Memorial

“ Are, then, the sculptured urn and storied monument nothing more than symbols of family pride? Is all I see around me a memorial of the living more than of the dead, an empty show of sorrow, which thus vaunts itself in mournful pageant and funeral parade? Is it indeed true, as some have said, that the simple wild flower which springs spontaneously upon the grave, and the rose which the hand of affection plants there, are fitter objects wherewith to adorn the narrow house? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath his brows.
"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."
"We say nothing because we know nothing." ”

“ In these sweet solitudes the morning passes quickly, and in the afternoon we go to the cemetery, which is about three miles from the town, to witness the decoration of the soldiers’ graves—for it is Memorial Day—the one day set apart in every year now and for all time for people to come to do honour to the dead who fell in the lost cause; nay, for the dead who fell on either side. Streams of people crowd the highways and byways, all flowing in one direction, and all mass together at the wide-open gates of the cemetery. ”

“ The paved way that runs on for three miles is worn and broken, the grass comes up between the blocks, the bridges are falling into disrepair, but these things are trifles in the face of the amphitheatre set among the eternal hills, the blue sky and the sunshine, these are a memorial here, a memorial that makes the work of men's hands but a small thing. ”

“ Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.'
Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 10
Once known to men as pious, learnèd, just,
And one memorial pile that dares to last:
But Memory greets with reverential kiss
No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this,
Touched by that modest glory as it past,
O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed
These hundred years its monumental shade. ”

“ In another place I discovered a more solemn memorial of mankind—a grave, with the remains of a mahogany cross at its head. Who lay interred there? Had he, or she, been earthed up in their last home by the survivor whose bones were scattered on the cliff, which, perhaps, he was daily in the habit of climbing to gaze on the silent sea for a passing sail, even as I now daily climbed it, and gazed hopelessly? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ To wander around the Poets' Corner along the echoing aisles, and stand in front of each memorial and read off the few cold lines that seem a mockery to regard as a record of some mighty intellect, serve only to awaken the imagination and to recall their sad biographies read at one time or another. ”

“ It is a cruel addition to an orphan's lot, to consign to the tomb even the memory of the dead. We refer not to the indecent and revolting haste with which every memorial of the deceased is swept into oblivion by those who, studious of new relations, are faithful only to forget. ”

“ But when outward danger had been safely passed, and nothing but a feeling of perfect security could naturally be realized, the object of this memorial became sensibly alive to the impressiveness of the solemn sentiment of our Church’s funeral service—“In the midst of life we are in death!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ What we may desire is that the memorial, whatever it is, of this great and heroic trial through which we are passing, should grow up out of the minds of the inhabitants of a city or a town, and should be made by the hands of inhabitants as well. ”

“ It may be true that we mount on our dead selves to higher things, but it is well to hold little Memorial Days now and then, and on the graves of our dead, especially [251] of those who died young in the flower of innocence, to leave a peppermint, as the soldiers leave on the grave of Miss Emily a print flag and a basket of geraniums. A cemetery need not be a mournful place. ”

“ 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! ”

“ This was an object which answered perfectly to the definition of a War Memorial: a useless work dedicated to God and carved with knops. One lich-gate, it was true, already existed. But nothing would be easier than to make a second entrance into the churchyard; and a second entrance would need a second gate. Other suggestions had been made. Stained-glass windows, a monument of marble. Both these were admirable, especially the latter. It was high time that the War Memorial was erected. It might soon be too late. At any moment, like a thief in the night, God might come. ”

“ Gratification of a certain kind may, it is true, be derived from the contemplation of a memorial of bygone times, in the associations that so busily crowd the fancy as it endeavours to penetrate into the obscure Past, and to identify itself in imaginary existence with the scenes and actors of a distant age. ”

“ On either side of the chamber stand a few memorial statues,—real works of art,—each one of them keeping alive the memory of some one who in his life was either good or great. 156Many of the marble slabs in the sides and floor of the temple bear in plain, sunken letters, a name and two dates. Behind or beneath them are niches containing urns where rest the pure white ashes of the beloved dead. On a simple dais in the middle of the room lays the body of our beloved friend. ”

