FOOTNOTE:
[13] By Sidney Lanier, an American musician and poet (1842-1881). From the Poems of Sidney Lanier, published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Expression: Compare this poem with the one which precedes it. Compare them both with Tennyson's "Song of the Brook" ("Fifth Reader," p. 249). Which is the most musical? Which is the best simply as a description?
Make a list of the unusual words in this last poem, and refer to the dictionary for their meaning. In what state is the Chattahoochee River? "Habersham" and "Hall" are the names of two counties in the same state.
If you have access to a library, find Southey's poem, "The Cataract of Lodore," and read it aloud.
WAR AND PEACE
I. War as the Mother of Valor and Civilization [14]
We still hear war extolled at times as the mother of valor and the prime agency in the world's advancement. By it, we are told, civilization has spread and nations have been created, slavery has been abolished and the American Union preserved. It is even held that without war human progress would have been impossible.
The answer: Men were at first savages who preyed upon each other like wild beasts, and so they developed a physical courage which they shared with the brutes. Moral courage was unknown to them. War was almost their sole occupation. Peace existed only for short periods that tribes might regain strength to resume the sacred duty of killing each other.
Advancement in civilization was impossible while war reigned. Only as wars became less frequent and long intervals of peace supervened could civilization, the mother of true heroism, take root. Civilization has advanced just as war has receded, until in our day peace has become the rule and war the exception.
Arbitration of international disputes grows more and more in favor. Successive generations of men now live and die without seeing war; and instead of the army and navy furnishing the only careers worthy of gentlemen, it is with difficulty that civilized nations can to-day obtain a sufficient supply of either officers or men.
In the past, man's only method for removing obstacles and attaining desired ends was to use brute courage. The advance of civilization has developed moral courage. We use more beneficent means than men did of old. Britain in the eighteenth century used force to prevent American independence. In more recent times she graciously grants Canada the rights denied America.
The United States also receives an award of the powers against China, and, finding it in excess of her expenditures, in the spirit of newer time, returns ten million dollars. Won by this act of justice, China devotes the sum to the education of Chinese students in the republic's universities. The greatest force is no longer that of brutal war, but the supreme force of gentlemen and generosity—the golden rule.
The pen is rapidly superseding the sword. Arbitration is banishing war. More than five hundred international disputes have already been peacefully settled. Civilization, not barbarism, is the mother of true heroism. Our lately departed poet and disciple of peace, Richard Watson Gilder, has left us the answer to the false idea that brute force employed against our fellows ranks with heroic moral courage exerted to save or serve them:—
'Twas said: "When roll of drum and battle's roar
Shall cease upon the earth, oh, then no more
The deed, the race, of heroes in the land."
But scarce that word was breathed when one small hand
Lifted victorious o'er a giant wrong
That had its victims crushed through ages long;
Some woman set her pale and quivering face,
Firm as a rock, against a man's disgrace;
A little child suffered in silence lest
His savage pain should wound a mother's breast;
Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down
And risked, in Truth's great name, the synod's frown;
A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws,
Did that which suddenly drew a world's applause;
And one to the pest his lithe young body gave
That he a thousand thousand lives might save.
On the field of carnage men lose all human instincts in the struggle to protect themselves. The true heroism inspired by moral courage prompts firemen, policemen, sailors, miners, and others to volunteer and risk their lives to save the lives of their fellowmen. Such heroism is now of everyday occurrence.
In our age there is no more reason for permitting war between civilized nations than for relaxing the reign of law within nations, which compels men to submit their personal disputes to peaceful courts, and never dreams that by so doing they will be made less heroic....
When war ceases, the sense of human brotherhood will be strengthened and "heroism" will no longer mean to kill, but only to serve or save our fellows.
II. Friendship Among Nations [15]
Let us suppose that four centuries ago some far-seeing prophet dared to predict to the duchies composing the kingdom of France that the day would come when they would no longer make war upon each other. Let us suppose him saying:—
"You will have many disputes to settle, interests to contend for, difficulties to resolve; but do you know what you will select instead of armed men, instead of cavalry, and infantry, of cannon, lances, pikes, and swords?
"You will select, instead of all this destructive array, a small box of wood, which you will term a ballot-box, and from what shall issue—what? An assembly—an assembly in which you shall all live; an assembly which shall be, as it were, the soul of all; a supreme and popular council, which shall decide, judge, resolve everything; which shall say to each, 'Here terminates your right, there commences your duty: lay down your arms!'
"And in that day you will all have one common thought, common interests, a common destiny; you will embrace each other, and recognize each other as children of the same blood and of the same race; that day you shall no longer be hostile tribes—you will be a people; you will be no longer merely Burgundy, Normandy, Brittany, Provence—you will be France!
You will no longer make appeals to war; you will do so to civilization."
If, at that period I speak of, some one had uttered these words, all men would have cried out: "What a dreamer! what a dream! How little this pretended prophet is acquainted with the human heart!" Yet time has gone on and on, and we find that this dream has been realized.
Well, then, at this moment we who are assembled here say to France, to England, to Spain, to Italy, to Russia: "A day will come, when from your hands also the arms they have grasped shall fall. A day will come, when war shall appear as impossible, and will be as impossible, between Paris and London, between St. Petersburg and Berlin, as it is now between Rouen and Amiens, between Boston and Philadelphia.
"A day will come, when you, France; you, Russia; you, Italy; you, England; you, Germany; all of you nations of the continent, shall, without losing your distinctive qualities and your glorious individuality, be blended into a superior unity, and shall constitute an European fraternity, just as Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, have been blended into France. A day will come when the only battle field shall be the market open to commerce, and the mind open to new ideas. A day will come when bullets and shells shall be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by the arbitration of a great sovereign senate.
Nor is it necessary for four hundred years to pass away for that day to come. We live in a period in which a year often suffices to do the work of a century.
Suppose that the people of Europe, instead of mistrusting each other, entertaining jealousy of each other, hating each other, become fast friends; suppose they say that before they are French or English or German they are men, and that if nations form countries, human kind forms a family. Suppose that the enormous sums spent in maintaining armies should be spent in acts of mutual confidence. Suppose that the millions that are lavished on hatred, were bestowed on love, given to peace instead of war, given to labor, to intelligence, to industry, to commerce, to navigation, to agriculture, to science, to art.
If this enormous sum were expended in this manner, know you what would happen? The face of the world would be changed. Isthmuses would be cut through. Railroads would cover the continents; the merchant navy of the globe would be increased a hundredfold. There would be nowhere barren plains nor moors nor marshes. Cities would be found where now there are only deserts. Asia would be rescued to civilization; Africa would be rescued to man; abundance would gush forth on every side, from every vein of the earth at the touch of man, like the living stream from the rock beneath the rod of Moses.
III. Soldier, Rest [16]
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
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.
Yet the lark's shrill fife may come
At the daybreak from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum,
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,
Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here's no war steed's neigh and champing,
Shouting clans, or squadrons stamping.
IV. The Soldier's Dream [17]
Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw,
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain;
At the dead of the night a sweet vision I saw,
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battle field's dreadful array,
Far, far I had roamed on a desolate track;
'Twas autumn, and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life's morning march, when my bosom was young;
I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung.
Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to part;
My little ones kissed me a thousand times o'er,
And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart.
"Stay, stay with us—rest, thou art weary and worn;"
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.
V. How Sleep the Brave [18]
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mold,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay,
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell a weeping hermit there.