Dead March

“ This beginning of March always brings with it many sad recollections, the date—always nearing March 4—of all our greatest anxieties, at Pau, Piazza di Spagna, Via Babuino, Via Gregoriana. It is almost as incredible to me now as a year and a half ago to feel that it is all over—the agony of suspense so often endured, and that life is now a dead calm without either sunshine or storm to look forward to. ”

“ Headed with the heavily white-draped standards of the Army from all the city corps, at the slow march, and followed by the first section of the massed bands playing the “Dead March,” the cortege presented a melancholy and impressive sight. The funeral cars, draped heavily with crepe and purple, and each drawn by four black horses caparisoned with black and purple trappings, and each led by an attendant, were preceded by two draped cars heavily laden with the beautiful floral tributes. ”

“ After a march of all day, under a burning sun, and all night through a tempest of wind and rain, drenched, exhausted, hungry, they wheeled into line, without a murmur for that awful charge, that dance of death, the struggle against hopeless odds, and the shattered remnants were hurled back as from the mouth of hell, leaving the dead bodies of their young commander and his noble followers to be buried in a common grave. ”

“ And through this dark valley did the sad note of the funeral dirge sound and with great sobbing and wailing did the mourners march beside the bier whereon lay the dead son of the widow. Thus did the march of Life and the march of Death make toward each other and the way was wide enough but for one of them to pass. On, on they marched, the one passing to the hilltop and blue sky, the other to the bat-ridden place of corruption. When they did meet, on the bier Jesus placed his hand—a hand throbbing with the life of a strong man. ”

“ The merchant ships lowered their colours, and the men stood up respectfully with their hats off, as the procession moved slowly to the landing-place. The coffin was borne to the burial-ground by the crew of the barge, followed by Mr Falcon as chief mourner, all the officers of the ship who could be spared, one hundred of the seamen walking two and two, and the marines with their arms reversed. The cortege was joined by the army officers, while the troops lined the streets, and the bands played the Dead March. ”

“ It ravaged Poland as well and wreaked its fiendish will on wounded soldiers on the battlefields.
But Schrecklichkeit is dead. Belgium and France have shown that murder and rape and arson cannot destroy liberty nor check the indomitable ambitions of the free peoples of earth.
[152] The lesson to Germany was taught at a terrible cost to humanity, but it was taught in a fashion that nations hereafter who shall dream of emulating the Hun will know in advance that frightfulness serves no end except to feed the lust for destruction that exists only in the most debased and brutish of men. ”

“ The twenty-fifth of March is the period assigned by the Christian world generally for the resurrection of Christ, though some Christian writers have assigned other dates for this event. They all agree, however, that Christ rose from the dead, and that this occurred three days after the entombment. Bishop Theophilus of Cesarea remarks, relative to this event, "Since the birth of Christ is celebrated on the twenty-fifth of December,.... ”

“ Whoever has a touch of madness to lend him sympathy with the March hare likes the bewildering days through which he scampers to vanish at the edge of April. Rebellious, whitening ponds and wind-bent trees; defiant buds and all the kindled life of marsh, hill, and woodland, set free once more from cold, but not from dread—hear at the coming of the mighty month their promise of release. But only to comrades who will run with him through muddy lanes and tangled brush does he show his treasures: forest creatures sped like the couriers, petals lifted like the banners, of life resurgent. ”

“ Where the snow-fairies are again designing
Another robe for Nature's barren breast.
MARCH.
Come walk a mile with me—'Tis March and windy,
And Winter's dying breath comes hard and fast,
And hark!—the storm, like death-bells of a Sunday,
Tolls the sad knell upon the icy blast;
Louder and louder now the winds are wailing,
Faster and faster wings the frozen snow,
Darker and darker the cold clouds are sailing,
As the March-storm goes hurrying to and fro. ”

“ Come now, like Pan's old crew we'll dance and sing, Or Oberon's, for hill and valley ring To March's bugle horn—earth's blood is stirred."
March has indeed come; boisterous, wild, terrible, in many ways, but lovely in others. There is a freshness in the air that rouses glad thoughts within the breast, vague thoughts, sweet, as undefinable, and that yet mean life. The whole land seems to have sprung up from a long slumber, and to be looking with wide happy eyes upon the fresh marvels Nature is preparing for it. ”

“ Often we had chickens, and a cow would be milked by some unknown "fairy," and the contents of the pail deposited in our kitchen before the sun was up in the morning.
March, which brought its bitter winds to our Northern hills, came to us with now and then a clear sunny day—a promise of the coming spring. With every streak of golden light came a wild throbbing at my heart, for battles would be fought again—the contending forces only waited for the work of nature's hand to begin again the carnival of death. ”

“ Fearful of losing the chance of liberty, these unfortunate persons, wasted by sickness, set out on their march that very night. There were old men amongst them, worn down by sufferings as well as by years, besides women and children of the tenderest age. That night they marched three or four leagues through the snow, in the most intense frost.’
This first march cost the lives of a hundred and fifty of them. ”

“ I read a deeper meaning in my garden book as the boys' human calendar runs parallel with it, and I can see month by month and day by day that it is truly the touch of Nature that makes kindred of us all—the throb of the human heart and not the touch of learning or the arts.
Everything grows restless as spring comes on—animate, and what is called inanimate, nature. March is the trying month of indecision, the tug-of-war between winter and spring, pulling us first one way and then the other, the victory often being, until the final moment, on the side of winter. ”

“ And I shall sleep—and on thy side,
As ages after ages glide,
Children their early sports shall try,
And pass to hoary age and die.
But thou, unchanged from year to year,
Gayly shalt play and glitter here;
Amid young flowers and tender grass
Thy endless infancy shall pass;
And, singing down thy narrow glen,
Shalt mock the fading race of men.
MARCH. The stormy March is come at last,
With wind, and cloud, and changing skies;
I hear the rushing of the blast,
That through the snowy valley flies.
Ah, passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee ”

