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THEODORE O’HARA’S IMMOR
TAL POEM.
Mrs. Susan Bullitt Dixon, of Louis
ville, Ky., enters protest against cer
tain mutilations of the text of “The
Bivouac of the Dead.”
(Original Text.)
The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on Life’p parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread, ,
And. Glory guards, with solemn Mund,
The bivouac of the dead.
.No rumor of the foe’s advance
Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight
haunts
Os loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow’s strife
The warrior’s dream alarms;
No braying horn, no screaming fife,
At dawn shall call to arms.
Their shivered swords are red with
rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed;
Their haughty banner traile din dust
Is now their martial shroud—
And plenteous funeral tears have
„ washed
The red stains from each brow,
And the proud forms by battle
gashed
Are free from anguish now.
The neighing troop, the flashing
blade,
The bugle’s stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are past—
Nor War’s wild note nor Glory’s peal,
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that nevermore may
feel
The rapture of the fight.
Like the fierce northern hurricane
That sweeps his great plateau
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain,
Came down , the serried so
Who heard the thunder of the fray
Break o’er the field beneath,
Knew well the watchword-of that day
Was “Victory or Death!”
*****
Full many a norther’s breath has
swept
O’er Angustura’s plain,
And long the pitying sky has wept
Above its moldered slain.
The raven’s scream or eagle’s flight,
Or shepherd’s pensive lay,
Alone now wake each solemn height
That frowned o’er that dread fray.
Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground!
Ye must not slumber there,
Where stranger steps and tongues re
sound
Along the heedless air.
Your own proud land’s heroic soil
Shall be your fitter grave;
’ She claims from War his richest
spoil—
The ashes of her brave.
Thus ’neath their parent turf they
rest,
Far from the gory field;
Borne to a Spartan mother’s breast
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
On many a bloody shield.
The sunshine of their native sky
Smiles sadly on them here,
And kindred eyes and hearts watch
by
The heroes’ sepulchre.
I
Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood you gave!
No impious footstep here shall tread t
The herbage of your grave;
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.
Yon .marble minstrel’s voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanished year hath
flown
The story how ye fell.
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s
blight
Nor Time’s remorseless doom,
Can dim one ray of holy light
That gilds your glorious tomb.
—THEODORE O’HARA.
In the issue of The New York
Times Saturday Review, of August
11th last, Mrs. Susan Bullitt Dixon,
of Louisville, Ky., warmly protests
against certain changes which George
• W. Rauch, of Laxington, Ky., has re
cently seen fit to make in the text of
Theodore O’Hara’s famous poem,
“The Bivouac of the Dead.” About
a year ago Mr. Rauch edited a vol
ume of O’Hara’s poems; and when
“The Bivouac of the Dead” was
read it was observed to differ in
many respects from the original as
given above. Says Mrs. Dixon:
Mr. Rauch claims that Colonel
O’Hara himself authorized these al
terations, which statement to one fa
miliar with the poem as it first ap
peared seems incredible. If it were
so, then O’Hara acted under a deci
sion, and did what no man has a
right to do —deface the beauty of his
own work or mar its perfection. The
“Bivouac of the Dead” was a God
given inspiration; it was the inspir
ation of a lifetime, a perfect crea
tion, a complete harmony—as when
‘ ‘ the morning stars sang together, and
all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
It was first published in The
Frankfort Yeoman in 1850, and was
inscribed: “Lines Written at the
Tomb of the Kentuckians Who Fell
at Buena Vista, Buried in the Cem
etery at Frankfort.” Since tha?
time it has been published and re
published in parts or in whole—
sometimes called “Kentucky’s Dead”
—but has now acquired the perma
nent and beautiful title of “The Biv
ouac of the Dead.” Its fame is world
wide, and it has been appropriated
by the whole world wherever the
English language is spoken.
Many different versions of it have
appeared, but not one so unjust as
the one given in Mr. Rauch’s book.
The ivorst of it is, that this motley
version, in which the sublime and
strong verses of the poet have been
displaced by the weak and even lu
dicrous substitutes of Mr. Rauch’s
choosing, the connection between the
parts broken and the harmony en-
tirely destroyed, has been accepted by
many as the true one. Various au
thors and poets of note have com
mended Mr. Rauch’s work, a publi
cation in the Southern History Asso
ciation even stating of it that “ the
most widely quoted martial elegy in
the English language has at last re
ceived fitting treatment, and been au
thoritatively fixed in form and word
for future readers.” Which reminds
one of Caesar Borgia’s exclamation:
“Defend me from my friends, and I
will take care of my enemies myself.”
Mr. Hall Caine is accused of “na
tional bias,” because he “will not ad
mit that ‘The Bivouac’ is the equal
of British lyrics of a like kind, though
he warmly applauds the work of Mr.
