Memorial Day 2011 ala poets and historians

“The dead make the living dearer.” –Thomas Lynch, from Treasury of Proverbs and Epigrams (Avenel Publishers, 1954) p. 110.

“For the whole earth is the/ sepulchre of famous men and/ their story is not graven/ only on stone over their/ native earth but lives on/ far away without visible/ symbol woven into the stuff/ of other men’s lives.” –translated from the Greek from the Oration of Pericles over the dead in the Peloponnesian War and delivered at Athens in 430 B.C. Pericles made this appeal to the pride of his countrymen and praised the warriors who had fallen in their country’s service.—from The Joy of Words (J. G. Ferguson, 1960), p. 136.

SOULS AND RAIN-DROPS by Sidney Lanier: “Light rain-drops fall and wrinkle the sea,/ Then vanish, and die utterly. One would not know that rain-drops fell/ If the round sea-wrinkles did not tell.// So souls come down and wrinkle life/ And vanish in the flesh-sea strife./ One might not know that souls had place/ Were’t not for the wrinkles in life’s face.” (Ibid) p. 137.

A poet friend sent me the following poem with this explanation: “One of the poems I had to memorize in school—when I was too young and ‘unaware’ to know what it meant. Now there are many, many such places, and I know what they mean—and wish I didn’t.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS –“In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row,/ That mark our place; and in the sky/ The larks, still bravely singing, fly/ Scarce heard amid the guns below.//
“We are the Dead. Short days ago/ We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,/ Loved, and were loved, and now we lie/ In Flanders fields.//
“Take up our quarrel with the foe:/ To you from failing hands we throw/ The torch; be yours to hold it high./ If ye break faith with us who die/ We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/ In Flanders fields.”--Lt. Col. John McCrae, MD

Finally, Edgar A. Guest’s MEMORIAL DAY. “The finest tribute we can pay/ Unto our heroes dead today,/ Are not rose wreaths, both white and red,/ In memory of the blood they shed;/ It is to stand beside each mound, / Each couch of consecrated ground,/ And pledge ourselves as warriors true/ Unto the work they died to do.//
“Into God’s valleys where they lie/ At rest, beneath the open sky,/ Triumphant now, o’er every foe,/ As living tributes let us go./ No wreath of rose or immortelles/ Or spoken word or tolling bells/ Will do today, unless we give/ Our pledge that liberty shall live.//
“Our hearts must be the roses red/ We place above our heroes dead;/ Today beside their graves we must/ Renew allegiance to their trust;/ Must bare our heads and humbly say/ We hold the Flag as dear as they,/ And stand, as once they stood, to die/ To keep the Stars and Stripes on high.//
“The finest tribute we can pay/ Unto our heroes dead today/ Is not of speech or roses red,/ But living, throbbing hearts instead/ That shall renew the pledge they sealed/ With death upon the battlefield:/ That freedom’s flag shall bear no stain/ And free men wear no tyrant’s chain.” ––from Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest (Reilly & Lee Co. 1934), p. 269-270.
Amen and Amen.
Pat Laster, author of A Journey of Choice