Poetry Analysis: “Rouge Bouquet” by Joyce Kilmer

I post this poem in honor of Memorial Day.  I don’t think I have ever heard of the poet Joyce Kilmer.  But I stumbled across this poem and thought it fitting for a Memorial Day commemoration. 

According to Wikipedia, Kilmer was born in New Jersey, published several books of poetry, volunteered for World War I in the United States Army, and was killed by a sniper in France in July of 1918, some three and a half months before the war would end.  Though relatively forgotten today, he was a poet of some distinction in his day.  He wrote on his Catholic faith and was compared to his contemporary in England, G.K. Chesterton.  The one poem he is remembered for today is a poem called “Trees,” but frankly I thought “Rouge Bouquet” to be much better poem. 

 

Rouge Bouquet

By Joyce Kilmer

 

In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet

There is a new-made grave to-day,

Build by never a spade nor pick

Yet covered with earth ten metres thick.

There lie many fighting men,

    Dead in their youthful prime,

Never to laugh nor love again

    Nor taste the Summertime.

For Death came flying through the air

And stopped his flight at the dugout stair,

Touched his prey and left them there,

    Clay to clay.

He hid their bodies stealthily

In the soil of the land they fought to free

    And fled away.

Now over the grave abrupt and clear

    Three volleys ring;

And perhaps their brave young spirits hear

    The bugle sing:

“Go to sleep!

Go to sleep!

Slumber well where the shell screamed and fell.

Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor,

You will not need them any more.

Danger’s past;

Now at last,

Go to sleep!”

 

There is on earth no worthier grave

To hold the bodies of the brave

Than this place of pain and pride

Where they nobly fought and nobly died.

Never fear but in the skies

Saints and angels stand

Smiling with their holy eyes

    On this new-come band.

St. Michael’s sword darts through the air

And touches the aureole on his hair

As he sees them stand saluting there,

    His stalwart sons;

And Patrick, Brigid, Columkill

Rejoice that in veins of warriors still

    The Gael’s blood runs.

And up to Heaven’s doorway floats,

    From the wood called Rouge Bouquet,

A delicate cloud of buglenotes

    That softly say:

“Farewell!

Farewell!

Comrades true, born anew, peace to you!

And your memory shine like the morning-star.

Brave and dear,

Shield us here.

Farewell!”

The poem is wonderfully set to music in this video,  I really enjoyed this, and highlights the musicality of the poem.

The poem is divided into two halves.  The first half identifies the woods called Rouge Bouquet where a number of soldiers lost their lives in a battle.  The second half commemorates their sacrifice from the viewpoint of those in heaven.  Both halves end with a stream of bugle notes, endowing the melody with song lyrics.

The meter is roughly iambic, but the length of each line varies.  It has a ballad sense, coming I think from the alternating four and three feet lines.  I suspect the poem was written while Kilmer was a soldier and perhaps published posthumously without editing.  But I’m only speculating.  The poem is fine in its improvisational style.

The central image I think is the name given to the woods, Rouge Bouquet.  Rouge alludes to the red blood that is spilled, and bouquet imagines the trees of the woods as a bouquet of flowers, a bouquet that would be placed on grave sites.  So the woods become the cemetery of which the soldiers are buried.

The bugle plays two songs, one for each half of the poem.  Both are melancholic.  The first song coaxes the dead to eternal rest.

 

“Go to sleep!

Go to sleep!

Slumber well where the shell screamed and fell.

Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor,

You will not need them any more.

Danger’s past;

Now at last,

Go to sleep!”

The second song bids the fallen adieu and will be honored in our collective memory.

 

“Farewell!

Farewell!

Comrades true, born anew, peace to you!

And your memory shine like the morning-star.

Brave and dear,

Shield us here.

Farewell!”

Kilmer in the second half has St. Michael, the archangel, a sort of military angel himself, welcome the dead souls into heaven. 

I also loved this quatrain from the first half for its elegance:

 

For Death came flying through the air

And stopped his flight at the dugout stair,

Touched his prey and left them there,

    Clay to clay.

That is a nice, poetic way of saying unto dust you returned, the clay of flesh to the clay of earth. 

Perhaps the poem was apocryphal.  Joyce Kilmer himself would shortly be killed and returned to clay.

May we remember all those who have died for our country.