The Mighty Handful - Albion Lyrics

We invent and surmise
Hostelries awash with
Improbable dreams and careless talk
We resist and survive
Beneath a chequered flag
Proud we stand upon
Ramparts of chalk

Edward the Confessor
Becket and Boudicca
Churchill, Purcell, Cromwell
Everyone from Florence Nightingale to
Septimus Severus and the Venerable Bede is a tether for us
A multitudinous chorus that echoes through the fabric of life

Drake, Wren, Turing, Darwin
Blake, Lennon/McCartney
Pankhurst, Shakespeare, Guy Fawkes
We might not like to hear the things they taught us
But it's deeds that stand time

We walk beneath a canopy of stars
This immigrant nation
We are Albion the Fair

Peter Pan, The Green Man
Faerie Queens and Aslan
Unicorns and dragons
Legends take on many different guises

Trillian and Dan Dare
The Beast of Bodmin to Milk Wood
It's elementary my dear Watson
You don't have to have lived in order to live on

We ride in the company of cabbages and kings
Poets and the dreamers
We are Albion the Fair

The Great Fires of the ages cannot consume us
Because we're seekers, explorers, protesters and innovators
We're Skara Brae and MS Windrush
Adversity, victory, challenge and opportunity
We're Diggers, Jarrow Marchers
Wat Tyler and Mary Secole
We're The Rocket, Concorde and TSR-2
A lineage of mothers to daughters
Like tragic Campbells from father to son
Oates may yet be some time
And Jimmy still grieves
While we shed a tear
And crack a smile
At our diminished Empire and heroic misfortunes

We fly chasing down the shadows of our past
Soaring with the bluebirds
We are Albion the Fair

We glide in the slipstream of the light
Far beyond horizons
We are Albion the Fair

As legacies collide a truth appears at last
We are moulded by the sights and sounds of the lands through which we pass
Oh Albion the Fair, legends linger, heart remains
When his people need him most
The King shall come again