Too Good to Burn

This week's song is based on a poem by Brendan Hamley:

Musician and poet Brendan Hamley has written verse online under the pseudonym of Stonepoem since the early days of the internet. In 2004 he created one of the web's first poetry blogs for the purposes of publishing a poem a day, everyday for a year.

Too Good to Burn was written after an evening of campfires, kinship and song beneath the magnificent 3,000 year old White Horse and Downland Neolithic site at Uffington, Oxfordshire. "At the end of the night, whilst tending the dying flames and watching the embers flicker and rise into the night sky, It felt like we were part of a tradition stretching back hundreds if not thousands of years. It is a poem about being called out to by unknown ancestors and answering them through fire and song. Tim's interpretation of the spirit of this, is uncanny. It was written in a metre and with folk song in mind, and has been patiently waiting to be sung by the right person for several years"

Brendan & Tim

Below the moon at Uffington
between the folds of chalkhill gown,
we sit beneath the White Horse stars,
see flames and sing this song.

O’ Stars and embers dance your crown
as woodsmoke turns the hour’s dust,
and as we do these things we must,
this night it shall be ours

Above, see nervous lanterns rise
like strange birds from another time,
we wait below this all tonight,
and contemplate the flow.

Stars and embers dance your crown
as woodsmoke turns the hour’s dust,
and as we do these things we must,
we know, this night is ours.

Below the moon at Uffington
we sing beneath your ancient night
we contemplate the eventide
and tell of White Horse downs.

So stars and embers raise your crown,
as woodsmoke turns, the hours must -
we hold our simple truth to trust,
the night indeed is ours.

Now sit, and sing with us.

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