by Chesterton · Cluster: Ruins the Abbey · Sic Transit Gloria Mundi · Ubi Sunt
Abstract
A short epigrammatic war-memorial inscription; the English dead ‘died to prove they were not dead’, set against the decay of usury and the fall of empires like Carthage. A meditation on heroism, sacrifice and immortality through memory.
Testo / Text
Connections
Settings: Grave (2)
Topoi: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, Ubi Sunt, Memento Mori Motifs: Ruins the Abbey, Storm, Grave, Stone and Marble, Lightning Themes & Concepts: Heroism, War and its Cost, Immortality, Nationalism and Patriotism, Money and Avarice, Vanity of Worldly Things, Transience, Memory and Time, Economics Forms & Genres: Epigram, Inscription Historical References: Ancient Rome, Carthage
Testo integrale / Full text
For a War Memorial
[Suggested inscription probably not selected by the Committee.]
The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.
A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.
If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,
Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.
G.K. Chesterton