“Over the Hills and Far Away” by Unknown and “Louis Napoleon” by Oscar Wilde
Commonplace Book – Pages 99-101
O’er the Hills and Far Away by Unknown
O’er the hills and o’er the main
Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain.
King George commands and we obey
Over the hills and far away.
It’s forty shillings on the drum
To those who volunteer to come,
To ‘list and fight the foe today
Over the hills and far away.
Through smoke and fire and shot and shell
And to the very walls of hell,
But we shall stand and we shall stay
Over the hills and far away.
If I should fall to rise no more,
As many comrades did before,
Ask the pipes and drums to play
Over the hills and far away.
Louis Napoleon by Oscar Wilde
Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
When far away upon a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Or ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican
Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place
The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,
That not dishonoured should thy soul go down
To tell the mighty Sire of thy race
That France hath kissed the mouth of liberty,
And found it sweeter than his honied bees,
And that the giant wave Democracy
Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.
