The School Song

Songs are sung by the boys in their Houses every term, and also by the whole School to audiences of parents, Old Harrovians or distinguished guests; the latter has included members of the Royal family and previous governments.

Songs Concerts always include Forty Years On, which has become known as The Harrow Song, although in reality it is one of many.

Download Forty Years On

• MP3 format (2.6 Mb)
  
• Windows Media Audio File (WMA) (3.0 Mb)

You can also download the sheet music and lyrics, either as a MSWord document (299Kb) file or in PDF format (272Kb).

If you would like to hear more of the School singing Songs, there are CDs of the performances at the Royal Albert Hall in 1990 and 2000, which are available from the Harrow School Bookshop. You can sing along, with the Song Book, containing fifty Songs, also available from the Harrow School Hill Stores.

The music and words for Forty Years On are not in copyright and may be downloaded without permission, but the performance is the copyright of the performers and may not be used for public performance.

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.