There are times when gold and silver are as dross, when pomp and power flicker and ebb when all that remains to comfort sorrowing hearts are tears and the old, old words.

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land,
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand;
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.
 Herman Melville’s “The Martyr,” written on the death of Abraham Lincoln

From panic, pride, and terror,
Revenge that knows no rein,
Light haste and lawless terror,
Protect us yet again.
Cloak Thou our undeserving
Make firm the shuddering breath,
In silence and unswerving
To taste Thy lesser death!

Ah, Mary pierced with sorrow
Remember, reach and save
The soul that comes tomorrow
Before the God that gave!
Since each was born of woman,
For each at utter need —
True comrade and true foeman —
Madonna, intercede!
 Rudyard Kipling, “Hymn Before Action”
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade;
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.
 W.H. Auden, poem written on the first day of the Second World War

Some of the old words serve as warnings. The Afghans regard the United States as the Third Empire. The Second Empire was the Soviet Union, which the Afghans fought in the 1980s. The First Empire was Britain, which the Afghans fought throughout the nineteenth century.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.
 Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier”

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori. *
 Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”
*How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.

Some of the old words, strange as ancient incantations in this new century, place honor on the graves of the valiant who gave their lives for the lives of others:

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while towards the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
 Stephen Spender, “The Truly Great”

The old words, the words that give comfort like a small and cleansing wind ....

God is our refuge and our strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into
The midst of the sea;
Though its water roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with its swelling.
 Psalm 46: 1-4

And sometimes there are no words save those spoken in the silence of the heart.
(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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