Land of hope and glory-Question.

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kl122002

Kevin H.Y. Lui
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I know how to sing this meaningful song although I am not come from England. This song is teched when I was in primary school and sing until I graduated from university. But this is something that I don't understand, especially the last part:

'Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won;
The blood a hero sire hath spent
Still nerves a hero son. '

When shall we sing this part? :confused:
 
are you meaning that you don't comprehend the last part or that you don't identify with its sentiment?
 
I can understand the whole song, except the last part. We never sing the last part . Just wondering what it means and why
 
Pride in Empire and Sovereign? Mighty? Anachronistic and irrelevant I would say, as is the national anthem. I dip in & out of the Proms but always avoid the decidedly weird Last Night because of this and other such.

Perhaps national anthems etc are inevitably chauvanistic but the lyrics to Jerusalem are so much more positive - y'know let's try to make this a better place rather than wallowing in imperial hubris - and it has a good tune too which is always a bonus.
 
There are a number of points here - perhaps most importantly that no-one in the UK could possibly regard Land of Hope And Glory seriously - it is basically treated as a piece of ironic kitsch and confined to an indescribable musical event called The Last Night of the Proms. I think that most people would regard "Jerusalem", based on the introduction to a long poem by William Blake, as the "English" anthem - and Blake's readers will be aware that it is actually much more.

However, LOHAG has to be understood in its historical context - it is intensely of its time (1902). At the turn of the 20th century there was enormous debate as to the future path of the British Empire. Some thinkers foresaw it as the nucleus of a multi-national (and multi-racial) world federation of independent states sharing the traditions of common law and democracy. Others understood it in a purely nationalistic way, with a special emphasis on the wealth and glory overseas rule bought, a triumphalism particularly obvious in 1897, at Queen Victoria's Jubilee..

This latter, "materialist" model of the Empire was criticised by Kipling in his great poem "Recessional", which enjoyed enormous popularity - http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Kipling/Recessional.htm

The outbreak of the Boer war seemed to confirm such fears. There was very considerable domestic and international opposition to what was widely understood as a war for gold and diamonds, not for "civilisation". In fairness, had the Boers been black, few of the critics at home or abroad would have had the slightest objection to the conflict - but that is how things were.

LOHAG was written in the immediate wake of the Boer War. In many ways it reflects the model of imperialism associated with Cecil Rhodes - ever-widening Empire, commercial prosperity (and ideally a union with the United States). This famous Punch cartoon shows Rhodes as the Collosus of Africa, and suggests the ethos - http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?i...channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N
The second verse seems to directly refer to critics of the Boer war and the "materialist" Imperial project -

Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide
- in Rhodesian terms the ocean is often a symbol for transatlantic unity as well as British trade and seapower .
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride
- that is, an Imperial pride which does not bend to flattery (or criticism, of which there had been much).
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won;
- nor an attitude that regards the age of conquest and expansion as over.
The blood a hero sire hath spent
Still nerves a hero son.
That is, the age of heroic conquest is still here, and "we" are still as ready to conquer and dare as our ancestors. We might even identify the "sons" with the emerging British Dominions and the United States. Some at the time most certainly did.


After 1914-18 this sort of stuff rang pretty hollow. I have never ever heard the second verse sung, nor the song sung in any but ironic circumstances. Me - I'm for this -

http://www.progressiveliving.org/william_blake_poetry_jerusalem.htm

Cheers, Ian
 
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I see. I have learned s little bit about the Boer War. have never though then this verse is related to the war.
Thank you very much Ian, for helping me to solve my question. It has been in my heard for many years. And how about the first part of the song ? I have not hear anyone sing it again in these years.



Kevin
 
So who wrote "Land of Hope and Glory" anyway? The music is Elgar, of course, but I don't know who grafted the words onto it.
 
kl122002 said:
I see. I have learned s little bit about the Boer War. have never though then this verse is related to the war.
Thank you very much Ian, for helping me to solve my question. It has been in my heard for many years. And how about the first part of the song ? I have not hear anyone sing it again in these years.

Kevin
Click to expand...

Hi Kevin :)

Well, it's not so much directly about the Boer War as a response to the general crisis regarding the direction of the empire, of which the Boer war was a major part.

There are two other sections of LOHAG. The first verse (which is now never sung) actually refers to the coronation of King Edward VII and perhaps alludes to the contemporary creation of a self-governing Commonwealth of Australia and reconciliation in South Africa - an empire under "equal laws".

Dear Land of Hope, thy hope is crowned.
God make thee mightier yet!
On Sov'reign brows, beloved, renowned,
Once more thy crown is set.
Thine equal laws, by Freedom gained,
Have ruled thee well and long;
By Freedom gained, by Truth maintained,
Thine Empire shall be strong.

The chorus is the only part still (very occasionally) sung -

Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet.

Which is self-explanatory. It is really the sort of vainglorious bluster and self-delusion that Kipling identified: God is able to make up his own mind, and that may not involve making X or Y mightier yet :)

Cheers, Ian
 
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KoNickon said:
So who wrote "Land of Hope and Glory" anyway? The music is Elgar, of course, but I don't know who grafted the words onto it.
Click to expand...

A.C. Benson, one of the amazing Benson family - his brother, E.F. Benson, created the Mapp and Lucia books, a much greater achievement (IMHO) :)

Cheers, Ian
 
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Iggy said:
Don't the Tories sing LOHAG at the close of their annual conference?


(Yet another) Ian
Click to expand...

Yes. And Labour sing the Red Flag.

Not for nothing is Great Britain the world's No.1 source of irony :)

Cheers, Ian :)
 
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To leave all the British politics out of it, the words are simply an old-fashioned way of expressing the following ideas:

The "land of hope and glory," whatever it might be, has been famous for a long time ("as ancient as the days.") Its fame is also as large and wide as the ocean.

It has pride, but not the sort of pride that simply enjoys being praised. Instead, it is the kind of pride that encourages great deeds ("a pride that dares.")

This pride is also not the type of pride that encourages the land's people to be satisfied with what their ancestors have achieved. ("Not that false joy...with what our sires have won.")

Instead, the sacrifices of the ancestors still encourage their descendants to attempt great deeds. ("The blood a hero sire hath spent/Still nerves a hero son.")

See, not too complicated once you strip away the antique, poetic language.

As to whether or not the Land of Hope and Glory still has the qualities of fame, pride and bravery... well, the Brits on this board seem to think not, but maybe they're not a representative sample!
 
Thanks, Jocko. Can't say I'd ever heard of A.C. Benson. And I'm glad to have had the chance to read again "Recessional" -- presages the work of Wilfred Owen.
 
The music is glorious, and comes from the Pomp and Circumstance (title inspired by Shakespeare's 'Othello') series of Marches (no. 1) - the words were added at the suggestion of King Edward VII

Elgar himself was not the least bit 'jingoistic' and disliked LOHAG and I suspect would not be especially impressed by the Last Night of the Proms as it is today. I would suggest that all lovers of good music, and particularly lovers of Elgar, would much prefer to hear the original purely orchestral version.
 
In the final episode of the frankly brilliant History of Britain, I think Simon Schama defined a patriotic Brit as someone who holds the twin virtues of social justice and bloody-minded liberty dear. I shouted at the TV screen "Yes. That's it! Thank you Simon for at last I belong" but my heart quickly sank :( as I simply couldn't get past the ludicrousness of being proud of an accident. Of birth that is.

The teaching of explicitly British values:confused: in schools is very much on the political agenda but to oppose such teaching seems a very British position to take somehow.
 
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