It is said Churchill "wept openly" whenever he attended an event at his public school and this song was belted out by the whole gang. Is it not (sniff) only fitting that a special verse was added in Churchill’s honor? You can see it — and sing it — at the end of this (sniff) post.
The lyrics of Forty Years On
- Forty years on, when afar and asunder
- Parted are those who are singing today,
- When you look back, and forgetfully wonder
- What you were like in your work and your play,
- Then, it may be, there will often come o’er you,
- Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song –
- Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
- Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along,
- Chorus
- Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!
- Till the field ring again and again,
- With the tramp of the twenty-two men.
- Follow up! Follow up!
- Routs and discomfitures, rushes and rallies,
- Bases attempted, and rescued, and won,
- Strife without anger, and art without malice, –
- How will it seem to you, forty years on?
- Then, you will say, not a feverish minute
- Strained the weak heart and the wavering knee,
- Never the battle raged hottest, but in it,
- Neither the last nor the faintest, were we!
- Chorus
- O the great days, in the distance enchanted,
- Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun,
- How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted –
- Hardly believable, forty years on!
- How we discoursed of them, one with another,
- Auguring triumph, or balancing fate,
- Loved the ally with the heart of a brother,
- Hated the foe with a playing at hate!
- Chorus
- Forty years on, growing older and older,
- Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
- Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
- What will it help you that once you were strong?
- God give us bases to guard or beleaguer,
- Games to play out, whether earnest or fun;
- Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,
- Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!
- Chorus
(written for Sir Winston Churchill’s ninetieth birthday and first sung 28th November 1964)
- Blazoned in honour! For each generation
- You kindled courage to stand and to stay;
- You led our fathers to fight for the nation,
- Called "Follow up" and yourself showed the way.
- We who were born in the calm after thunder
- Cherish our freedom to think and to do;
- If in our turn we forgetfully wonder,
- Yet we’ll remember we owe it to you.