[QUOTE=D_Odds]
Brin will listen intently to Starharp’s lessons on hand signals…for the first hour. He will offer the signals he’s used previously in his duty with the Dale Guard. After about an hour of the Elf’s lesson, his mind will start to wander off to thoughts of home and worries that he might never make it back.
[/QUOTE]
An hour? From prior experience, anything a Human hasn’t grasped in five minutes is probably not worth persisting with. Besides, he has to allow for the fact that most Humans can’t tell a sparrow from a finch a hundred yards off. 
The pleasure is all mine. Such moments of peace and pleasant society should be enjoyed and enhanced however possible.
On the first evening when our party is camping by itself, Gil-Gandel retunes his harp and plays some gentle arpeggios reminiscent of the bells in the high towers of Minas Tirith. If Thoroncir has any ear for music, he may notice that the notes interweave as in change-ringing between one verse and the next of the following:
Hear thou, Eternal Kindler[sup]1[/sup] of the Stars
Who ever dwellst in hallowed courts of light -
The home of hope for every elven heart
Beyond the furthest shores of endless sea -
Gone is the flame of Arien[sup]2[/sup] from the world
And earthly souls compose themselves to rest.
Grant us, we pray, a night’s refreshing rest
Who here look on thy white eternal stars
That shine in pity on the troubled world
And wash it in their cool redeeming light
From mountain tall to ever-changing sea;
From desert strand to forest’s verdant heart.
Ease doubts and cares that daunt the weary heart;
Courage but grant, and we will do the rest
To serve this land - still fair - beyond the Sea
Where woke the Elves of old beneath thy stars
To seek (yet knew not what they sought!) the Light
Of Trees that grew beyond the mortal world.
Those Trees, forever gone from all the world!
Of sadness how to sing that fills my heart?
For never now shall I behold that light
Which graced the Valar’s blessed land of rest;
Living yet only in the Evening Star[sup]3[/sup] -
Earendil’s ship upon his heavenly Sea.
But there are many lights we yet may see
That bring your joy and promise to the world;
Great deeds of hope and faith, which like the stars
Strengthen the will and glad the sorrowed heart;
For which we now prepare to take our rest,
So on the morrow we may serve the Light.
Come, blessed one! until the day’s new light
Calm you our thoughts, reposeless like the sea;
Grant unto care-worn minds and hands that rest
Dreams of thy land all fair beyond the world;
Banish our gloom, console the sick at heart,
And let us sleep in bliss beneath thy stars.
So ever send thy light upon the world;
In realms beyond the sea thy loving heart
Be moved to grant us rest, Queen of the Stars.
[sup]1[/sup]Elbereth, or Varda in Quenya: the Vala of the Stars
[sup]2[/sup]The Maia who drives the Sun; hence, the Sun itself, personified.
[sup]3[/sup]After the Two Trees were destroyed by Morgoth and Ungoliant, their light survived only in the Silmarils, which at the end of the First Age were sundered, and so remain: one lost in the bowels of the Earth, one in the deeps of the Sea, and one upon Earendil’s ship Vingilot which still sails the skies as the Evening Star, and therefore shines with the last trace of the Light that was before the Sun and the Moon.
