My Love's gone a-fighting Where war-trumpets call, The wrongs of men righting With carbine and ball, And sabre for smiting, And charger, and all! Of whom does he think there Where war-trumpets call? To whom does he drink there, With carbine and ball On battle's red brink there, And charger, and all? He hears her voice a-humming Where war-trumpets call, "I wait, Love, thy coming With carbine and ball, And bandsmen a-drumming Thee, charger and all!"
The Battle Cry
Song Cycle by Garth Baxter (b. 1946)
1. My Love's gone a‑fighting  [sung text checked 1 time]
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), appears in The Dynasts, Act V, Scene 6, first published 1908
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Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter2. The battle  [sung text checked 1 time]
They come beset by riddling hail; They sway like sedges in a gale; They fail and win and win and fail; Their mad assailants rave and reel And face as men who scorn to feel. Phantasmal fears And the flop of the flame, And the throb of the clock, And the loosened slate, And the blind night's drone Which tiredly the spatial pines intone. They come beset by riddling hail; They sway like sedges in a gale; They fail and win and win and fail; Their mad assailants rave and reel And face as men who scorn to feel. Till faintness follows closing in When, faltering headlong down, they spin. Pale Colonels, Captains, ranksmen lie, Facing the earth or facing the sky. They strove to live, They stretch to die! Friends, foemen mingle; heap and heap Hide their hacked bones, earth deep! Where harmless worms caress and creep Hide their hacked bones, earth deep. What man can grieve What woman weep Better than waking is to sleep.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), appears in The Dynasts, first published 1903-8
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Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter3. The man he killed  [sung text checked 1 time]
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have [sat]1 us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
He thought he'd ['list]2 perhaps,
Offhand like - just as I -
Was out of work, had sold his traps,
No other reason why.
[ ... ]
Yes, quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), appears in Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses, first published 1909
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Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) [singable] (Walter A. Aue) , "Der Mann, den er erschoß", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 Baxter: "set"
2 Baxter: "enlist"
Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter
4. Drummer Hodge  [sung text checked 1 time]
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined - just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. Young Hodge the Drummer never knew - Fresh from his Wessex home - The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), "The Dead Drummer"
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First published in Literature, Nov. 1899Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter
5. A wife in London  [sung text checked 1 time]
She sits in the tawny vapour That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold on fold Like a waning taper The street-lamp glitters cold. A messenger's knock cracks smartly, Flashed news is in her hand Of meaning it dazes to understand Though shaped so shortly: He - has fallen - in the far South Land... 'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, The postman nears and goes: A letter is brought whose lines disclose By the firelight flicker His hand, whom the worm now knows: Fresh-firm-penned in highest feather - Page-full of his hoped return, And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn In the summer weather, And of new love that they would learn.
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), appears in Poems of the Past and Present, first published 1901
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Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter6. Coda (A Christmas Ghost‑Story)  [sung text checked 1 time]
South of the Line, [inland]1 from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies - your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? And what of logic or of truth appears In tacking "Anno domini" to the years? Near twenty-hundred liveried thus have hied, But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."
Authorship:
- by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928), first published 1899
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View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Joubert.
Researcher for this page: Garth Baxter