Green Hills of Earth

When I first joined the OK Chorale, one of the pieces I was handed was "The Green Hills of Earth." My initial thought when the sheet music was yet to be handed out was, "Cool! That looked like a great song in the story!" When I first got to read the song, my spirit gagged. This?? This wasn't the song at the end of the story! This was... this was something watered down. Genteel. Not the song of an uncouth man on his last legs weaving his last strong and beautiful song. It didn't have the first verse written by RAH. It didn't have any verses afterwards that *looked* like the first verse RAH wrote. No, this was not "The Green Hills of Earth" that I really wanted to sing. But I did sing it - and it's a decent melodic piece. It's just not the piece I would have written.

So... last year I wrote it. I wrote the song blind Rhysling sang as he worked desperately to save a radioactive pile, then dumped it - on his final legs from major radioactivity. I performed it at FilkOntario, to mixed reactions. And to my mind it was a bit short there. It didn't have Mars, or Neptune, just the little lead-in lines RAH wrote at the end of the story along with the verses he wrote. So now, I present the last song of Blind Rhysling - "The Green Hills of Earth".

( Verse to follow )