Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie
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The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place
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I keep hitting the Escape key, but I'm still here!
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Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View PostBoth Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory have been used as the English anthem in sporting events. I favour the former, preferable orchestrated by the the composer of the latter
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Originally posted by LeMartinPecheur View PostWell, Flanders & Swann went down this track many years ago. Their attempt at a national anthem for England alone entitled A Song of Patriotic Prejudice (chorus, to a suitably rousing original tune, "The English, the English, the English are best,/ I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest") would I believe do the job very nicely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh-wEXvdW8
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Originally posted by ahinton View PostBut an English national anthem would and could in any case have no clout unless England were already an independent country entitled to its own national anthemIt isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View PostMae hen wlad fy nhadau [has] quite contentious lyrics in at least one verse.[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View PostDoes it? "Mae hen iaith y Cymru mor fyw ag erioed" do you mean? Well, perhaps not "as ever", but "poetic licence" rather than "quite contentious", surely? (Especially if we're allowing the "legend with no historical basis" that you mention in the song with a title of a city over 2000 miles away from the country it "represents"!)
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Originally posted by Eine Alpensinfonie View PostBoth Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory have been used as the English anthem in sporting events. I favour the former, preferable orchestrated by the the composer of the latter..
You really want to build Jerusalem? You like the mess of the Middle East?
Great tune - but the words!
All the satanic mills that haven't been gentrified into apartments have been demolished by Blaster Bates or Fred Dibnah.
'I vow to thee my country' is the one - otherwise write a new one.
Alternatively you could big up the N/S divide with 'Hills of the North rejoice'
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With the massive, and growing, disparity between the remuneration of those that do the work, and those who live off their labours in this contry, how about the Chartist Ernest Jones's Song of the Wage-slave?
The land it is the landlord's,
The trader's is the sea,
The ore the usurer's coffer fills —
But what remains for me?
The engine whirls for master's craft;
The steel shines to defend,
With labor's arms, what labor raised,
For labor's foe to spend.
The camp, the pulpit, and the law
For rich men's sons are free;
Theirs, theirs the learning, art, and arms —
But what remains for me?
The coming hope, the future day,
When wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now .
I pay for all their learning,
I toil for all their ease;
They render back, in coin for coin,
Want, ignorance, disease:
Toil, toil — and then a cheerless home,
Where hungry passions cross;
Eternal gain to them that give
To me eternal loss!
The hour of leisured happiness
The rich alone may see;
The playful child, the smiling wife —
But what remains for me?
They render back, those rich men,
A pauper's niggard fee,
Mayhap a prison — then a grave,
And think they are quits with me;
But not a fond wife's heart that breaks,
A poor man's child that dies,
We score not on our hollow cheeks
And in our sunken eyes;
We read it there, where'er we meet,
And as the sun we see,
Each asks, " The rich have got the earth,
And what remains for me? "
We bear the wrong in silence,
We store it in our brain;
They think us dull, they think us dead,
But we shall rise again:
A trumpet through the lands will ring;
A heaving through the mass;
A trampling through their palaces
Until they break like glass:
We'll cease to weep by cherished graves,
From lonely homes we'll flee;
And still, as rolls our million march,
Its watchword brave shall be —
The coming hope, the future day,
When wrong to right shall bow,
And hearts that have the courage, man,
To make that future now.
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Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View PostJerusalem obviously symbolised an imaginary place (builded here) very different for Blake than the modern city, sadly, can ever represent the ideal of utopia he intended in its translocated imaginary place. And that, apart of course from anything else, rules it out, sadly, as a candidate for English national anthem.
If so (and apologies if I've misunderstood) then I think we interpret the words differently. The first verse refers to a myth that Christ spent some time in England (IIRC, during his childhood/youth after the flight into Egypt) - which the verse questions (all those "And did .. "s) in the context of the exploitive emergent capitalist system of the Industrial Revolution which Blake witnessed. The second verse counters this with a declaration by the individual that s/he shall fight (physically ["my sword"] and intellectually ["mental strife", the "arrows of desire") against the dehumanizing results of the "Satanic Mills" - and not stop fighting, until collectively people make the country a place worth living in.
What I like about Jerusalem (for all its typically Blakean use of metaphor) is that it doesn't like most other such "anthems" (including the vile I vow to thee my country) smugly assume the "superiority" of the Nation - and, therefore, its "right" to dominate others - but the responsibility of citizenship: the collective necessity for its people not to allow the few to determine how the many are allowed to live.
So, if there is to be such an Anthem, (I'm more of an Internationale chap, messel'n) the words of Jerusalem are much better than most, and the tune isn't bad, either (but preferably not in the Elgar orchestration, where the Satanic Mills of the orchestra drown out the voices of the people singing - just a piano; or even Billy Bragg's arrangement/re-setting).[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]
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