95. Dirge for Two Veterans. Ralph Vaughan Williams

Our choir sang Dona Nobis Pacem as a protest at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. Vaughan Williams wrote this in the years before the Second World War. Of the six parts in it, two take their words from scripture, one from a speech delivered in the British House of Commons during the Crimean War, and three from the Civil War poetry of Walt Whitman. It's a very forceful work. This part is from Whitman. Great word-painting, as our choir director, B, would say: "And every blow of the great convulsive drums strikes me through and through" and "Two veterans, son and father, dropped together."

In fact, the combination of words and music was so powerful that I was moved almost to tears during one rehearsal. War is so abstract when you are not directly involved in it, and this music forces you to confront what it means. Now this song has an even greater significance as our nephew joins the Canadian Armed Forces.

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.



And now I must tell you about the photograph. It's a picture of the graveyard at the Carnton Plantation in Franklin, Tennessee, which was right in the middle of the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864. During the 5-hour battle, about 10,000 soldiers were killed, injured, or went missing. The plantation owners gave up their home to be used as a hospital, keeping one room for themselves. Injured soldiers filled every room, every inch of floor, stair, and veranda, and spilled out onto the grounds. The dead were buried in a farmer's field. In 1866, when the farmer wanted to reclaim his field, the owners of the Carnton plantation gave up some of their land to re-bury the 1,481 soldiers. This whole thing was retold in Robert Hicks' The Widow of the South, which I intend to read someday.