One Crowded Hour of Glorious Life

Authorship of the “One Crowded Hour” Quatrain

Introduction

The famous quatrain –

“Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.”

– has a tangled attribution history. Over time it has been credited to three different authors: Rev. William Lucas Collins, Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Osbert Mordaunt. To determine the true author, we examine each candidate’s connection to the lines and trace the poem’s earliest appearances in print. We draw on historical publications, literary commentary, and scholarly findings to weigh the evidence for and against each attribution.

William Lucas Collins

William Lucas Collins (1828–1893) was a Victorian scholar and cleric, best known as an editor of the Ancient Classics for English Readers series. Collins did not compose this quatrain, but he did quote it in his own writings – which has led to some modern confusion. In his commentary on the Iliad, for example, Collins cites the lines while discussing Achilles’ choice of a short glorious life, explicitly referring to them as “the stirring lines of Scott”. He reproduces the entire stanza in his text, clearly treating it as an existing quote (from Scott) rather than original verse of his own. Collins again quoted the passage in his volume on Cicero, using it to admonish readers that “the heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains … but by being prodigal of their lives”. In these instances Collins is acting as an editor/critic, not claiming authorship. Indeed, he attributes the lines to Sir Walter Scott, showing he himself believed Scott was the source.

Evidence for Collins’ authorship: Essentially none – beyond the fact that the stanza appears in books he wrote or edited. It was Collins’ misfortune to have his name attached to the quote in modern databases and quotation compilations (likely because he published it in his books). For example, Goodreads and other quote sites list the passage under Collins’ name due to its appearance in his Cicero volume. This is a misunderstanding: Collins never claimed to have written “One crowded hour of glorious life…”, he was merely quoting it.

Evidence against Collins: All historical and textual evidence indicates Collins was a later transmitter, not the originator. The quatrain predates Collins’ works by many decades (it was already famous by the time he quoted it). Collins himself gives credit to another author (Scott) in his commentary, which refutes any notion that he considered it his own. In short, there are no verified publications in which Collins is identified as the author of the poem – only publications where he includes the lines second-hand. Thus, William Lucas Collins can be ruled out as the true author.

Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott’s connection to the lines is much stronger. The stanza appears prominently in Scott’s novel Old Mortality (1816) as an epigraph to Chapter 34, where it is printed in italics and attributed only to “Anonymous.” Scott often prefaced his chapters with snatches of poetry (sometimes from obscure ballads or his own pen), and in this case he chose the “One crowded hour of glorious life” verse. Because he gave no author, many readers assumed it was Scott’s own creation written for the novel. Contemporary admirers of Scott remarked on the aptness of the “Anonymous” lines and suspected Scott had written them himself. For example, Scott’s friend Mrs. Grant of Laggan, in a letter of January 1817, noted the “motto to one of the chapters, marked Anonymous, that, I suspect, is written by the author himself – Fill, fill the clarion, sound the fife… One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name! How nobly spirited and expressive!” This early reaction shows that Scott’s contemporaries strongly believed the quatrain was his work (Mrs. Grant even misremembered “fill the clarion” for “sound the clarion,” but clearly meant the same lines).

For the next century, the lines were overwhelmingly identified with Scott. His son-in-law and biographer, John Gibson Lockhart, quoted the stanza in Life of Scott and called them “his own immortal words,” using the passage to eulogize Scott. Later scholars and editors of Scott’s works also tended to assume Scott’s authorship unless evidence indicated otherwise. In 1890, Notes and Queries declared “there is not the slightest doubt that the fine quatrain … is Scott’s own,” citing Lockhart’s testimonial as conclusive. The lines had essentially become part of the Scott legend. They were frequently included in 19th-century anthologies under Scott’s name or under Old Mortality. For instance, an 1865 edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations lists the stanza as the chapter motto from Old Mortality. Likewise, The World’s Best Poetry (1904) categorized the quatrain as “Old Mortality: Chapter Head – Sir W. Scott”. The association was so strong that as late as   1926, a speaker at the Sir Walter Scott Club in Edinburgh could recite the lines and call them “these lines of Scott, famous the world over,” to rousing applause. In popular memory and literary tradition, the quatrain had effectively been canonized as Scott’s.

