PRIVATE HARRY STEANE
8TH BTTN AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
29TH JUNE 1916 AGE 21
BURIED: BERKS CEMETERY EXTENSION, BELGIUM
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
This poem, The Call, written by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1730-1809) was at one time thought to have been written by Sir Walter Scott who used it as the motto to Chapter XIII in Volume II of An Old Mortality. W.E.Henley (1849-1903) certainly attributed it to Scott when he used it on the title page of Lyra Heroica, his collection of poetry for boys.
The phrase, which Harry Steane's mother has slightly misquoted, was frequently used as a shorthand to describe a certain type of person. Vera Britain used it to describe Roland Leighton:
"I know you're the kind of person who would risk your life recklessly; I was talking to someone a short time ago and I said I thought you were the kind who believes in the 'one glorious hour of crowded life' (sic) theory; is it true?" (Vera Brittain, Chronicle of Youth, 1981, page 139).
Harry Steane, who was born in Warrington, England, enlisted on 5 October 1914 in Australia. After his death his mother wrote, "But the best of all in my idea is he volunteered for his country at once and was in the first landing on Gallipoli and I think that is a very great honour".