Lyr Add: Forty Years On (from Harrow School)

Subject: Lyr Add: FORTY YEARS ON (Bowen/Farmer)
From: *#1 PEASANT*
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 09:20 AM

Forty years on, when afar and asunder

Parted are those who are singing today,

When you look back, and forgetfully wonder

What you were like in your work and your play,

Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you,

Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song -

Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,

Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along,

Chorus

Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!

Till the field ring again and again,

With the tramp of the twenty-two men.

Follow up! Follow up!

Routs and discomfitures, rushes and rallies,

Bases attempted, and rescued, and won,

Strife without anger, and art without malice, -

How will it seem to you, forty years on?

Then, you will say, not a feverish minute

Strained the weak heart and the wavering knee,

Never the battle raged hottest, but in it,

Neither the last nor the faintest, were we!

Chorus

O the great days, in the distance enchanted,

Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun,

How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted -

Hardly believable, forty years on!

How we discoursed of them, one with another,

Auguring triumph, or balancing fate,

Loved the ally with the heart of a brother,

Hated the foe with a playing at hate!

Chorus

Forty years on, growing older and older,

Shorter in wind, as in memory long,

Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,

What will it help you that once you were strong?

God give us bases to guard or beleaguer,

Games to play out, whether earnest or fun;

Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,

Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!

Chorus

(written for sir Winston Churchill's ninetieth birthday and first sung 28th November 1964)

Blazoned in honour! For each generation

You kindled courage to stand and to stay;

You led our fathers to fight for the nation,

Called "Follow up" and yourself showed the way.

We who were born in the calm after thunder

Cherish our freedom to think and to do;

If in our turn we forgetfully wonder,

Yet we'll remember we owe it to you.

Special Verses and Variants:

(Written for Sir Winston Churchill, 12th November 1954.)

Sixty years on - though in time growing older,

Younger at heart you return to the Hill:

You, who in days of defeat ever bolder,

Led us to Victory, serve Britain still.

Still there are bases to guard or beleaguer,

Still must the battle for Freedom be won:

Long may you fight, Sir, who fearless and eager

Look back to-day more than sixty years on.

E. V. C. Plumptre

Source and notation etc....

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Forty Years On-The Harrow Song
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 10:27 AM

I've just been looking at page 35 of this week's Harrow Observer, which previews next Sunday afternoon's walk inspired by the prime ministers educated at Harrow School. The article includes a photo of Sir Winston and Clemmie with headmaster AP Boissier at the school in 1940, plus portraits of Spencer Perceval (the only British PM to be assassinated in office), Sir Robert Peel (who "created London's first police force" - as opposed to the Bow Street Runners), Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston. It says that Winston was originally destined for Eton, but Harrow was considered better for his health. He returned annually from the 1940s to the 1960s to hear performances of the school songs.

The school hymn is "He who would true valour see" - words by John Bunyan, tune trad.

Kitty

PS Herga was the old name for Harrow.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Forty Years On-The Harrow Song
From: GUEST,Bobby Bob, Ellan Vannin
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 01:45 PM

I don't know whether the lyric went any further, but my father always sang -

Forty years on, when we're farting like thunder.

Shoh slaynt,

Bobby Bob

Subject: Lyr Add: ARITHMETIC ON THE FRONTIER (R Kipling)
From: Gareth
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 02:39 PM

Kipling had something to say on this :-

Arithmetic on the Frontier

A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --,
The flying bullet down the Pass,,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent,
On making brain and body meeter,
For all the murderous intent,
Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!",
And after -- ask the Yusufzaies,
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --,
A canter down some dark defile --,
Two thousand pounds of education,
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --,
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow,
Strike hard who cares -- shoot straight who can --,
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp,
Will pay for all the school expenses,
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp,
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear",
Are cheap -- alas! as we are dear.

Hmmm! is this apt for our present time ?

Gareth