Ballad of Heroes

Chorus:
 You who stand at your doors,
 wiping hands on aprons,
 you who lean at the corner
 saying: "We have done our best",
 you who shrug your shoulders
 and you who smile
 to conceal your life's despair
 and its evil taste,
 to you we speak, you numberless Englishmen,
 to remind you of the greatness still among you
 created by these men who go from your towns
 to fight for peace, for liberty and for you.
 They were men who hated death and loved life,
 who were afraid, and fought against their fear.
 Men who wish'd to create and not to destroy,
 but knew the time must come to destroy the destroyer.
 For they have restored your power and pride,
 your life is yours, for which they died.

Chorus:
 It's farewell to the drawing room's civilised cry
 the professors' sensible whereto and why,
 the frock coated diplomats' social aplomb,
 now matters are settled with gas and bomb.
 The work for two pianos, the brilliant stories
 of reasonable giants and remarkable fairies,
 the pictures, the ointments, the frangible wares,
 and the branches of olive are stored upstairs.
 For the Devil has broken parole and arisen,
 he has dynamited his way out of prison;
 out of the well where his Papa throws
 the rebel angel, the outcast rose.
 The behaving of man is a world of horror,
 a sedent'ry Sodom and slick Gomorrah,
 I must take charge of the liquid fire,
 and storm the cities of human desire.
 For it's order and trumpet and anger and drum!

 And power and glory command you to come.
 The fishes are silent deep in the sea,
 the skies are lit up like a Christmas tree,
 the star in the west shoots its warning cry:
 "Mankind is alive but mankind must die."
 So goodbye to the house with its wallpaper red,
 goodbye to the sheets on the warm double bed,
 goodbye to the beautiful birds on the wall,
 it's goodbye, dear heart, goodbye to you all.

Recitative:
 Still tho' the scene of possible summer recedes,
 and the guns can be heard across the hills
 like waves at night:
 though crawling suburbs fill
 their valleys with the stench of idleness like rotting weeds,
 and desire unacted breeds its pestilence.

Tenor solo:
 Yet still below the soot the roots are sure
 and beyond the guns there is another murmur
 like pigeons flying unnotice'd over continents
 with secret messages of peace: and at the centre
 of wheeling conflict the heart is calmer
 the promise nearer than ever it came before.

Chorus:
 Europe lies in the dark.
 City and flood and tree;
 thousands have work'd and work
 to master necessity.
 To build the city where
 the will of love is done
 and brought to its full flower
 the dignity of man.
 Pardon them their mistakes,
 the impatient and wavering will.
 They suffer for our sakes,
 honour, honour them all.
 Honour, honour them all.
 Dry their imperfect dust,
 the wind blows it back and forth,
 they die to make man just
 and worthy of the earth.

Tenor solo and Chorus:
 To you we speak, you numberless Englishmen,
 to remind you of the greatness still among you
 created by these men who go from your towns
 to fight for peace, for liberty and for you.