High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! `"O Valiant Hearts" is a hymn remembering the fallen of the First World War. Words were taken from a poem by Sir John Stanhope Arkwright (1872–1954), published in `The Supreme Sacrifice, and other Poems in Time of War (1919). It was set to music by the Rev. Dr. Charles Harris, Vicar of Colwall, Herefordshire 1909-1929. The poem was later included as a hymn in both editions of the hymn book Songs of Praise. For the first edition, published in 1925, the music was set to a traditional tune, `Valour`, arranged by Vaughan Williams. In the second, larger edition of Songs of Praise, published in 1931, Gustav Holst composed the tune `Valiant Hearts` especially for the hymn. In Songs of Praise Discussed, Valiant Hearts is described as `a good bold tune, in triple time, with a suggestion of bell-chimes in the repeated first phrase, an effect which is enhanced by the nature of the accompaniment to the alternative unison version`. The alternative unison version referred to is written for verses 3 and 7.` However, it is to the Harris tune that the hymn is now always sung. In fact there is no evidence to suggest that the later tunes mentioned above ever gained any popularity. A very early recording (to Harris`s beloved tune) by the boy soprano Harold Langston was played at the Aldershot Tattoo in 1930 to vast crowds. http://www.boysoloist.com/artist.asp?VID=1130