Back a million years ago (1969) my then not quite husband (now ex) sang a version of Robert Southey's poem, "The Battle of Blenheim".

All I remember of the tune was what went with "It was a famous viiiiic-tory."

It strikes me that a song about the uselessness of war is as appropriate now as it was in the Vietnam era. Probably more so.

Has anybody else heard this poem as a song?

I'd really like to sing it, but haven't enough information in my mental database.

Here's what Historic Poems and Ballads (Ed. Rupert S. Holland. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1912) has said about the poem:

"Southey's poem tells how a little girl found a skull near the battle-field many years afterward, and asked her grandfather how it came there. He told her that a great battle had been fought there, and many of the leaders had won great renown. But he could not tell her why it was fought or what good came of it. He only knew that it was a "great victory." That was the moral of so many of the wars that devastated Europe for centuries. The kings fought for more power and glory; and the peasants fled from burning homes, and the soldiers fell on the fields. The poem gives an idea of the real value to men of such famous victories as that of Blenheim."

Thanks!

Linn