The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80804   Message #3576198
Posted By: Jim Dixon
16-Nov-13 - 07:40 AM
Thread Name: Songs about the Great War (WWI)
Subject: Lyr Add: ANZAC COVE (Leon Gellert)
This was mentioned by Rich Joy above.

These lyrics copied from History of the 10th battalion, A.I.F. by A. Lumb (London...: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1919), page 26:

ANZAC COVE
Poem by Leon Gellert

There's a lonely stretch of hillocks:
There's a beach asleep and drear:
There's a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves:
And a little rotting pier:
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.

There's a torn and silent valley:
There's a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones:
There's an unpaid waiting debt:
There's a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.

[This poem previously appeared in Songs of a Campaign by Leon Gellert (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1917). It may have been set to music more than once. There is a version composed and sung by Ben Abraham on YouTube.]