(Reposted from 2015.)
 He leads for aye the advance,
 Hope’s forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good
For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood;
James Russell Lowell
Memoriae Positum, memory laid down. The Latin phrase is a good short hand description of what History accomplishes. In 1864 the poet James Russell Lowell wrote a poem entitled Memoriae Positum in tribute to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw who died heroically at age 25 leading the unsuccessful assault of the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first black Union regiments, on the Confederate stronghold of Fort Wagner at Charleston, South Carolina on July 18th, 1863. The poem predicts that Shaw’s memory will live forever and feels sorrow only for those, unlike Shaw, who are unwilling or unable to risk all for their beliefs. It is a poem completely out of step with the predominant sentiments of our day which seem to value physical survival and enjoyment above everything else. Here is the text of the poem:
I
Beneath the trees,
 My lifelong friends in this dear spot,
 Sad now for eyes that see them not,
 I hear the autumnal breeze
Wake the dry leaves to sigh for gladness gone,
Whispering vague omens of oblivion,
 Hear, restless as the seas,
Time’s grim feet rustling through the withered grace
Of many a spreading realm and strong-stemmed race,
 Even as my own through these.
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 Why make we moan
 For loss that doth enrich us yet
 With upward yearning of regret?
 Bleaker than unmossed stone
Our lives were but for this immortal gain
Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain!
 As thrills of long-hushed tone
Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine
With keen vibrations from the touch divine
 Of noble natures gone.
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 ‘Twere indiscreet
 To vex the shy and sacred grief
 With harsh obtrusions of relief;
 Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet,
Go whisper: ‘_This_ death hath far choicer ends
Than slowly to impearl to hearts of friends;
 These obsequies ’tis meet
Not to seclude in closets of the heart,
But, church-like, with wide doorways, to impart
 Even to the heedless street.’
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II
 Brave, good, and true,
 I see him stand before me now.
 And read again on that young brow,
 Where every hope was new,
_How sweet were life!_ Yet, by the mouth firm-set,
And look made up for Duty’s utmost debt,
 I could divine he knew
That death within the sulphurous hostile lines,
In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs,
 Plucks heart’s-ease, and not rue.
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 Happy their end
 Who vanish down life’s evening stream
 Placid as swans that drift in dream
 Round the next river-bend!
Happy long life, with honor at the close,
Friends’ painless tears, the softened thought of foes!
 And yet, like him, to spend
All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure
From mid-life’s doubt and eld’s contentment poor,
 What more could Fortune send?
 Right in the van,
 On the red rampart’s slippery swell,
With heart that beat a charge, he fell
 Foeward, as fits a man;
But the high soul burns on to light men’s feet
Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet;
 His life her crescent’s span
Orbs full with share in their undarkening days
Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise
 Since valor’s praise began.
III
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 His life’s expense
 Hath won him coeternal youth
 With the immaculate prime of Truth;
 While we, who make pretence
At living on, and wake and eat and sleep,
And life’s stale trick by repetition keep,
 Our fickle permanence
(A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play
Of busy idlesse ceases with our day)
 Is the mere cheat of sense.
 We bide our chance,
 Unhappy, and make terms with Fate
 A little more to let us wait;
 He leads for aye the advance,
Hope’s forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good
For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood;
 Our wall of circumstance
 Cleared at a bound, he flashes o’er the fight,
 A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right
 And steel each wavering glance.
 I write of one,
 While with dim eyes I think of three;
 Who weeps not others fair and brave as he?
 Ah, when the fight is won,
Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn,
(Thee! from whose forehead Earth awaits her morn,)
 How nobler shall the sun
Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air,
That thou bred’st children who for thee could dare
 And die as thine have done!
On Memorial Day in 1897 a monument to Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts was unveiled in Boston. It was created by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. I have always regarded it as the most striking bit of Civil War statuary, Shaw and his marching men remembered forever in bronze.
Appropriately, the memorial includes this inscription from Lowell’s poem:
RIGHT IN THE VAN ON THE RED RAMPART’S SLIPPERY SWELL
  WITH HEART THAT BEAT A CHARGE HE FELL Â
FOEWARD AS FITS A MANÂ Â
BUT THE HIGH SOUL BURNS ON
TO LIGHT MEN’S FEET
  WHERE DEATH FOR NOBLE ENDS MAKES DYING SWEET.
And so poetry and sculpture are joined in an act of Memoriae Positum to call us to remember the courage of Shaw and his men and to honor what so many of them died for on that long ago July 18th. The movie Glory (1989), a video clip of which begins this post, performs the same function. History serves many tasks, but recalling that which shows humanity at its best, meeting death for a cause deemed just and good is surely in that category, is not the least important and perhaps the most noble.
May all of their souls rest in peace.