Turn back, O Man, forswear thy foolish ways

Turn back, O Man, forswear thy foolish ways. Clifford Bax* (1886-1962). This poem was first published in a book entitled The Motherland Song Book (1919), though written earlier, during World War I. It was written at the request of Gustav Holst*, who composed a motet on the tune OLD 124th, and who wanted a new text for his music, which had hitherto been associated with the 124th metrical psalm in Scotland, and with two not very successful hymns in EH, ‘The dying robber raised his aching brow’ (EH 114), and ‘Father of spirits, whose divine control’ (EH 352). Bax later published it in Farewell, My Muse (1932), where he dated it 1916: it acquires a particular resonance when it is recalled that...