THE HEROIC DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 64, 15 March 1919, Page 17

THE HEROIC DEAD.

MEMORIALS AND EPITAPHS. (By REV. H. RANSTON, M.A.) Tht time is at hand for planning our monuments to those who went to the Great War and died. It is imperative that these should be worthy of the martyrs and the cause for which they so prodigally laid down their lives. ! Stones will be made to speak to future generations of the doing of this, and every word they utter should suit the deeds and the noble ideals behind the deeds. We must carve only such inscriptions as will prove more fitting ana true and beautiful as the years go by. [ Of some of the memorials of the Sou T .ti I African War it can only be said that they tempt the profane to scofling; there is such a lack of litness and beauty and that severe restraint which belong to the true epitaph. Politicians, civic and ecclesiastical authorities have perpetuated phrases which irritate by their lloridity and high-sounding hollowness. iSurely it is ac important to inscribe tlie J right words on the stones as it is to j build these into memorials which obey the canons of beauty. No hastilycomposed epitaph can permanentty satisfy either the heart or the head. Our monument-builders will need models. In which direction shall they cast their eyes? Where else but towards ancient Greece? To Hellas we turn to lind the spring of our greatest social and political ideas. In Soirates and Plato and Aristotle we have teachers formulating the eternal problems of life and science, and in grap- ! pling with them, laying down principles • which every succeeding race of investiI gators has been compelled to accept an I the bases of their own thinking. i Thucydide.* teaches how history ougntj i to be written, and Demosthenes how a ! speech should be made. When; in the whole wide world are songs so ravishing as those of Sappho, the priestess of Love, or dramatists so great as the noble triad —Aeschylus, Sophocles, and , Euripides? Almost every fruitful idea of the human intellect that is, has its source in the writings of the Hellenic I giants, or finds its truest interpretation therein. To Hellas, then, must we look for models when we wish to write the praises of our Heroic dead. We are not disappointed. Think of the immortal epitaphs ot Simonides of Ceos. Greece had been in direst peril. Persia threatened to enslave the world ac did Germany but yesterday. Hurled back and scattered were the" forces of Xerxes by the valour of the men of Greece. Young men bore the strong pain and died as our boys have since 1914. What did Simonides inscribe upon the memorial of their braveryT A simple couplet: — "When Greece upon the point of danger stood, We, who lie here, preserved her with our blooil." Where the deed 3 of the dead aie their own truest praise the Hellenic poet felt that high-sounding words were out of {place; the only fitting beauty was plain, chaste, severe, with never a superfluous boast. Two unforgettable lines commemorate :the valorous death of the famous heroes of Tbermoplylae. There Lconiilas and his three hundred warriors took their stand against the hordes of Persia. They fought, says Herodotus, when swords failed them, with hands and feet; and at last lay buried beneath the overwhelming showers of arrows and javelins and stones. For such heroism no ■praise would seem extravagant. They jwere buried where they fell, and op their tomb one read of no boast of warlike exploits, but just eleven Greek words of [which even the finest translation is but feeble rendering:— "Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by That here, obedient to their words, we lie!" Die rather than yield, were their orders. They had obeyed. That is all the inscription said, but it was sufficient. For the simple and self-restrained j beauty which has behind it the recognition that words can never adequately praise the patriot's death, think of this': "Opoeus, the capital of Locre, hides in its bosom those who died in the defence of Greece against the Medes." What nobler epitaph could warriorstatesman desire than the following: — "Here Adelmantus rests; the same was he Whose counsels won for Greece the crown of liberty." It would he difficult to find an epigram finer than this: — "Hail, great in war! all hall, by rlorv cherished, AtMna's sons, for horseman prowess noted; "In your sweet native soil in youth ye perished, For Hellas - sons unborn to death devoted." An even greater poet than Simonides. Aeschylus, wrote of the slain in a Th.essalian battle: — "These livid Death destroyed, who with spear stood, And from their country turned of shields the flood. Still lives of dead the fame; whose dust the sod Of Oss-a keeps, and tells where brave men trod." Simonides •made the epitaphs on those who fell at Plataea. For the Athenians he wrote: — "Nobly to die! if that be virtue's crown. Fortune to us her bounly well displayed; StriviuK to make Greece free, we gained renown, That shrouds us where we lie, and ne'er can fade." This is on the Spartan dead:— "These to their land fame aucxtinguished gave, Though dealii's dark cloud encompassed them around; Dying they died not; Valour from the grave Leads them on high, with glory's garland crowned."' The typical Greek note—life is nought compared with the priceless treasure of freedom —is again struck in tlio ver=fij on the defenders of Tegea:— '• "Tvras by their valour tuat to heaven ascended, ■No curling smoke from Tegea's ravaged iield; Who chose—so as the state their arms defended. They to their sons a heritage might yield, Inscribed with freedom's ever-blooming name— Themselves to perish in the ranks of fame." Might not such words be written of the sons of New Zealand? I can never read another epitaph without feeling that ancient lyric poetry contains no finer, or more finished product. >'o translation surpasses that of Merivale, but even he cannot convey a tithe of the beautiful expressiveness of the original. "In dark Thermopylae they lie; O death of glory - thus to die! Their tomb an altar is. their name A mighty heritage of fame: Their dirge Is triumph: cankering rust And Time that turneth all to dust, That tomb shall never waste or hide, The tomb of warrior true and tried. The full-voiced praise of Greece around Lies buried in that sacred mound, Where Sparta king, Leonidas, In death, eternal slory has," , v

But, after all, it was not so much they as God who had delivered Hellas. The Greek spirit was that of the Hebrew psalm of thanksgiving, which Henry the Fifth commanded to be sung on the field of Agincourt—"Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us." "Here, vten the Greeks, by strength of heart and hand, Had driven the Persians trom the Hellenic land, A record of delivered Gre"ece to prove, They raised this shrine to the Deliverer, Side by side with the epigraphs of i Simonides must be set the noble verses of Demosthenes, or one of his companions on those who fell on the field of Chaeronea:—

"These were the brave, unknowing how to yield; Who, terrible in valour, kept the field Against the foe; and, higher than life's breath, Prizing their (honour, met the doom of death, Our common doom; that Greece might unyoked stand. Nor shuddering crouch beneath a tyrant's hand. Such was the will of God; and now they rest. Peaceful enfolded in their country's breast. And erring mortals must submit to rate." Let these imperishable epitaphs of Hellas be studied and their spirit caught by our monument-builders. And when there is added the cemiivVy of immortality of which the Greek says nothing, we shall have inscriptions which befit the deeds of those who died that the world might lire.