Songs

The Night of Trafalgar

by Ivor Gurney

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Text

The Night of Trafalgar
English source: Thomas Hardy

In the wild October night-time, when the wind raved round the land,
And the Back-sea met the Front-sea, and our doors were blocked with sand,
We heard the drub of Dead-man’s Bay, where bones of thousands are,
But knew not what the day had done for us at Trafalgar.
Had done,
Had done,
For us at Trafalgar!

‘Pull hard, and make the Nothe, or down we go’, one says! says he.
We pulled; and bedtime brought the storm; but snug at home slept we.
Yet all the while our gallants after fighting through the day,
Were beating up and down the dark, sou’west of Cadiz Bay.
Sou’west,
Sou’west,
Sou’west of Cadiz Bay!

The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore,
As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore;
Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far,
Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar!
The deep,
The deep,
That night at Trafalgar!

Composer

Poet

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly…

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