Six songs of manhood, op. 17

Song Cycle by Rutland Boughton (1878 - 1960)

1. The great grey mother

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2. Sea grave

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3. Song of the labourer

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4. The Love of Comrades  [sung text not yet checked]

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Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
  With the love of comrades,
  With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and 
along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks,
  By the love of comrades,
    By the manly love of comrades.

For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!
For you! for you, I am trilling these songs,
  In the love of comrades,
    In the high-towering love of comrades.

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5. In Prison  [sung text not yet checked]

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Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.

While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square-letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.

Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong.

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Confirmed with William Morris, The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems, London: Bell and Daldy, 1858.


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6. Man and Men  [sung text not yet checked]

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I

Men the Angels eyed;
And here they were wild waves,
And there as marsh descried;
Men the Angels eyed,
And liked the picture best
Where they were greenly dressed
In brotherhood of graves.

II

Man the Angels marked:
He led a host through murk,
On fearful seas embarked;
Man the Angels marked;
To think without a nay,
That he was good as they,
And help him at his work.

III

Man and Angels, ye
A sluggish fen shall drain,
Shall quell a warring sea.
Man and Angels, ye,
Whom stain of strife befouls,
A light to kindle souls
Bear radiant in the stain.

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Total word count: 290