Sam Pegg's A Child Of The Snows for SATB choir and Piano accompaniment is a setting of a poem by G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton was known as an avid traveller and was a friend to all he met on his wanderings. In his own house he was famed for his warmth and hospitality. For him the inn was almost a spiritual symbol. 'In all of my settings of his poems I have tried to convey the sense of a yearning journey of life coupled with the joy of finding something thought lost forever: we travel to a place that if we are truthful we never really left. In A Child of the Snows I have tried to suggest the wandering wondering journey to the next staging post 'the Inn at the end of the world'. - Sam Pegg There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim And never before or again When the nights are strong with a darkness long And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and in snow The place where the great fires are That the midst of the earth is a raging mirthAnd the heart of the earth a star. And at night we win to the ancient innWhere the child in the frost is furled We follow the feet where all souls meetAt the inn at the end of the world. The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red For the flame of the sun is flown The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold And a Child comes forth alone.
