ABSTRACT
Militaristic songs, doggerel and verse were a pronounced feature of the literature associated with late-Victorian and Edwardian public schools and their staff, pupils and advocates. The most famous public school versifier, who sang loud and often of the relationship between public school playing field and imperial battlefield was Sir Henry Newbolt. Newbolt's poems in praise of the public schoolboy at war and the public school as a preparation for war: 'Sacramentum Supremum', 'Clifton Chapel', 'The Schoolfellow', 'The School at War', 'The Best School of All', 'The Virgil', 'The Grenadier's Goodbye', 'The Echo', 'Commemoration', and, of course, Vitae Lampada, arguably, are too well known to be considered here yet again, but collectively they should not be overlooked for what they were - a sustained paean to the public schoolboy as sacrificial imperial subaltern.
