A view of Washington DC across the Potomac from Arlington National Cemetery
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s visit to Arlington National Cemetery was a substitute for what we had thought we would be doing.\u00a0 Plans changed.\u00a0 But it was both interesting and meaningful.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arlington is replete with former presidents, generals, admirals, justices of the Supreme Court, senators, secretaries of State and Defense, and other dignitaries.\u00a0 It\u2019s a class on American history.\u00a0 But it also, iconically, features row after row after row of virtually identical white headstones that mark the final earthly resting place of the bodies of thousands of ordinary sailors, soldiers, and airmen, many of whom died very young, victims of human evil.\u00a0 People whose stories are unknown to most of us, except that those stories were cut tragically short.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This sorrowful fact has had me thinking, as I often do at Easter, of A. E. Housman, the Cambridge classicist and important second-tier English poet who is a personal favorite of mine.\u00a0 (I\u2019ve even made the pilgrimage to his burial place at Ludlow, in Shropshire.)\u00a0 Specifically, I\u2019ve been remembering his poem \u201cTo an Athlete Dying Young\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The time you won your town the race<\/span><\/div>\nWe chaired you through the market-place;<\/span><\/div>\nMan and boy stood cheering by,<\/span><\/div>\nAnd home we brought you shoulder-high.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Today, the road all runners come,<\/span><\/div>\nShoulder-high we bring you home,<\/span><\/div>\nAnd set you at your threshold down,<\/span><\/div>\nTownsman of a stiller town.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Smart lad, to slip betimes away<\/span><\/div>\nFrom fields where glory does not stay,<\/span><\/div>\nAnd early though the laurel grows<\/span><\/div>\nIt withers quicker than the rose.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Eyes the shady night has shut<\/span><\/div>\nCannot see the record cut,<\/span><\/div>\nAnd silence sounds no worse than cheers<\/span><\/div>\nAfter earth has stopped the ears.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Now you will not swell the rout<\/span><\/div>\nOf lads that wore their honours out,<\/span><\/div>\nRunners whom renown outran<\/span><\/div>\nAnd the name died before the man.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
So set, before its echoes fade,<\/span><\/div>\nThe fleet foot on the sill of shade,<\/span><\/div>\nAnd hold to the low lintel up<\/span><\/div>\nThe still-defended challenge-cup.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
And round that early-laurelled head<\/span><\/div>\nWill flock to gaze the strengthless dead,<\/span><\/div>\nAnd find unwithered on its curls<\/span><\/div>\nThe garland briefer than a girl\u2019s.<\/span><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, of course, his \u201cEaster Hymn\u201d is also very relevant to Arlington.\u00a0 You may perhaps recall \u2014 I\u2019ve mentioned it several times here \u2014 that Housman was an agnostic, but a yearning one.\u00a0 And his \u201cHymn\u201d expresses that yearning quite powerfully.\u00a0 It\u2019s address to Christ:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,<\/span>
\nYou sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,<\/span>
\nNor even in dreams behold how dark and bright<\/span>
\nAscends in smoke and fire by day and night<\/span>
\nThe hate you died to quench and could but fan,<\/span>
\nSleep well and see no morning, son of man.<\/span><\/p>\nBut if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,<\/span>
\nAt the right hand of majesty on high<\/span>
\nYou sit, and sitting so remember yet<\/span>
\nYour tears, your agony and bloody sweat,<\/span>
\nYour cross and passion and the life you gave,<\/span>
\nBow hither out of heaven and see and save.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Washington DC<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s visit to Arlington National Cemetery was a substitute for what we had thought we would be doing.\u00a0 Plans changed.\u00a0 But it was both interesting and meaningful. \u00a0 Arlington is replete with former presidents, generals, admirals, justices of the Supreme Court, senators, secretaries of State and Defense, and other dignitaries.\u00a0 It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1375,27128,27131,27125,4632,4630,27122,21284,21287],"class_list":["post-93576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-e-housman","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-national-cemetery","tag-dying-young","tag-easter-hymn","tag-housman","tag-to-an-athlete","tag-washington-d-c","tag-washington-dc"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>