"The Glorious Land" is a song by the English alternative rock musician PJ Harvey. The song was released as the second single from her eighth studio album, Let England Shake, on 18 April 2011. An accompanying music video, directed by Seamus Murphy, was recorded and was released in March 2011, prior to the single release. It is the fourth part of a twelve music-film project documenting Let England Shake.

The song was written after the release of PJ Harvey's seventh studio album, White Chalk, in 2007. It is also known that the lyrics to the song were written prior to the music, as Harvey used this technique with all the songs written for the album, citing it as "the starting point" and explaining that it is "the root level" of her style of song-writing Recorded during the sessions for Let England Shake, the song was recorded over a five-week period in April and May 2010 with long-time collaborators John Parish and Mick Harvey, and, like other songs on the album, was recorded live so that Parish and Harvey could "bring their feelings into it."

Although the majority of the songs on White Chalk, and Let England Shake's first single, "The Words That Maketh Murder", feature an autoharp, "The Glorious Land" is primarily arranged for guitar, with the accompaniment of electronica beats. The guitar uses a capo on the eighth fret. It features a standard chord progression throughout the course of the song (Em-Bm-G/C-Am-D). Similarly, the bridge uses the first two chords. The song's final refrain alternates the basic chord progression (Em-A-Bm) and finishes on an Em. An extract of the song is based on "The Bed's Too Big Without You", a song by The Police, written by Sting. The bugle call sampled throughout the song is "Regimental March", performed by HM Irish Guards.

Lyrically, the song refers to militarism and the ongoing Afghan war. The lyrics in the final refrain appear to refer to the disastrous effects of war: "What is the glorious fruit of our land? / the fruit is deformed children / what is the glorious fruit of our land / the fruit is orphaned children." Alex Denney of The Quietus noted that the final refrain is "a chilling finale" to the song. Several lyrics throughout the song ("How is our glorious country ploughed? Not by iron ploughs") are extracts from an untitled Russian folk song anthologised in Russian Folk Songs by Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp and translated by Roberta Reeder. Other translated lyrics from the same song mimic lyrics from "The Glorious Land" such as "Our land is being ploughed by horses' hooves; And the glorious land is being sown with Cossack heads." These reworked lyrics, however, were noted by Harvey as a credit on Let England Shake.

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