PRIVATE GRAHAM WELLESLEY HOPPER
LONDON REGIMENT
12TH NOVEMBER 1916 AGE 19
BURIED: LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Although long forgotten, these lines come from one of the most popular poems of the nineteenth century, 'A Lost Chord', written by Adelaide Anne Procter in 1860. Procter was said to be Queen Victoria's favourite poet and her national popularity to have been second only to that of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Procter died in 1864 but in 1877 the poem's popularity received a further boost when Sir Arthur Sullivan set it to music, calling his song 'The Lost Chord'. Although it can be sung by either men or women, the original poem is thought to be a comment on women's lives, domestic harmony - or disharmony - and religious doubt. It is sung here by Dame Clara Butt.
Improvising one day at the organ, while her mind was "weary and ill at ease", the poet unconsciously struck a single, calming, exquisitely harmonious chord that for that moment brought peace and meaning to her life before it trembled away into silence. The sound could only be described as "like the sound of a great Amen" in that it embodied deeply religious emotions that were beyond expression in words.
Nineteen-year-old Gerald Hopper died of wounds at a casualty clearing station in Lijssenthoek on 12 November 1916. His widowed mother chose his inscription. Did she mean that she had come to terms with the death of her son and found peace, or as the last verse of the poem suggests, did she only expect to find the peace she had once experienced whilst her son was alive after her own death?
It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.