Thomas Osbert Mordaunt

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.^[1]^[2] He was commissioned ensign and lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Foot Guards on 27 January 1753, and promoted captain-lieutenant in the 10th Regiment of Dragoons on 25 December 1755.^[3] He is recorded as having ultimately achieved the rank of major general.^[2]

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 (Chapter XIII of Volume II) of his novel Old Mortality.^[4]

One Crowded Hour, Tim Bowden's biography of Australian combat cameraman Neil Davis, takes its title from a phrase used in "The Call". Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, One Crowded Hour,^[5] makes ironic use of the same phrase.