The Beacon (Don't Let Me Die)

Don't let me die in the city

Don't lay my body in the ground
under forecourts and car parks
and lay-bys and driveways

Burn my body in a pyre

Pile up the rough hewn timbers
under round and above

A great stack of ready firewood
cut down in proper time

From those self-same trees

Which I myself had planted
and tended over many years

By the labour of my own hands

Let me die in my country

The country of my Fathers

Let it be not far from home

But should it be so
then choose well

The aspect of
my point of leaving

On a hillside
well within clear sight
of the ocean or the sea

It's a comfort now
for me to know

Dear Mother

It's a comfort

It will always be so

Now for me to know
that you will be there too

To oversee the rites at last

To see that I'm sent off in style

In blaze of fire by night
and on into the early rising dawn

When dust and ashes
blow upon the sea breeze

And the merry wind
comes a blowing in
across the waves

To greet the newly broken day

The day that I could never know
when life went on without me