“With
souls unpurged and steadfast breath
They
supped the sacrament of death.
And
for each one, far off, apart,
Seven
swords have rent a woman’s heart.”—Canadian poet Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922),
“Marching Men,” from The Wood Carver's Wife (1922)
Remember
those lines this Memorial Day, and beyond—along with this one, from Herman Wouk’s
novel War and Remembrance: “Either
war is finished, or we are.”
(The
image accompanying this post shows a grim, agonized Kirk Douglas, knowing his men face certain death, in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. That 1957 film showed, in
less poetic terms than Ms. Pickthall’s verses, the immense, lacerating sacrifice
of soldiers in WWI—indeed, implicitly, of all wars.)
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