Into the West - funeral music?

I don't know about you but I don't pay much attention to film music as music. At the end of "The Lord of the Rings," there is some music. Whatever else I did or didn't like about the films, the way they did the elves was close to the top of "didn't much like." I wanted to bite one of them in the ankle, just to see what would happen... 

So the last scene, in The Grey Havens, is far from memorable for me, along with its music, which if I remember rightly, runs on into the credits. A powerful piece of myth-making schmaltzed up, was my grumpy reaction.

Yet in it's essence, it is the ancient myth of death as a sea journey to another country. The Anglo-Saxon epic poem "Beowulf," much mined by Tolkien, opens with the funeral of Shield Sheafson, Beowulf's ancestor. He is sent out to sea in a Viking longship, and the poet comments that no-one can say what hands, under what skies, unloaded that precious cargo.

This myth (I'm using the term objectively not perjoratively) crops up in different forms at funerals, most frequently in the poem "what is dying?" which starts "I am standing on the sea shore/A ship sails..."


Anyway, at a funeral yesterday we had a CD track of Annie Lennox singing "Into the West," the music which she co-wrote for the very end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy,

It was a favourite track of the man who had died, and his wife had it playing on a loop to comfort him during his last hours. In context, it was deeply moving and very beautiful. I commend it to you.

Lay down your sweet and weary head
Night is falling, you have come to journey's end
Sleep now and dream of the ones who came before
They are calling from across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see all of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms, you're only sleeping

What can you see on the horizon?
Why do those white gulls call?
Across the sea a pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

Dawn will turn to silver glass
A light on the water, all souls pass

Hope fades into the world of night
Through shadows falling out of memory and time
Don't say we have come now to the end
White shores are calling, you and I will meet again
And you'll be here in my arms, just sleeping

What can you see on the horizon?
Why do those white gulls call?
Across the sea a pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn to silver glass
A light on the water, gray ships pass
Into the west.