Monday – Memorial Day
Donald Trump wants to build a triumphal arch near Arlington Cemetery, which along with dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial would also dishonor the military dead in a manner consistent with all the other ways he has done so. As Benjamin Parker of The Bulwark observes, there’s already an arch at Arlington, the much more “human scale” McClellan Gate. Better yet, on it are eloquent lines taken from Theodore O’Hara’s “Bivouac of the Dead.”
On the east side of the arch can be found the closing quatrain of the opening stanza: “On Fame’s Eternal Camping Ground Their Silent Tents Are Spread and Glory Guards With Solemn Round the Bivouac of the Dead.” On the west, meanwhile, is a quatrain from the penultimate stanza: “Rest on Embalmed and Sainted Dead, Dear as the Blood Ye Gave; No Impious Footsteps Here Shall Tread on the Herbage of Your Grave.”
This is not a day to dwell on how Trump’s impious footsteps have violated the cemetery with tasteless photo ops. What strikes one is just how beautifully the cemetery honors those who lie buried there. The simple gravestones bring to mind Donne’s “The Canonization,” in which he believes a poem, which he compares to “a well-wrought urn,” does more honor to his love than a vast monument would. He is talking of burial because he imagines that he and his mistress have died for love:
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs…
O’Hara wrote his poem in 1847 to honor Kentucky volunteers who died in the imperialistic war that took Texas and California from Mexico. For the poet to complain about “the vengeful blood of Spain,” therefore, sticks in the craw. The best parts of “Bivouac for the Dead,” however, focus on how the dead are “free from anguish now.” I’m pretty sure that the poem was inspired in part by Sir Walter Scott’s “Soldier Rest”:
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more:
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armor’s clang, or war-steed champing,
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan, or squadron tramping.
Here’s “Bivouac for the Dead” in its entirety:
Bivouac of the Dead
By Theodore O’Hara
The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on life’s parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.No rumor of the foe’s advance
Now swells upon the wind;
Nor troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow’s strife
The warrior’s dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.Their shriveled swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed,
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud.
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And the proud forms, by battle gashed
Are free from anguish now.The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle’s stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout, are past;
Nor war’s wild note nor glory’s peal
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that nevermore may feel
The rapture of the fight.Like the fierce northern hurricane
That sweeps the great plateau,
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain,
Came down the serried foe,
Who heard the thunder of the fray
Break o’er the field beneath,
Knew well the watchword of that day
Was “Victory or death!”Long had the doubtful conflict raged
O’er all that stricken plain,
For never fiercer fight had waged
The vengeful blood of Spain;
And still the storm of battle blew,
Still swelled the gory tide;
Not long, our stout old chieftain knew,
Such odds his strength could bide.Twas in that hour his stern command
Called to a martyr’s grave
The flower of his beloved land,
The nation’s flag to save.
By rivers of their father’s gore
His first-born laurels grew,
And well he deemed the sons would pour
Their lives for glory too.For many a mother’s breath has swept
O’er Angostura’s plain —
And long the pitying sky has wept
Above its moldered slain.
The raven’s scream, or eagle’s flight,
Or shepherd’s pensive lay,
Alone awakes each sullen height
That frowned o’er that dread fray.Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground
Ye must not slumber there,
Where stranger steps and tongues resound
Along the heedless air.
Your own proud land’s heroic soil
Shall be your fitter grave;
She claims from war his richest spoil —
The ashes of her brave.Thus ‘neath their parent turf they rest,
Far from the gory field,
Borne to a Spartan mother’s breast
On many a bloody shield;
The sunshine of their native sky
Smiles sadly on them here,
And kindred eyes and hearts watch by
The heroes sepulcher.Rest on embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood ye gave;
No impious footstep shall here tread
The herbage of your grave;
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While fame her records keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where Valor proudly sleeps.
Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanquished ago has flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight,
Nor Time’s remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of glory’s light
That gilds your deathless tomb
