After I wrote about Remembrance Day, I was driven to thinking of A Farewell To Arms, the Elizabethan poem by George Peele (not the Hemingway novel which used its title.)
Where Remembrance Day is about the 'glorious dead' (and is usually filled with war poetry), A Farewell To Arms is perhaps its reverse. It answers the question 'How should those who survive conduct their lives?'
The answer, says George Peele, is generally in thinking about the present and the future, not the past. His poem is about an old soldier, a retired knight, who puts aside thoughts of youth - he wants to spend his time serving his queen (or 'goddess'), who still lives:
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
His golden locks Time hath to silver turn'd;
O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurn'd,
But spurn'd in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.
His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart.
And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,--
'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.'
Goddess, allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.
The beadsman (or bedesman) is someone who prays for the soul of others. The dictionary says 'paid to pray', but the poem suggests it can be someone who does it for simple duty.
George Peele was addressing Queen Elizabeth I, so this is not a poem for republicans, except where the queen is a metaphor for those who survive.
I rather like the lines:
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.
and
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:
Of course, eventually doing anything on your clapped-out knees is an impossibility, but you get the metaphor.
Here's my father's last visit to Granny Buttons, at Loughborough in December 2006, with my sister. His knees were too far gone to come aboard, sadly.
"How are you, Daddy?" we'd ask.
"All right above the knees!" he'd reply chirpily.
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