Quick Facts
Biography
Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1730–1809) was a British officer and poet, known for "The Call".
Mordaunt was the son of Charles Mordaunt, also a soldier. His grandfather, Brigadier-General Lewis Mordaunt, was the younger brother of Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough, sometime First Lord of the Treasury.
Mordaunt is best remembered for his oft-quoted poem "The Call", written during the Seven Years' War of 1756–1763:
- "Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
- Throughout the sensual world proclaim,
- One crowded hour of glorious life
- Is worth an age without a name."
For many years, the poem was incorrectly attributed to Mordaunt's contemporary, Sir Walter Scott. Scott had merely quoted a stanza of the poem at the beginning of Chapter 34 of his novel Old Mortality.
One Crowded Hour, Tim Bowden's biography about the Australian combat cameraman Neil Davis, takes its title from a phrase used in "The Call".
