BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 19 He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES 1. Tell how the Battle Hymn came to be written and sung. 2. Why did God seem to be the moving force in the efforts to put down slavery? 3. Explain the first line; the second. 4. In what sense had they "builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps"? 5. What is the "righteous sentence"? 6. Interpret in your own words the "fiery gospel" in the third stanza. 7. Explain the second line in stanza four. 8. Why did the last stanza so affect the grizzled old Torpenhow? 9. What change in the wording of the refrain at the close of each stanza? 10. What is added to the meaning of the refrain with each successive stanza? 11. What is the secret of the power of this poem over the hearts of men? Father Abraham. REFERENCES KEY: Star Spangled Banner. SMITH: America. EMMETT: Dixie. Bonnie Blue Flag. When Johnnie Comes Marching Home. FINCH: The Blue and the Gray. BRYANT: The Battlefield. LONGFELLOW: The Arsenal. HOPKINSON: Hail Columbia! THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD THEODORE O'HARA HE horrors of war make us sometimes wish it were not the theme of so many poems. Few conditions of national life, however, are conducive to so elevated a spirit of patriotism as the time immediately succeeding a war carried on by participants fighting for what they rightly or wrongly judge a just cause. Theodore O'Hara, a fiery American of Irish parentage, was of a spirit whose patriotism knew no bounds. A soldier, who had performed valiant service for his country on foreign soil, and had shed his blood at her behest, he was a fitting eulogist of his dead comradesat-arms. The following poem was written in memory of the Kentucky soldiers who had been killed in the battle of Buena Vista, and whose ashes were being removed to their native state. Its stirring word pictures, its dignified and mournful melody, and its proud and profound appreciation of the valor of those whose lives had been given to their country, brought a prompt and thankful response from loyal hearts. Carved on slabs of stone and graven on tablets of bronze, stanzas of this poem have been placed by order of the government in Arlington Cemetery near Washington, and in nearly all the other national soldiers' burying grounds provided by this nation. It has become an international funeral hymn to martyred soldiers, as is shown by its having been se BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD 21 lected for an epitaph on a monument erected on a battle field of the distant Crimea. BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD The muffled drum's sad roll has beat No more on Life's parade shall meet On Fame's eternal camping ground No rumor of the foe's advance No troubled thought at midnight haunts No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms; No braying horn nor screaming fife Their shivered swords are red with rust, And plenteous funeral tears have washed. And the proud forms, by battle gashed, The neighing troop, the flashing blade, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, Like the fierce northern hurricane Long had the doubtful conflict raged Not long, our stout old chieftain knew, 'Twas in that hour his stern command His first-born laurels grew, And well he deemed the sons would pour Their lives for glory too. Full many a norther's breath has swept And long the pitying sky has wept Alone awakes each sullen height That frowned o'er that dread fray. Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground, Where stranger steps and tongues resound BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD Your own proud land's heroic soil She claims from war the richest spoil- Thus 'neath their parent turf they rest, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast The sunshine of their native sky And kindred eyes and hearts watch by Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead! Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone When many a vanished age hath flown, Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight, Shall dim one ray of holy light That gilds your deathless tomb. SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES 1. What spirit prevails in the first four stanzas? 2. To what are the next four devoted? 3. Why was the watchword "Victory or Death"? 4. Who was the stout old chieftain, line 51? 5. Where were the "rivers of their fathers' gore" shed? 23 |