The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #49018   Message #754552
Posted By: bill kennedy
25-Jul-02 - 03:55 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: For the Godless March on Washington
Subject: Lyr Add: THIS IS MY SONG (FINLANDIA) (adapted)
Joe Offer -

The attribution to the "This Is My Song" version above is not exactly correct, in that it is Bill Staines' version called "A Song of Peace" of Lloyd Stone's lyric called "This Is My Song", indeed NOT Lloyd Stone's from 1934, but Bill Staines, ca. 198?. I mentioned this song in another thread (politically incorrect national anthems), which might be of interest to you, as might be the Sing Out! article that appeared in the spring. Lloyd was a hymn writer, and this is sung often in churches, though it is about the least offensive reference to a god I can think of in a hymn.

I don't really care for Bill Staines version, in that in many places he changes things unnecessarily, like "all the nations" to "other nations" in order to scan because he substitutes "people" for "God". It is just too politically correct not to have changed "God of all the nations" to "men of all the nations" using the all encompassing meaning of "men" for "people" but it sure would scan better and sing easier than "people of other nations". It is, as Lloyd Stone wrote it in 1939, and without the later added third verse by another hand that is VERY Christian sounding, as I have said elsewhere, the only real "Rational Anthem".

Sing it daily, and get everyone else to join.

AND appropriate to appropriate for a "Godless March" by just changing "God" to "Folk", if "Men" is just to sexist for most to use, "people" doesn't work for me. & Sunlight doesn't fall, I don't think, it does beam -
Here is what I would write -

THIS IS MY SONG (FINLANDIA)
(Jean Sibelius, music - Lloyd Stone, words © 1934, Lorenz Publishing Co.) Adapted by Bill Staines (& Bill Kennedy!)

This is my song, oh folk of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine,
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover, leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song you folk of all the nations,
A song of peace for all lands and for mine.