The Address
This address was delivered on Decoration Day (now Memorial Day) in 1876. It is considered one of the finest examples of ceremonial oratory in the American tradition — lyrical, moving, and deeply humanist in its grief.
At the Grave of Unknown Soldiers
The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation — the music of boisterous drums, the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers.
We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessing of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses — divine mingling of agony and love!
The Great Sacrifice
And some are talking with comrades and strangers, one moment laughing, the next expressing wild, strange dread lest those they love may forget the dead. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms — standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves — she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.
What They Gave
They gave to life whatever life is worth. The millions who died for this country — who lie in a thousand fields, who sleep beneath a thousand mounds — they gave not merely their years, but the years of their children, the years they might have had, the summers and autumns and winters of a whole human life.
And they gave this that the flag might still wave, that the Republic might endure, that upon this continent the experiment of self-government might not fail.
Was it worth it?
I believe it was. Not because I know — no one can know such things — but because I see this country now, imperfect as it is, struggling still toward the ideals that those men died for. I see the flag flying, and I know that it flies over a country where more people are free than were free before. It is not all that those men hoped for. It is not all that we owe to the dead. But it is something.
The Mystery of Death
I cannot speak of them without thinking of the great mystery — the mystery that stands behind every death, the question to which no philosophy has given a satisfying answer: where are they?
I do not know. No one knows. The honest answer is silence.
But I say this: whatever they were, whatever became of them, they were real. They lived, they loved, they suffered, they gave. The love they gave is not nothing, even if they are nothing. The sacrifice they made is not erased by their extinction. The good that came from their dying — if good came — belongs to the world forever.
We honor the dead not because we know they are watching. We honor them because they deserve to be honored. Because the honoring of the dead is the way we tell ourselves and our children: this is what we value, this is what we believe is worth dying for.
The Living Lesson
Let me say, in closing, what I take from this day.
I take the reminder that liberty costs. That the freedoms we have were paid for by people who are now beyond all compensation. That our obligation to them is to use those freedoms well — to build a country worth their sacrifice.
I take the reminder that human life is brief and human suffering is real, and that the greatest use of whatever time we have is to reduce suffering and increase happiness for the living.
And I take the reminder that honest grief — grief that does not hide behind comfortable mythology, grief that faces loss directly and refuses the false consolation of easy certainty — is not despair but love. It is love that has run out of its object and does not know where to go.
“Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.”
“Decoration Day” and other prose poems appear in Volume 8 of the Dresden Edition.