Phrase Writers Group

My Wedding Song, written for a relative. Presented here as a poem.

In 1984 a much loved relative got married. The previous year I wrote a song for their engagement. Come the big day I had a Wedding Song ready.

There’s a back story to it.

Nearly 2 decades earlier in the 1960s I was a Cub Scout. With Newbold-on-Stour Sea Scouts, near Stratford-on-Avon in England. Percy Blandford, the renowned home-built boat and canoe designer was in charge. And we cubs had Akela. A formidable but kindly lady who kept us focussed.

Back then boys were cubs and scouts, girls brownies and guides. Mixed groups would come much later.

Akela was a wise leader in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Robert Baden-Powell had inspired the Scouting movement in 1908. Around 1916 he asked his friend for use of Jungle Book themes and characters in the fledgling Scouting movement.

Akela was our Cub Scout leader. At the start of each week’s meeting we would chant, “Akela, we’ll do our best.” She replied by exhorting us “Cubs, do your best.” And in a somewhat half-hearted manner, we would mutter “We will do our best.” One week Akela had had enough of our lack of enthusiasm and had words with us.

Thereafter, for several months such was our respect and trepidation, we would follow “Cubs do your best” with a hearty “We WILL do our best.”

Here is the wedding song.

FROM ON HIGH

Gazing up at rainbows knowing it’s a waste of time
They’re out of reach except in my mind’s eye
Their multi-coloured film of beauty comes out when storms die
While your fathomless aurora’s there no matter what the clime

It seems that rainbows try to call me with their siren sound
But you alone can raise me up
And that’s where I’ve found

From on high, is where we can look down on the rest
From on high, is where I want to be
Only when with you as my friend can I see
We will go on together from on high

You are the sun on my horizon rising when I’m down
You bring the shepherd’s warning of delight
The dark shadows lengthen when you’re setting your stall out of sight
But you came and filled my fathomless well, on your own

It seems that lovers pull their own ways, from the very start
But we will be together, even when apart

From on high, is where we can look down on the rest
From on high, is where I want to be
Only when with you as my friend can I see
We will go on together from on high

From on high
From on high, is where I want to be
Only when with you as my friend can I see
We will go on together
We’ll take each day together, from on high