Vera Brittain in Oxford - 1 May, 1915, 04:00 AM

from Letter from Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton, 1 May 1915, page 95:

I was up at 3.45 this morning for the famous May Morning ceremony ... as the clock struck four all the people turned towards the tower & became absolutely silent. Then immediately after, as the sun was rising, the choristers on the top of Magdalen tower sang the May Morning Latin hymn, turning towards the sun ... I could quite easily have wept at the beauty & pain of it. I couldn’t help thinking how different everything is from what we pictured it would be, & how you had meant to be here, & how you would have loved it if you had been...
cite as

Letter from Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton, 1 May 1915. In A. G. Bishop and Mark Bostridge (ed.), Letters from a lost generation : First World War letters of Vera Brittain and four friends - Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow (:London, 1999), p. 95. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1399990653596 accessed: 1 December, 2024

location of experience: Oxford

Listeners

Vera Brittain
Writer
1893-1970

Listening to

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May Morning Latin hymn

Experience Information

Date/Time 1 May, 1915, 04:00 AM
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, outdoors

Notes

Roland was serving on the Western Front with 4th Battalion, The Norfolk Regiment.


Originally submitted by hgb3 on Tue, 13 May 2014 15:17:34 +0100