#39 / War Horse

I saw War Horse in London, about a year ago. I learned from the latest New Yorker Magazine that the play will open on Broadway next month. Click the image to book tickets.

The New Yorker quotes Michael Morpurgo, who wrote the children's book upon which the play is based: "I thought it was a way of telling about the universal suffering of war. A million British horses were taken to the war, and sixty thousand came back. The number killed was about as many as the soldiers."

I found the play profoundly affecting, and in a very significant part because of the song, "Only Remembered," which reminds us, truly, that it is we who create the world that we must, inevitably, leave behind:

Only Remembered

Fading away like the stars in the morning, 

Soaring from earth to its heavenly home, 

Thus should we leave from this world and its toiling,

Only remembered for what we have done.

Chorus

Only remembered, Only remembered, 

Only remembered for what we have done; 

Only remembered, Only remembered

Only remembered for what we have done.

Shall we be missed when others succeed us, 

Reaping the fields we in spring time have sown? 

Nay, for the sower shall pass from his labor, 

Only remembered for what he has done.

Chorus

Only the truth that in life we have spoken,

Only the seeds that on Earth we have sown,

These shall pass onward while we are forgotten, 

Only remembered for what we have done.

Chorus