Commentary
Although most folks look forward to barbecues and family activities during the Memorial Day weekend, this special holiday has a fascinating history.
A soulful poem, which expresses the reflective and sobering mood of commemoration, was written by Herman Melville following the battle of Shiloh, Tennessee in April of 1862. Ironically, much of this horrific battle was fought around the area of a house of worship. There is a similarity between this poem and the elegy, “In Flanders Field,” penned by Canadian poet John McRae to honor the fallen soldiers of World War I, or Theodore O’Hara’s “Bivouac of the Dead.”…