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Mostly melancolic musings & lanquid lovelorn litagies.
Song Info
Genre
Charts
Peak #48
Peak in subgenre #9
Author
Griffiths&Wilkinson2008
Rights
Griffiths&Wilkinson2008
Uploaded
June 03, 2008
Track Files
MP3
MP3 7.5 MB • 128 kbps • 8:14
Story behind the song
This brief extract from 'Fighter Boys' by Patrick Bishop - which is a wonderful telling of the Battle of Britain in 1940, says everything:
On one of the most ferocious days of the battle, after 5 hours of continuous engagement with German bombers and fighters above the south eastern counties of England, young Rob Brodie was at last returning to base in his Spitfire, having helped see off the Germans with fifty-six of their aircraft lost that day:
'The day had been a year. I flew to the coast and set course for home. Passing low over fields and villages, rivers and towns, I looked down at labourers working, children at play, beside a red-brick schoolhouse, a bomb crater two streets away; little black heads in the streets turning to white blobs as they heard my engine and looked up. I thought of workers in shops and factories, of stretcher-bearers and Air Raid wardens. I hoped the 'All Clear' had gone. I was tired. I'd done my best for them.'
We see an Englishman as he gazes down from his little fighter plane, then lists those things which are the sum of the English countryside seen from the air "fields and villages, rivers and towns". And then that extraordinary understatement at the end: "I was tired. I'd done my best for them". My lip trembles ever so slightly when I read that.
The song is born of that same spirit: it's a eulogy to the past, framed in the words of some of my most beloved English poets and writers.
You see, the English have a predilection with a melancholic yearning for simpler, purer times lost. In the English language lies our English culture. 'Our' English has a millenia and more of history woven all through it; it's there, in the words.
Lyrics
The Bones Of Old England
Having put to song selected lines by the following authors with the addition of some of my own:
F. W. HARVEY
PHILIP LARKIN
RUPERT BROOKE
AN UNKNOWN SAXON POET
ROBERT BROWNING
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
G. K. CHESTERTON
T. H. WHITE
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
WILFRED OWEN
Dream not the English meadows dead,
I heard some fields, the secret words they said,
They were more English than our tongue,
Old already, when words were young.
"Never such innocence again",
So Philip Larkin wrote,
There's some corner of a foreign field,
Still shadowing Domesday lines.
"We can ask and we can ask",
For what once seemed ours forever,
For all the precious moments long gone,
Long since Beowulf killed Grendel.
Now that April's here,
Hear the wise old Thrush,
He sings his song twice-over just for me,
These words are the bones of old England,
A cage of words which frames the way we are,
These words are the bones of old England.
We dance on dream-enfranchised feet,
Where fishes flew and forests walked,
The poet knew where past and present meet,
Is where we glimpse our future.
Now that April's here,
Hear the wise old Thrush,
He sings his song twice-over just for me,
These words are the bones of old England,
A cage of words which frames the way we are,
These words are the bones of old England,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
Of old England.
Before the Roman came to Rye,
Or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made,
The rolling English road.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte,
But plenty of the squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman,
I did not much desire.
But I did bash their baggonets,
Because they came array'd,
To straighten out the crooked road,
An English drunkard made,
To straighten out the crooked road,
An English drunkard made.
Of the once and future king,
Asleep beneath the dreaming hill,
For some far, fierce hour and sweet
We'll keep faith with Arthur still.
I've travelled far among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea,
Oh England I did not know 'till then,
The love I bore for thee.
Now that April's here,
Hear the wise old Thrush,
He sings his song twice-over just for me,
These words are the bones of old England,
A cage of words which frames the way we are,
These words are the bones of old England,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones.
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
The bones,
Of old England.
Dream not the English meadows dead,
For each slow dusk Is a drawing down of blinds.
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Comments
2
Rosie Clare
Jun 21, 2008
The lyrics....the melody..........well put together!! I really enjoyed it!!
Rosie
Two part harmony, very nice start for this awesome song. Tell a story and is very nicely sung and has a very mellow build up and then moves you into the song. Very nice. Peace and Blessings, John