade within the voice

I am the assassin
I am the assassin

And what do you call assassins who accuse assassins anyway, my friend?
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Fish -- Warm Wet Circles

H -- Gazpacho