Rest In Peace Drummer Hodge

An English Drummer Boy (1902)
by George W. Joy (1844 - 1925)

Thanks to Gerry
for calling my attention
to this sad historical poem,
so appropriate for Veterans Day.

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

For more on
Thomas Hardy's "Drummer Hodge"
Caroline Sheridan Norton's "Bingen on the Rhine"
Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"
& Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

see my recent post

A Soldier of the Legion

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

On Veterans Day and every day,
"Let us remember . . . all those who have served
upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number . . . ”