“ On the 29th of March, just as the days were drawing in and becoming fatally short from a climbing point of view, the bad weather broke, and in its stead reigned a succession of still, bright days, with a tinge of cold in the clear air that set the blood racing, and made mere living a matter of delight. ”

“ Had taught his soldier-heart to sigh:—
SONG. March! nor heed those arms that hold thee,
Tho' so fondly close they come;
Closer still will they enfold thee
When thou bring'st fresh laurels home.
Dost thou dote on woman's brow?
Dost thou live but in her breath?
March!—one hour of victory now
Wins thee woman's smile till death.
Oh what bliss when war is over
Beauty's long-missed smile to meet. ”

“ The sun crosses the line; the days grow a minute longer: spring will come by and by. But by what cruel irony was the month of March ever called spring?—March, which piles snow-storms and wind-storms on backs almost broken by endurance. The long agony of March and April is the breaking-point with many a delicate person who has borne pretty well the regular winter. ”

“ It was a cold night in March, cloudy and blowing. Every human body was turned into a fortress for bare defence of life. There was no snow on the ground, but it seemed as if there must be snow everywhere else. ”

“ March in Marbridge used to mean violets and daffodils, tender green shoots and balmy middays. March here means days of pale clean light and great sweeping wind which chased grey clouds across a steely sky, and stirred the lust for fight and freedom in men's minds and set them longing to be up and away and at battle with the world or the elements. ”

“ His frost, and still the sky sheds snow and sleet;
Yet ever, when the sun looks forth again,
The flowers smile up to him from their low seats.
Well hast thou borne the bleak March day of life.
Its storms and its keen winds to thee have been
Most kindly tempered, and through all its gloom
There has been warmth and sunshine in thy heart;
The griefs of life to thee have been like snows,
That light upon the fields in early spring,
Making them greener. ”

“ It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. ”

“ From both a human and humane point of view, it was most fortunate to have found this spring, and with it a respite, not only from our unceasing march, but from the terrible pressure on our minds of our perilous situation; for the painful fact was ever before us, that even after struggling bravely through hundreds of miles of frightful scrubs, we might die like dogs in the desert at last, unheard of and unknown. ”

“ Every word was a stab in March's heart, so weakly tender to his own; his wife's tears, after so much experience of the comparative lightness of the griefs that weep themselves out in women, always seemed wrung from his own soul; if his children suffered in the least through him, he felt like a murderer. ”

“ To die upon the field of battle, amidst the shouts of victory, in presence of an admiring throng, surrounded by the badges of honor and respect, bequeathing to history a celebrated name, may merit the ambition of the world ”

“ Death is the one expectation that never fails to arrive. But it comes always as a new thing, an unheard-of thing, a miracle. It is the commonest word in the lexicon, yet it always reads as a hapax legomenon. It is like spring, though so unlike. For who ever believed that May would emerge from March this year? And who ever remembers that violets were suddenly abroad on the hills last April, too?
William Rudd ought to have known better. ”

“ March, as we all know, is the eldest daughter of Winter, and bitterly like her grim sire. The snow which has melted from the uplands lingers in the valleys; the storms, and the cloudy skies, and the rushing blasts mark the sullen retreat of winter ”

“ The year 1408 brought another sanguinary struggle in favour of March’s title, headed by the old white-haired sinner Northumberland, who fell in his attempt, at the battle of Bramham Moor, on the 29th of February. He had armed in the cause of Rome, which he hoped to induce March to espouse yet more warmly than Henry the Fourth. He probably did not know the boy personally, and imagined him the counterpart of his gallant, fervent father. He was as far from it as possible. Nothing on earth would have induced March to espouse any cause warmly. ”

“ On 20th February a rising wind drove before it snow, fine powdered and dry as March dust, and with the waxing gale, and cold "intense to a degree never before remembered," the drift quickly became a swirling blizzard which no living thing could face. ”

“ March shewed some pale gleams of spring, but April was one of the coldest and dreariest in the memory of living man. The old earth in sympathy with the great struggle that was devastating and searing her, seemed to be withholding leaf and flower, and forbidding the sun to woo her. ”

“ It was a day late on in March—one of those days not unfrequent at that season, especially in the south and west—a day that seems filled with a promise of coming summer—a day in which all nature rejoices, which stirs the pulses and sets the blood coursing joyously, and fills the air with subtle promises of life and hope. ”

“ March, march, quoth I, the word straight give,
let’s lose no time, but leave her:
That Giant upon air will live,
and hold it out for ever.
To such a place our camp remove,
as will no siege abide;
I hate a fool that starves her love,
only to feed her pride. ”

“ But our heaviest snow-storms and most savage cold are often reserved for March; and to many an invalid it has given the final thrust: it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. But after March, in New England, comes April, utterly untrustworthy, and with no assured out-door life for a delicate person. ”

“ To-day's march does not secure to-morrow's rest, but, however footsore and weary, we have to move on, like some child dragged along by a careless nurse. It expresses the awful crumbling away of life beneath us. The road has an end, and each step takes us nearer to it. The numbers that face us on the milestones slowly and surely decrease; we pass the last and on we go, tramp, tramp, and we cannot stop till we reach the narrow chamber, cold and dark, where, at any rate, we have got the long march over. ”

“ A sable hearse bestrewn with snow is bearing a dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh how dreary is a burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor child!
Evening—the early eve of December—begins to spread its deepening veil over the comfortless scene. The firelight gradually brightens and throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber, but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. ”