A Soldier of the Legion

IN HONOR OF VETERANS DAY
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Conquest of Algeria, 1830
by Jean Bainville

The French conquest of Algeria took place between 1830 and 1903.
The painting above depicts a battle at the onset;
the poem below, first published in 1867,
describes a battle from half-way through:

Bingen on the Rhine

A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers —
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away,
And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say.
The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade’s hand,
And he said: “I never more shall see my own, my native land;
Take a message and a token to some distant friends of mine,
For I was born at Bingen — at Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around
To hear my mournful story, in the pleasant vineyard ground,
That we fought the battle bravely — and, when the day was done,
Full many a corse lay ghastly pale, beneath the setting sun.
And ’midst the dead and dying were some grown old in wars,—
The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars;
But some were young,— and suddenly beheld life’s morn decline,—
And one had come from Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age,
And I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage;
For my father was a soldier, and, even as a child,
My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild;
I let them take whate’er they would—but kept my father’s sword;
And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard,
And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine,
On the cottage wall at Bingen — calm Bingen on the Rhine!

“Tell my sister not to weep for me, and sob with drooping head,
When the troops are marching home again, with glad and gallant tread;
But to look upon them proudly, with a calm and steadfast eye,
For her brother was a soldier, too — and not afraid to die.
And, if a comrade seek her love, I ask her, in my name,
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame;
And to hang the old sword in its place (my father’s sword and mine),
For the honour of old Bingen — dear Bingen on the Rhine!

“There’s another — not a sister, — in the happy days gone by,
You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye:
Too innocent for coquetry! too fond for idle scorning; —
Oh friend! I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning!
Tell her, the last night of my life (for, ere this moon be risen,
My body will be out of pain — my soul be out of prison),
I dreamed I stood with her, and saw the yellow sunlight shine
On the vine-clad hills of Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

“I saw the blue Rhine sweep along—I heard, or seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing, in chorus sweet and clear;
And down the pleasant river, and up the slanting hill,
That echoing chorus sounded, through the evening calm and still;
And her glad blue eyes were on me, as we passed with friendly talk,
Down many a path beloved of yore, and well-remembered walk;
And her little hand lay lightly, confidingly in mine …
But we’ll meet no more at Bingen — loved Bingen on the Rhine!”

His voice grew faint and hoarser,— his grasp was childish weak,—
His eyes put on a dying look,— he sighed and ceased to speak:
His comrade bent to lift him, but the spark of life had fled!
The soldier of the Legion, in a foreign land was dead!
And the soft moon rose up slowly, and calmly she looked down
On the red sand of the battle-field, with bloody corpses strown;
Yea, calmly on that dreadful scene her pale light seemed to shine,
As it shone on distant Bingen — fair Bingen on the Rhine!

By Caroline Sheridan Norton (1808–1877)

According to American author Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900) and Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 – 1942), this poem almost immediately upon publication -- and for years afterward -- became a hugely popular choice for grade school memorization and declamation. Both authors recall hearing "Bingen on the Rhine" recited by dozens of their peers and repeated so often that the narrative began to bore its audience and nearly lost its tragic impact.

Montgomery's heroine, Anne Shirley (of Green Gables!) declares:

"I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart—‘The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘Edinburgh after Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader —‘The Downfall of Poland’— that is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn’t in the Fifth Reader — I was only in the Fourth — but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read. . . . When Gilbert Blythe recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Anne picked up Rhoda Murray’s library book and read it until he had finished . . . ."

From Anne of Green Gables, Chapters 5 & 19

Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables in 1908 but set the story about thirty years ealier. In keeping with the novel's timeline, Gilbert is reciting the poem "Bingen on the Rhine" in 1877, a decade after its initial publication.

Stephen Crane wrote and published "The Open Boat" in 1897. He was twenty - six at the time, thinking back to the days when he -- like Gilbert and Anne -- had memorized "Bingen on the Rhine" in school:

"To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the correspondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten this verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.

'A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand
And he said: I shall never see my own, my native land.'

"In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows had informed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point.

"Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was an actuality --stern, mournful, and fine.

The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his feet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square forms was set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers."

From "The Open Boat"

When I was a student, in the 20th Century, Caroline Norton was no longer required reading, but Stephen Crane was, and that is how I learned of Norton's poem, not in grade school, but in a graduate seminar on "Style & Audience Interaction." We were given an assignment, by Professor Herman Wilson, to compare Crane's original 1897 New York Press account of surviving a tragic shipwreck with his subsequent literary narrative, "The Open Boat." And -- it goes without saying! -- we were compelled to look up every literary allusions along the way! From that day until now, I have always thought that one of the most memorable lines in all of American fiction is Crane's admission that up until his own near - death experience, the fate of the soldier in Algiers "was less to him than breaking of a pencil's point."

As Gerry so rightly observed, we cannot move on from "Bingen on the Rhine" without also paying our respects to Thomas Hardy's misplaced hero, Drummer Hodge, whose fate was similar to that of the Soldier of the Legion, not in Algiers but in South Africa. The theme is sadly similar -- a young man far from home, unknowing, unknown and unmourned. Hardy's poem was first published as "The Dead Drummer" in November 1899, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Boer War:

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)

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

May they rest in peace,
both Drummer Hodge and The Soldier of the Legion

"Let us remember . . . all those who have served
upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number . . . ”
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, November 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "RIP Drummer Hodge"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com