Gethsemane

[poliphilo]

I've been looking for this for years. It's Peter Bellamy's setting of Kipling's Great War poem "Gethsemane". Bellamy included it on the album "Mr Kipling Wrote Exceedingly Good Songs" which- at the time of writing- is unobtainable in any form. Here it's sung by Andrew King in a version taken from his Album The Amfortas Wound.

Comments

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Not so jingoistic now, is he? The Great War had a way of changing men. I do better when I see the words, so here they are for folks similarly challenged:

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass-
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a great poem.

Kipling was haunted by the war. So many of his later stories are about psychological healing and forgiveness and the futility of carrying forward a hatred.