Today marks the eightieth anniversary of Victory over Japan Day (VJ-Day). On this day, it seems appropriate to remember the epitaph that is carved on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the cemetery at Kohima:
When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.
John Maxwell Edmonds (21st January 1875 – 18th March 1958) was an English classicist, poet and dramatist and is credited with writing this epitaph in 1918. It was inspired by an epigram written by the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos to the fallen at the Battle of Thermopylae:
Tell them in Lacedaemon, passer-by
That here, obedient to their word, we lie.
Lest we forget.
ReplyDeleteConrad Kinch,
DeleteAmen to that.
All the best,
Bob
May I suggest a couple of memorable epitaphs, the first in respect of Alexander the Great: “A tomb now suffices him for whom the world was not enough”
ReplyDeleteAnd then some words from the very first service of Nine Lessons and Carols (Eric Milner-White, 1918; who had been an Army Chaplain in the Great War): “…let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom we for evermore are one.” (The whole prayer of which this is the most moving part, has been described as the most powerful to have been written since the Prayer Book.)
Toby E,
DeleteThanks for the excellent suggestions for suitable epitaphs. I have a vague memory of both; the first from my (albeit brief) foray into learning Greek at school and the second from a service I must have attended in my youth ... just before I was asked to stop attending church when I expressed doubts about the Trinity, much preferring the Unitarian point of view. (The vicar was the father of one of my school friends and was rather strict with regard to anyone who expressed doubt about the church's teachings.)
All the best,
Bob
PS. I was interested to note that Eric Milner-White served as a curate at St Mary Magdalene Church in Woolwich before the Great War. It is the church I got married in back in 1982.
Here's another: the poem "High Flight" by RCAF pilot John Gillespie Magee:
Delete"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."
The poem has often been quoted, and indeed set to music; two lines were used by President Reagan in his moving speech honouring the memory of the "Challenger" space suggtle astronauts, lost on 28 January 1986. He said:
"...There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and an historian later said, ``He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.'' Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ``slipped the surly bonds of earth'' to ``touch the face of God.''
Toby E,
DeleteI have heard the poem used at a funeral, and must admit that I don’t think that there was a dry eye by the end of it.
Whoever wrote Ronald Reagan’s speech was very good at their job. It has the right balance of gravitas and humility, and summed up the mood of the time. What makes the whole Challenger accident even more tragic than it was in the immediate aftermath was the fact that it could have been avoided.
All the best,
Bob