"The Sweepers" is a poem written by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), and set to music by the English composer

Edward Elgar Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestr ...

in 1917, as the fourth of a set of four war-related songs on nautical subjects for which he chose the title "

The Fringes of the Fleet ''The Fringes of the Fleet'' is a booklet written in 1915 by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). The booklet contains essays and poems about nautical subjects in World War I. It is also the title of a song-cycle written in 1917 with music by the En ...

". Like the others in the cycle, it is intended for four baritone voices: a solo and chorus. It was originally written with orchestral accompaniment, but was later published to be sung with piano accompaniment. The poem was called by Kipling ''"Mine Sweepers"'', and is about the British ships called minesweepers which cleared the seas of enemy mines in World War I.

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

included the poem in his 1941 collection '' A Choice of Kipling's Verse''.

References

External links

Sea Warfare - The Fringes of the Fleet
Notes by Alastair Wilson {{DEFAULTSORT:Sweepers, The Songs by Edward Elgar Poetry by Rudyard Kipling 1917 songs