Evidence for Scott’s authorship: The primary support was stylistic and contextual. The martial imagery and heroic sentiment fit Scott’s Romantic style well, and the lines meshed perfectly with the themes of Old Mortality. No alternative author was known for over 100 years, and Scott never disclaimed the lines. On the contrary, the fact that he labelled the piece “Anonymous” in the novel was interpreted by many (like Mrs. Grant) as a playful coyness – a way for Scott to include his own verse without explicitly signing it. In Lockhart’s view, the stanza distilled Scott’s ethos so well that it had to be his “own immortal words”. The absence of any 18th-century author in early editions or correspondence further allowed the assumption that Scott composed it. Simply put, until the true source was discovered, all circumstantial evidence pointed to Scott as the likely author, and this was the scholarly consensus through the 19th century. Scott’s enormous fame also meant the quote circulated widely under his name.

Evidence against Scott’s authorship: Despite the long-held attribution, critical doubts persisted beneath the surface. Scott’s decision to mark the piece “Anonymous.” in Old Mortality can be seen as a clue that it was not his own. In his other works, Scott sometimes credited chapter-head verses to sources like “Old Play” or a named poet when known; when he used “Anonymous,” it often implied an old folk verse or a then-untraceable source. Indeed, internal evidence hinted the lines might pre-date Old Mortality. The vocabulary (“clarion,” “fife,” “sensual world”) and the sentiment have an 18th-century flavour, more aligned with mid-18th-century rhetoric of glory than with 19th-century Romanticism. Some 19th-century commentators noticed this. In 1880, a Notes and Queries correspondent queried the origin of the “Sound, sound the clarion” lines, suspecting they might come from an earlier source given their anonymous attribution in Scott’s novel. However, without hard evidence, such suspicions remained speculative. It was not until the early 20th century that concrete proof emerged that Scott was quoting rather than authoring the quatrain. That proof came with the discovery of an earlier publication – by Thomas Mordaunt – as we shall see. In summary, while Sir Walter Scott popularized the stanza and was long credited for it, the key argument against his authorship is the existence of the poem in print before 1816 (something unknown to Scott’s contemporaries). Once an earlier source surfaced, Scott’s claim as original author collapsed. Modern scholarly consensus no longer attributes the poem to Scott.

Thomas Osbert Mordaunt

Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1730–1809) was a British army officer and a minor poet. He is now recognized as the true author of the “One crowded hour of glorious life” quatrain, which comes from his poem “The Call.” Mordaunt wrote this poem during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) – often called the “last German war” in older British usage. The poem The Call expresses a young soldier’s inner conflict between love and military glory, ultimately trumpeting the famous lines as a call to valour. Importantly, The Call was published in Mordaunt’s lifetime, though it remained obscure. The earliest known appearance in print is in The Bee, a weekly literary magazine published in Edinburgh. On October 12, 1791, The Bee printed a fourteen-stanza poem titled “A Poem, said to be written by Major Mordaunt during the last German War. Never before published.” The eleventh stanza of this piece is exactly the “Sound, sound the clarion…” quatrain. This 1791 publication predates Scott’s use of the lines by 25 years, firmly establishing priority. Notably, a copy of that very issue of The Bee was later found in Sir Walter Scott’s own library – suggesting that Scott encountered Mordaunt’s poem there and adopted the stirring stanza for his novel.

In The Bee and other sources, the poem was attributed to “Major Mordaunt,” which matches Thomas Osbert Mordaunt’s rank at the time of writing (he was a Major during the war and later rose to Lieutenant-General). After 1791, the poem was not widely reprinted in the 19th century, which is why its authorship slipped into obscurity while Scott’s star rose. For many years, reference works did not connect the quote to Mordaunt. It was only in 1920 that the puzzle was solved. In that year, a researcher named James Rankin of Galashiels uncovered the link between Scott’s “Anonymous” epigraph and Mordaunt’s The Call. Rankin published his findings in The Literary Digest (Sept. 11, 1920), reprinting Mordaunt’s The Call in full and announcing that the long-sought origin of the famous lines had been identified. This revelation showed definitively that Scott had borrowed the stanza, and that Thomas Mordaunt was the original author. As one quotations compendium noted in the wake of the discovery: the lines were “recently discovered in The Bee, Edinburgh, Oct. 12, 1791” and “said to have been written by Major Mordaunt.” No scholar has seriously contested this attribution since.

