Songs

On the Idle Hill of Summer

by George Butterworth From On Bredon Hill

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Text

On the Idle Hill of Summer
English source: Alfred Edward Housman

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.

Far and near and low and louder,
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.

Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow;
Woman bore me, I will rise.

Composer

George Butterworth

George Sainton Kaye Butterworth was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad. Read more here.

Poet

Alfred Edward Housman

Alfred Edward Housman (/26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the…

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