“ Armory from its earliest introduction has had great memorial use, and when a monument or hatchment is put up to a man it has been usual, prior to these utilitarian days of funeral reform, to memorialise all the wives he has been possessed of. ”

“ There is in our hearts an innate reverence for the burial-place; we tread by instinct lightly over the sleeping-places of the dead, and look with silent awe upon their tombs. The feeling being part of our humanity, we might suppose it to be universal, and be apt to conclude that, in our more primitive churchyards at least, we should find some effort to preserve the whole or a large proportion of the memorials which are there dedicated to departed merit, hallowed by love and made sacred by sorrow. ”

“ In many of our churches and public buildings are to be found numerous memorial brasses which possess undoubted interest for the collector of military curios. These memorials of the dead largely fall into two classes: those which are let into floors, and those which are fixed to walls. The former class, as a rule, are of some antiquity, are memorials to individuals rather than to groups of soldiers, and are to be found almost entirely in churches. ”

“ Moreover, in his last will he expressed a wish that a memorial should be engraved on his tombstone, how that it was his desire that the faithful on earth should continue in his place to offer up their suffrages for those holy souls. ”

“ Such, precisely, is this Poem, and such the experience of this Poet. As long as "the mourners go about the streets," or assemble in their crowds, blackening the silent braes on their way to the country churchyard—as long as the grass of the grave murmurs out its moral in the western wind, and the sunshine seems to sadden as it shines upon the memorials and monuments of the dead—so long shall men read the The Grave, and turn with pensive joy and tearful gratitude to the memory of its poet. ”

“ The effect of the whole is exceedingly beautiful, chaste, and saddening. The monument is kept carefully covered with clean white handkerchiefs, except when the family is present, when it is uncovered, until their departure. Before I was admitted to view this beautiful memorial, I had heard something of the story which it illustrates, and I inquired further of the sexton respecting it. ”

“ Whether these colossal memorials were temples for tombs of great men, surrounded as they are by three hundred barrows in the neighbourhood, they are marvellous in the skill of their workmanship, and they testify to a past which is still pitifully speechless and yet, with all its barbaric attributes, contains the embryonic characteristics of our modern existence to-day. ”

“ With these memorials they get together and stay their minds on their ideals. Our memorials, if we as a people are sound in thought and heart, have as their nucleus the best of our past selves and are filled out by our best civic aspirations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has all been full of suggestive life and interest. We have kept all the Memorial Days, and followed out its principles and precepts.” At their Longfellow memorial the circle kindly opened their doors to their friends, hoping by this means to extend the field of C. L. S. C. work in the town. ”

“ The monuments, tablets, memorials which are strewn with flowers and bathed with grateful tears, have often tribute that should be partly given to the double hero who bears on his bruised and broken body the torture of daily sacrifice for his country. ”

“ And on this memorial day we shall fall short of our duty if we content ourselves with praising the dead or complimenting the living and fail to make preparations for those responsibilities which present times and present conditions impose upon us. ”

“ But then the only reason why the name Memorials or Monuments is given to those sepulchres of the dead which become specially distinguished, is that they recall to memory, and by putting in mind cause us to think of, them who by death are withdrawn from the eyes of the living, that they may not by forgetfulness be also withdrawn from men’s hearts. ”

“ The cell, the bed-place, the lines traced on the rocks, the inscription of the year in which he hewed his habitation out of them, are all the memorials that remain of a man, whose strange and striking story might worthily adorn the pages of a tragic yet glorious history which is still unwritten—the history of the martyrs of knowledge in humble life! ”

“ And beautiful exceedingly are those beloved memorials—the silken locks of childhood, the treasured tresses of riper years, or the silver gray of reverend old age—which, in the eyes of sorrowing friends, are the dearest [7] relics of the loved ones whose angel spirits beyond the tomb have passed through death into eternity.
“There seems a love in hair, though it be dead:
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread
Of our frail plant—a blossom from the tree
Surviving the proud trunk; as if it said,
Patience and Gentleness in Power. ”

“ It is needless to say that here, as elsewhere, travellers have left by hundreds lasting memorials of their brutality, in the shape of names and dates drawn, painted, scratched, and cut on every wall and column, so that the eye finds no rest from them. ”