Nights are growing very lonely,
Days are very long;
I’m a-growing weary only
List’ning for your song.
Old remembrances are thronging
Thro’ my memory
Till it seems the world is full of dreams
Just to call you back to me.
Chorus:
There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And the white moon beams.
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true;
Till the day when I’ll be going down
That long, long trail with you.
All night long I hear you calling,
Calling sweet and low;
Seem to hear your footsteps falling,
Ev’ry where I go.
Tho’ the road between us stretches
Many a weary mile,
I forget that you’re not with me yet
When I think I see you smile.
Chorus:
There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And the white moon beams.
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true;
Till the day when I’ll be going down
That long, long trail with you.
Lyrics Stoddard King (1889-1933)
Music Alonzo (Zo) Elliott (1891-1964)
This marching song was one of the most popular and enduring amongst the English-speaking troops of World War 1 and is a good example of soldiers adopting a commercial song in its entirety because of the sentiments it expresses. The Trench Choir featured it in many of their concerts during the war commemorations and even today it moves people in its expression of longing for a loved one far away and for an eventual reunion.
The song has been extensively studied by the librarian of the Gilmore Music Library at Yale, Suzanne Lovejoy, and anyone who wants a detailed history can look up her article on the Yale University Library website:
https://web.library.yale.edu/news/2017/04/gilmore-insights-iconic-world-war-i-song-theres-long-long-trail
It was written originally by two Yale students in 1913, but no American publisher would risk it. Following graduation from Yale , Zo Elliott the composer studied at Trinity College in Cambridge. He played the song at parties there, and eventually, the owner of a music publishing firm in London heard it and published it, though he worried for some months whether he would ever recoup his investment. Quite quickly he was working overtime to keep up with demand.
According to Elliott the song first attracted widespread attention when ‘a boatload of Canadian soldiers sang it coming down the Thames from a Sunday outing.’ Soon it was picked up by the British soldiers who sang it constantly, when marching off to war , or waiting in the trenches and going over the top.
The song was published in the US later in 1914 and became popular with US soldiers, and was also sung at major recruiting events.
As an indication of the impact of the song, Yale warded Elliott and King the Joseph Vernon Prize for Poetry, the first time a popular song was awarded such an honour. In part this was because it had been written by Yale students, but also because of its lyrical quality. The rhyme scheme is varied (AB,A,B,C, D, E internal rhyme, D for the first verse) and the music of the first beautifully echoes the sentiments of loneliness and longing to be reunited. The chorus then repeats the long, long trail motif before assuring us that after the long, long night of waiting, the promised reunion will take place before the lovers go down another long trail of a shared life together.
Suzanne Lovejoy ends her study with a quote from an essay by Elliott ‘What Music has meant to me’ which sums up the appeal of this song to the Trench Choir and to us today; the words and music come together to channel the marching ghosts of World War One.
‘Every year that I am in France, I try to go up to the Argonne. Sometime I hope that someone will write what those fields are saying. The earth is singing there of loyalty, and courage, of longing for Mothers, and of sweethearts, and sons and daughters. The cuckoo can be heard in the early morning, as the mist rises from the fields, but there is something deeper. There are the voices of ghosts too, and they seem to be saying “Come pardner, give us a Song.”
