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.
