The Armistice, an agreement to end the fighting of the First World War as a prelude to peace negotiations, began at 11am on 11 November 1918.
“Another of my settings of Housman’s poems, this time one from Last Poems, not A Shropshire Lad. This version is heavily edited and remixed with copious synth – – David A Harley”
“This 1917 poem refers to the British Expeditionary Force, which German propagandists referred to as ‘mercenaries’ because at the outbreak of war, Britain’s army consisted of professional soldiers rather than conscripts or the later volunteers of ‘Kitchener’s Army’. The BEF was practically wiped out by 1916. I find it hard to empathise with either Housman’s or Kipling’s Imperialistic sympathies, but the poem does have power. I hope my arrangement does it justice.”
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
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Lyrics
These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and the earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
credits
Words by A.E. Housman. Setting, guitars, synth and vocals by David A. Harley.
David A. Harley 1949 – 2025
