Commemoration

“ The great works of commemoration are all monuments of boasting. By the grandiloquent hieroglyphs on palaces and pyramids and by the extolling hymns that he orders to be sung in his praise, the exultant hero endeavours to win from future admirers a meed of praise which shall quench his unsatisfied thirst for glorification. ”

“ Let it be, then, our present occupation to inquire and endeavor to ascertain the causes first put in operation at the period of our commemoration, and already productive of such magnificent effects; to examine with reiterated care and minute attention the characters of those men who gave the first impulse to a new series of events in the history of the world; to applaud and emulate those qualities of their minds which we shall find deserving of our admiration ”

“ In every Mass that is said the long year round on each of her myriad altars, a solemn commemoration is made for the Dead immediately after the Elevation of the Sacred Host, the great Atoning Sacrifice of the New Law ”

“ And when the man who hath been wont to celebrate the commemoration of one of the martyrs, or one of the righteous, dieth, that martyr or that righteous man shall come before our Lord Christ, and he shall say unto Him, ‘O my Lord and God, give me this soul, for it was wont to celebrate my commemoration when upon earth’ ”

“ But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having efficacy at all; as desirable observances, under whose action we should put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the heart. As soon as we see them acquiesced in, with this dutiful submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are already empty and dead. An expedient commemoration, deliberately maintained on utilitarian principles, for the sake of warming cold affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this mechanical and sceptical age. ”

“ Be strong, O Theodore, behold the time of the hours of thy fight hath drawn nigh, and many signs and wonders shall appear in the place where thy body is laid. And behold, our Lord Jesus Christ promiseth thee a righteous promise, and saith unto thee. ‘All those who shall celebrate thy commemoration, or fill the hungry with good, or give alms on the day of thy commemoration, or give drink to the thirsty, or shall give an offering or incense, or a book to the church in thy name, I will erase their sins from the roll, and they shall never see punishment. ”

“ For it had been the Commemoration week, when the feminine element puts in a strong appearance in Oxford, and for a few days in the year enlivens the old grey colleges with pretty pictures of beauty and fashion, and brightens up the rooms of happy undergraduates, of learned tutors, of stately dons, and miserable Fellows, whose tantalising lot it is to look and admire, but not to marry, under pain of resigning their incomes. ”

“ This can be seen from his words "Fasting in not practiced over a communal commemoration." On the other hand, our teacher the Rema writes as follows: "The custom is not to fast at all, even on the anniversary of the death of one's father or mother." ”

“ As a colourist in words, when he happens not to overdo the impression, his art often seems masterly. Yet if we look closely, even in the much lauded “Commemoration Ode,” his technique is seldom if ever inevitable. His prose is stylistically more continuous than his verse, owing to his experience as an editor. He healed others; himself he could heal at least partially. But even as a prose writer, in spite of his studies in the history of literature, he did not reach the point where science and the understanding are seen to be in harmony with poetry and the imagination. ”

“ So, poor Esau made a clean breast of it, and told his father everything—what he had done at Woodstock, and how Kelly had driven him back to College, and put him to bed.
"Let it be a warning to you, Tom, never to get tipsy again," said his father. "If you acquire tippling habits, you will lose what will be worth more to you than a whisker." The son promised amendment, and they sat down to breakfast; after which, Blatherwyck shaved off his other pet whisker, and appeared at the Commemoration festivities, looking so altered that his friends scarcely recognized him. ”

“ If we commemorate, let us commemorate by a memorial which arrests and attracts the eye, is long and gratefully remembered, and by an inscription which touches the heart, and does not merely merge a man among the possessors of all human gifts and virtues. ”

“ Years they had marked for the joys of the brave,
Years they must waste in the sloth of the grave.
All the bright laurels that promised to bloom
Fell to the earth when they went to the tomb.
Give them the meed they have won in the past;
Give them the honors their merits forecast;
Give them the chaplets they won in the strife;
Give them the laurels they lost with their life.
Cover them over—yes, cover them over—
Parent and husband and brother and lover;
Crown in your heart these dead heroes of ours,
And cover them over with beautiful flowers! ”

“ He blesses you every day. Look around—you, too, have got your tokens set up as a memorial unto you for ever. Look at your houses, they are memorials to you of what God has brought you into. Look at your children, every one of them is a little mark-stone or memorial of God's goodness to you. Look at your health, your good strong arms. ”

“ What I hope we shall do is to take careful thought where our memorials shall be set, so that they may be most constantly and plainly seen; and then how they may best fulfil their purpose, which is to remind us first, and next to kindle emotion and imagination. We have an ugly habit of combining, if we can, local utility with a memorial, as in the well-known story of the benevolent clergyman who read out the announcement of the death of a great statesman and added, ‘That is just what we wanted! ”

“ Each of those names in the table is the memorial—perhaps the only memorial—of a human heart that once lived and loved; a heart that kept its steady pulsations through some certain period of time, and then ceased to beat and mouldered into dust. Each of those names is the memorial of an individual human life that had its joys and sorrows, its cares and burthens, its affections and hopes, its conflicts and achievements, its opportunities wasted or improved, and its hour of death. ”

“ The whitened locks of these men point to a day in the near future when the members of the association will hold their last banquet, when there will be no member left to decorate the graves of the departed, but around their memory long will cluster recollections of patriotic work and good citizenship, and those now upon life’s stage, and those yet to come, with pride will study their history and place upon their graves flowers, emblematic of love and veneration. ”

“ Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and maintained individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come, than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war. ”

“ She sees the dying look, the parting tear,
That sought with anxious tenderness to save
That dear memorial from the closing grave:
He clasps the object of his love's last care,
And vows for him the load of life to bear; 130
To rear the blossom of a faded flower,
And bid remembrance sooth each ling'ring hour.
He journey'd o'er a dreary length of way,
To plains where freedom shed her hallow'd ray ”

“ As the world swings through the constellations year after year, I want the memory, I want the patriotic memory of this country to sit by the grave of every Union soldier, and, while her eyes are filled with tears, to crown him again and again with the crown of everlasting honor. ”

“ We keep Memorial Day.
They are sleeping in the valleys, they are sleeping neath the sea,
They are sleeping by the thousands till the royal reveille;
Let us know them, let us name them, let us honor one and all. ”

“ Memorial Day The finest tribute we can pay Unto our hero dead to-day, Is not a rose wreath, white and red, In memory of the blood they shed; It is to stand beside each mound, Each couch of consecrated ground, And pledge ourselves as warriors true Unto the work they died to do. ”

“ Imagine yourself in a country church, the sole visitor in the ghostly silence and the solemn twilight, with spectres all around you in the memorials of the dead and memories of the living, and then fancy the organist silently stealing, also alone, to the organ, and giving out to the evening air some beautifully solemn anthem with all the sadness of death, and none of the exultant joy of resurrection, and then you will get some faint idea of the pent-up emotion which filled every sympathetic heart in the great assembly as the Old Man finally came to the closing words of his great speech. ”

“ To these simple tokens which Nature has preserved, it might be fitting and well, were some more enduring memorial added of that pious, patient, and high-hearted race, from whom some of the most illustrious names in different sections of our country, trace their descent with pleasure and with pride. ”

“ The halo which around you shines
Shall, as the years go by.
Add luster to the deeds which in
Our memories fondly lie.
We deck your graves with flowers today,
O comrades brave and true!
In token of the love we bear,
Our offerings round we strew. ”

“ O'er these monuments in vigil Cloudless the sun flames and glows In the wind for funeral torches,— And the violet, and the rose, And the grape, the fig, the olive, Are the emblems fit of grieving; 'T is, in fact, a cemetery To strike envy in the living. ”

“ For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of men. ”

“ Our dead are not forgotten. The custom of strewing flowers on the graves of the dead soldiers, in the cemeteries of the North and South, has taken a deep hold upon the hearts of the people, and yearly the beautiful ceremony is faithfully observed, Thousands wend their way to the resting-places of the dead and cover the green mounds with those sweet emblems of remembrance and love. ”

“ A similar feeling of pride at the completion of a great career is expressed in the memorial lines which he composed to be placed under his bust after death,—“Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.” ”

“ Beloved by the Army, honoured by his Sovereign, and respected by his country, he has terminated a life devoted to her service by a glorious death, leaving his name as a memorial, an example, and an excitement to those who shall follow him in the path of honour, and it is from his country alone that his memory can receive the tribute which is its due. ”

“ On Memorial Day we honor the final resting places of the more than one million men and women who sacrificed their lives for our Nation, by decorating their graves with the stars and stripes, as generations have done since 1868. ”

“ As we look upon America's public memorials, we also remember the unseen tributes that dwell in homes and hearts across the country-the personal mementos and memories treasured by mothers who have lost a child in military service. ”

“ If you have engraven on your heart my often iterated admonitions and the favour of the Divine blessing invoked upon you,—to which the truth of God may add its seal, as you truly purpose to continue in the ways of God,—what need is there of a memorial on paper? ”

“ More than a generation has passed since the great Civil War desolated our fair land. The people of to-day have little cause to recall its sufferings and horrors.
How dear to the hearts of the American people are the familiar ceremonies of Memorial Day! What more impressive object lesson could our children have than to see the gray-haired veterans marching with thinner ranks and more faltering steps, on this sacred anniversary! ”

“ Vanity and pride have been thy ruin. But now, that a memorial may remain of the service which thou didst render unto me, your crowns of gold shall be changed into crowns of feathers, that ye may walk unharmed upon the earth. ”

“ Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake shall cherish its honored register; and till the mountains are worn out and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs and the springs forget to gush and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with reverent honors which are inscribed upon the book of National Remembrance. ”

“ It is good to write a memorial of the affliction, and of the frame of our hearts under it,—to keep a record of the thoughts we had of things when we were sick, the affections that were then working in us,—to write a memorial of the mercies of a sick bed, and of our release from it, that they may never be forgotten,—to write a thanksgiving to God, write a sure covenant with him, and seal it,—to give it under our hands that we will never return again to folly. ”

“ The Burial of their Dead is perform'd with a great deal of Ceremony, in which one Nation differs, in some few Circumstances, from another, yet not so much but we may, by a general Relation, pretty nearly account for them all. ”

“ Memorial, in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C., has been described as “an idealization complete and absolute, the rendering of a simple, natural fact—a woman in grief—yet with such deep and embracing comprehension that the individual is magnified into a type.” ”

“ Call up from their graves the departed worthies of their own day, the robed and transfigured memorials of distant times; let the long line of the revered dead pass in imagination before you, and as they pass, read their titles. The difference between a smile and a tear, between martyrdom and a triumph, between a smile of joy and a pang of agony, between a feast and a fast, is not greater than the difference in model and standard of character in those whom we agree in calling religious men. ”