Evidence for Mordaunt’s authorship: The textual evidence is unequivocal. The Old Mortality stanza is verbatim the stanza from Mordaunt’s The Call as printed in 1791. The timing fits: Mordaunt, a soldier-poet of the mid-18th century, wrote a poem during the Seven Years’ War when the cult of military glory was at its height. The sentiment “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name” perfectly encapsulates the ethos of that war era. It is highly plausible that an army officer in the 1750s would coin such a phrase; indeed Mordaunt’s entire poem builds to that crescendo. Furthermore, the 1791 magazine explicitly names Major Mordaunt as the author, which is essentially a primary-source attribution. After the 1920 discovery, authoritative compilations quickly corrected the record. The 1922 edition of Hoyt’s Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, for example, still lists the quatrain under Scott (reflecting its fame in Old Mortality), but adds the crucial footnote: “Recently discovered in The Bee, Edinburgh, Oct. 12, 1791. Said to have been written by Major Mordaunt.” Scholarly and literary consensus thereafter shifted to credit Mordaunt. The Oxford Book of English Verse (1939 edition) included the stanza under Mordaunt’s name, finally giving the soldier-poet his due. Modern reference works (as well as Wikipedia) now uniformly attribute the poem “The Call” to Thomas Osbert Mordaunt and explain that for many years it was wrongly thought to be by Scott. In summary, the evidence for Mordaunt is the combination of historical attribution in 1791, textual matching, and the acknowledgment of 20th-century scholars that he is the genuine author.

Evidence against Mordaunt’s authorship: There is little to argue against Mordaunt at this point, aside from the poem’s long anonymity. One could note that The Bee (1791) presented the piece with some uncertainty (“said to be written by Major Mordaunt…”), implying it was a hearsay attribution. However, no competing claimant from that era ever emerged. The style and context align with Mordaunt’s background, and no evidence suggests the lines belong to anyone else. The only historical “strike” against Mordaunt is that his authorship was forgotten for over a century, leading some to assume an attribution to Scott or others. But since the rediscovery, no scholar has produced a shred of contrary evidence to dispute Mordaunt’s claim. On the contrary, all known facts reinforce that Mordaunt wrote the stanza and Scott borrowed it. Thus, from a modern perspective, Thomas O. Mordaunt stands as the most likely original author by a wide margin.

Earliest Publication and Scholarly Consensus

To highlight the earliest known appearance: the quatrain first saw print on 12 October 1791 in The Bee magazine of Edinburgh. It appeared as part of a longer poem The Call by Major Thomas Mordaunt, presented to the public for the first time in that issue. This 1791 printing is a crucial piece of evidence, because it antedates Sir Walter Scott’s use of the lines in Old Mortality (1816) and thus demonstrates the verse was in existence well before Scott’s novel. After 1791, the trail went cold – the poem was not widely reprinted or anthologized in the early 19th century. When Scott included it as an epigraph in 1816 (without naming the author), the origin became obscured. Only in 1920 was the original source reconnected, thanks to the detective work published in The Literary Digest. From that point on, reputable literary historians and editors have accepted Mordaunt’s authorship as a matter of record. By the mid-20th century, reference books uniformly corrected the attribution. For example, Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922) explicitly notes the discovery in The Bee and the credit to Mordaunt, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (later editions) likewise attribute the line to Mordaunt (often with a parenthetical note about Scott’s usage). The scholar Herbert Grierson, editing the 1939 Oxford Book of English Verse, included “Sound, sound the clarion…” under Mordaunt’s name, reflecting the new consensus.

Today, academic sources are in broad agreement: “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name” originates from Thomas Osbert Mordaunt’s pen. Sir Walter Scott’s role was that of a quoting steward – he helped immortalize the lines by embedding them in his novel, but he did not compose them. William Lucas Collins was a later commentator who propagated the lines (assuming they were Scott’s). Thus, each of the three men had a hand in the verse’s journey: Mordaunt wrote it, Scott quoted it, and Collins quoted Scott. In light of the historical record, the true laurels of authorship belong to Major Thomas Osbert Mordaunt. As one modern compilation succinctly puts it, the quatrain commonly attributed to Scott was “actually written by Mordaunt during the Seven Years’ War”  – one glorious hour of poetic fame earned by a soldier-poet, finally restored to his name after an age of anonymity.

