GRIEF AND PRIDE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20420, 23 November 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

GRIEF AND PRIDE.

BY KOXAttE

POETS OF SORROW.

Wo cannot say tho things we feel. That is tho badgo of all our tribe. While British stock continues to bo predominantly Anglo-Saxon wo shall be torn by anguishes we cannot express; joy or sorrow will stir the deeps in us, but we shall remain inarticulate. That is our Saxon heritage. Tho Celt finds in his grief a great expansion and liberation of spirit; deep calls unto deep and tho rcsponsivo surges within break tho barriers of speech and pour forth without hindrance, without restraint. For tho Saxon tbero is no keening of the dead, no lament wailing through tho glens and over tho hills. Tho cenotaph—rigid, restrained, inarticulate—is worthily our symbol. Nature has laid her hand upon us; we can do no other. Grief easily finds its way in, but there is no way out.

Scotland can enshrino a nation's sorrow in the most perfect of war memorials; her poets can build iu words what her artists and craftsmen can build in

stone. Ireland and Wales sing their heart's sorrow and find their comfort in tho singing. But England can build no soaling pillars of her grief; for her no " Flowers of the Forest" opens the floodgates for tho anguishes of a thousand years.

We of Greater Britain tend to conform to the English tradition—not willingly, nor even consciously, but 110110 tho less surely. It is not that tho Saxon qualities aro the ones emphasised in the work of tho pioneer. Tho slow persistence in tho faco of odds is not nioro valuablo to (he Empire-builder than tho Celtic vision and fire, and both have played their part in tho making of New Zealand. But Saxon solidity, stolidity even, is the very groundwork of tho Now Zealand typo so far as we have developed it. We have no genius for expressing our deep emotions. Neither in words nor in stono can wo tell our sad pride in tho men wo bred and lost.

Words—and Stone. Wo must let others say tho perfect words that enshrine for ever a nation's pride and grief. Collins wrote in 1746 an odo to the fallen at Fontenoy and Culloden; a famous poem exquisitely wrought but too pretty, too delicately ornamented, to adorn a soldier's grave.

How Bleep the brave who sink to rest By nit their country's wishes blest ? By Fairy hands tlfeir knell is rime. By forms unseen their dirge is sunt:: There Honour comes a pilgrim grey, To bless tho turf that wraps their clays And Freedom shall a whilo repuir To dwell a weeping hermit there. Before the Great War that might havo served. Wo cannot wipe away our tears with so dainty a bit of cambric now. Two men have expressed tho general heart of man devastated by tho bitter floods of war; one a Greek of ancient

Athens, tho other a rugged son of tho

new world in the West. Across the years sound the voices of Pericles, dead theso twonty-lhree centuries, and of Lincoln done to death in tho hour of his triumph bixly-four years ngo. The Athenians had a special sepulchro

in tho most beautiful part of their city as the last resting place of soldiers who

felt 011 the field of honour. Only tho men of Marathon slept on the field for ever consecrated by their valour. The dead were carried through the streets, with one empty bier for tho missing, while

the whole city mourned. In the first year of tho Peloponnesian War Pericles, the leading citizen of Athens, was deputed

to pay the city's homage to the honoured dead. Ilis speech is perhaps tho most famous in history. Pericles. lie reminded the Athenians of the glory of their city. Here wero liberty, aspiration, knowledge, tho vast accumulations of spiritual and material trcasuro which they held from the generations of faithful men long dead, in trust for the generations still to be. Others had laboured to build the city; they were the rich heirs of all the past ages. " Such then is the city for whom, lest

they should lose her, tho men we celebrate died a soldier's death; and it is but natural that all of us who survive

icin should wish to spend ourselves i

her service. ... If I have chanted the glories of the city it was these men and their like who set hand to array her.

There in the last brave hour no hearts grew faint because they loved riches more than honour; none shirked tho issue in the poor man's dreams of wealth. All •these they put aside to strike a blow for tho city. Counting the quest to vindicate her honour as the most glorious of all ventures, and leaving Hope, the uncertain goddess, to send them what she would, they faced the foe as they drew near him in the strength of their own manhood; and when the shock of battle •came they chose rather to suffer tho uttermost than to win lifo by weakness. " Such were the men who lie hero and such tho city that inspired them. We survivors may pray to bo spared their bitter hour, but must disdain to meet tho foe with a spirit less triumphant. Let us draw strength from the busy spectacle of our great city's life, falling in lovo with her as wo see her and remembering that all this greatness she owes to men with tho fighter's daring, the wise man's understanding of hij duty, and tho good man's self-discipline in performance. So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth, and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchres, a home in (he minds of men where (heir glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as tho occasion comes by. Their story lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into tho stnff of other men's lives."

So Pericles in deathless words said all (lint can ever be said in sun-drenched Athens two thousand years ago. It is a poor heart that docs not thrill lo his trumpet call.

Lincoln. Lincoln, the twin from the ranks, with no long tradition of culture and civic leadership, the plain blunt man born and bred on the frontier, in his hour of vision soared to a place besido Pericles. He stands to dedicate the cemetery at Gettysburg, and his speech lasts only two minutes. Tlio simple words wrung from a heart carrying a whole nation's sorrow say once again all that can over bo said, in the magical form that mankind can never forget. t " Wo cannot dedicate, wo cannot consecrate, wo cannot hallow this ground, The bravo men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. . . It is for lis the living rather to bo dedicated here'to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be hero dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honoured dead we fake increased devotion to that cause for which they gave here tho last full measure of devotion; that we hero highly resolvo that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by tile peoplo, anrl for tho peoplo shall not perish from tho earth,"- I