Theodore O'Hara

Theodore O'Hara (February 11, 1820 – June 6, 1867) was a poet and an officer for the United States Army in the Mexican–American War, and a Confederate colonel in the American Civil War. He is best known for the poems Bivouac of the Dead, which is quoted in many cemeteries, and "The Old Pioneer".

Quotes

The bivouac of the dead.

Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground.

• The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
     The soldier's last tattoo;
  No more on life's parade shall meet
     That brave and fallen few.
  On fame's eternal camping ground
     Their silent tents are spread,
  And glory guards, with solemn round,
     The bivouac of the dead.
  • "The Bivouac of the Dead" (1847), st. 1

• Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground,
     Ye must not slumber there,
  Where stranger steps and tongues resound
     Along the heedless air;
  Your own proud land's heroic soil
     Shall be your fitter grave;
  She claims from war his richest spoil—
     The ashes of her brave.
  • "The Bivouac of the Dead" (1847), st. 9
  • Written for the Kentuckians who fell at Buena Vista (February 22–23, 1847). The "Dark and Bloody Ground" was a name used to describe the region that became Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio

• Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone,
     In deathless song shall tell,
  When many a vanished age hath flown
     The story how ye fell;
  Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,
     Nor Time's remorseless doom,
  Shall dim one ray of glory's light
     That gilds your deathless tomb.
  • "The Bivouac of the Dead" (1847), st. 12

• A dirge for the brave old pioneer!
     Knight-errant of the wood!
  Calmly beneath the green sod here
     He rests from field and flood
  The war-whoop and the panther's screams
     No more his soul shall rouse,
  For well the aged hunter dreams
     Beside his good old spouse.
  • "The Old Pioneer" (December, 1850), st. 1
  • "The Old Pioneer", Register of Kentucky State Historical Society, vol. 1, no. 3 (1903), p. 58

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Theodore O'Hara on Wikipedia