Conclusion

After examining all three candidates, the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Thomas Osbert Mordaunt is the original author of the celebrated lines. Sir Walter Scott, though long credited, was essentially quoting an older poem in Old Mortality, and he did so without claiming authorship (marking it “Anonymous.”). Scott’s literary genius helped spread the verse, but the words themselves were penned by an earlier hand. William Lucas Collins, in turn, was a 19th-century conduit who cited the lines in his essays, further cementing the misattribution to Scott in Victorian minds. The puzzle of authorship was conclusively solved in 1920 when Mordaunt’s forgotten poem was brought to light, revealing the quatrain’s earliest print appearance in 1791 and its true creator. Modern scholarly consensus, backed by publication history and literary analysis, affirms that the stirring proverb, “One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name,” originated with Major Thomas O. Mordaunt’s The Call, even though it attained fame through Sir Walter Scott. In summary, each man played a role, but only one – Mordaunt – wrote those immortal lines. As such, the laurels of authorship rightly rest with him, while Scott’s legacy is that of a great populariser who recognized the power of Mordaunt’s words and gave them new life on the pages of his novel.

....and Just to Confuse things:

Here is a quote by Sir Walter Scott from Count Robert of Paris (1832), and it indeed shows how he not only admired Mordaunt’s original lines but internalised and rephrased their sentiment in his own prose:

"One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation."

That’s unmistakably an echo—almost a prose expansion—of Mordaunt’s original verse:

"One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."

Scott clearly respected the idea and repurposed it for his own purposes. What’s especially interesting is that by 1832 (when Count Robert of Paris was published), Scott had already used Mordaunt’s quatrain in Old Mortality (1816), attributing it to “Anonymous.” Yet in Count Robert, he neither quotes it directly nor attributes it—it’s simply absorbed into the voice of the narrator, transformed into Scott’s own rhetorical flourish.

So did Scott “rip off” Mordaunt?

Well… sort of, but not maliciously. Here’s the nuance:

• Scott was famous for drawing on earlier poetry, ballads, and folk traditions—sometimes unattributed, sometimes lightly veiled as “Anonymous” or “Old Play.”
• When he used Mordaunt’s lines in Old Mortality, he didn’t claim them as his own—though he didn’t name Mordaunt either.
• In Count Robert of Paris, Scott reshaped the idea rather than copying the wording, which was common literary practice at the time (think of it as 19th-century intertextual homage).
• It wasn’t plagiarism by the standards of the period—but he definitely helped bury Mordaunt’s name in the process.

If anything, this quote strengthens the case that Scott revered Mordaunt’s sentiment, used it consciously, and gave it new life in both verse and prose—though modern standards would call for more explicit credit.

The Call by Mordaunt:

Go, lovely boy! to yonder tow'r
The fane of Janus, ruthless King
!And shut, O! shut the brazen door
,And here the keys in triumph bring

.

Full many a tender heart hath bled,
Its joys in Belgia's soil entomb'd:
Which thou to Hymen's smiling bed,
And length of sweetest hours had doom'd.

Oh, glory! you to ruin owe
The fairest plume the hero wears:
Raise the bright helmet from his brow;
You'll mock beneath the manly tears.

Who does not burn to place the crown
Of conquest on his Albion's head?
Who weeps not at her plaintive moan,
To giver her hapless orphans bread?

Forgive, ye brave, the generous fault,
If thus my virtue falls; alone
My Delia stole my earliest thought,
And fram'd its feelings by her own.

Her mind so pure, her face so fair;
Her breast the seat of softest love;
It seemed her words an angel's were,
Her gentle percepts from above.

My mind thus form'd, to misery gave
The tender tribute of a tear:
O! Belgia, open thy vast grave,
For I could pour an ocean there.

When first you show'd me at your feet
Pale liberty, religion tied,
I flew to shut the glorious gate
Of freedom on a tyrant's pride.

Tho great the cause, so wore with woes,
I can not but lament the deed:
My youth to melancholy bows,
And Clotho trifles with my thread.

But stop, my Clio, wanton muse,
Indulge not this unmanly strain:
Beat, beat the drums, my ardor rouse,
And call the soldier back again.

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.

Go then, thou little lovely boy,
I can not, must not, hear thee now;
And all thy soothing arts employ
To sooth my Delia of her wo.

If the gay flow'r, in all its youth,
Thy scythe of glory here must meet;
Go, bear my laurel, pledge of truth,
And lay it at my Delia's feet.

Her tears shall keep it ever green,
To crown the image in her breast;
Till death doth close the hapless scene,
And calls its angel home to rest.