Rauch.” Having seen only Mr.
Rauch’s version. Mr. Hall Caine re
quired no “national bias” to influence
his decision.
In truth, there is no British or
American lyric equal to O’Hara’s, nor
is there onejike it. It stands out
alone, perfect in its beauty, its gran
deur, its harmony, its sublime pathos,
its exquisite and mournful tenderness,
its glory of immortal light. It is
in words what the great “Siegfried”
funeral march is in music.
The version given below is copied
from The Louisville Courier-Journal,
which paper published it as a pan
of the funeral ceremonies of the day,
when Colonel O’Hara, General Cary
W. Fry, and Adjutant George M.
Cardwell, whose bodies had been
brought home for burial by order of
the legislature, were re-interred in
the beautiful cemetery at Frankfort,
in the autumn of 1874. The*poem was
read by Major Henry L. Stanton,
himself a poet, and there can be no
doubt as to its being the true version
of this noble lyric.
Mr. Rauch’s first desecration of
it occurs in that exquisite fourth line
of the first verse, which has a special
significance and peculiar beauty, not
only as denoting those noble and gal
lant-spirits whom the poet knew and
loved, but conveying in its full mean
ing both the sadness and the gran
deus of thei rdeath. The substitute
for this noble and touching line, ac
cording to Mr. Rauch’s version, is:
“The brave and daring few.”
What destruction of the pathos,
the sublimity, the tragedy, which be
long to the original!
There are many other changes
which mar not ‘only the melody, but
the meaning, of the verse, such as
“steed” for “troop,” “trumpet” in
place of “bugle,” both of which are
untrue to the reality of a cavalry
charge, which is usually made with a
“troop” of horse, while the bugle
call is the one used, as I am informed,
for cavalry.
•
But Mr. Rauch seems to have re
served the fifth, sixth and seventh
verses for the extremest exercise of
his extraordinary talent and taste in
amending that which was already per
fect; lighting his little lamp the bet
ter tc show’ the light of the sun to
an admiring world.
It would seem not enough that ha
should characterize as “dread” only,
that fiercest of all nature’s forces,
the “northern hurricane,” but he
must stigmatize the “great plateau”
as merely “broad”—which would in
dicate only width—while “great plat
eau” expresses all the illimitable
grandeur of those vast plains where
earth and sky seem to meet —
you realize infinity and eternity—
like tiie ocean in immensity, like the
sky in infinity, like the desert in sol
emn grandeur.
But Mr. Rauch says he objects to
“descriptive parts.” So he chooses
to make these lines as non-descriptive
as possible of what they Are obvi
ously intended to describe. His gen
ius, however, reaches its climax in
the suppression of the four last lines
of this same verse (than which noth
ing finer was ever conceived by poet),
and the substitution of the following,
which, by comparison, is the merest
doggerel:
Our heroes felt the shock and leapt
To meet it on the plain,
A*nd long the pitying sky hath wept
Above our gallant slain.
Shade of O’Hara! “Our heroes
felt the shock and leapt!”
‘ ‘ Leapt! ’ ’ And this is to be called
poetry! And such a desecration is to
be permitted! And this travesty of
the grandest lyric of all ages is to be
accepted as O’Hara’s work, “author
itatively fixed in form and word for
future readers.”
“Fixed,” indeed! This poor,
weak, ludicrous absurdity, this libel
which smacks of the rhyming dic
tionary, is enough to make Theodore
O’Hara rise from his grave and his
sheeted corpse pursue w’ith avenging
wrath the iconoclast who would so
deface his great work and elevate
this wretched absurdity upon its
ruins. Ten thousand Rauches could
never make me (nor any other friend
of O’Hara) believe that he would,
in his right mind, have ever author
ized such stuff as this to take the
place of his own beautiful inspira
tion. Had he, in a moment of delir
ium, done- this thing—and he could
never have done it otherwise —it
would have become the duty of his
friends to protect his great creation
and preserve it intact, in all its in
tegrity and perfection.
As O’Hara wrote them, those first
four lines of the fifth verse give the
most vivid impression of the foe as
they sweep down the mountain pass
in all the fierce grandeur of battle
array, marching with proud step to
the martial music, sure of conquest,
eager for the fight, burning with hat
red and revenge; while the last four
express with equal vividness the stern
resolve of the handful of men await
ing them to conquer or tc die. Is
there anything “weak” in these
lines'! And shall they be banished at
Mr. Rauch’s dictum and because he
has not enough vim to affireciate
their strength and nobility when they
so forcibly describe one of the grand
est phases of that hard-won victory!
Next, this great expunger sup
presses the sixth verse entirely. In
(Continued on Page Seven.)
PAGE THREE