Title: Through a Glass, Darkly (Patton on the Cyclic Nature of War) Source:
Website of General George S. Patton, Jr. URL Source:http://www.generalpatton.com/poem.html Published:May 19, 2009 Author:George S. Patton, Jr. Post Date:2009-05-20 00:09:09 by Deasy Ping List:*Up to the Sun*Subscribe to *Up to the Sun* Keywords:Asatru, Odin, Norse, Cyclic Views:1049 Comments:69
THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY by Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
Through the travail of the ages, Midst the pomp and toil of war, Have I fought and strove and perished Countless times upon this star.
In the form of many people In all panoplies of time Have I seen the luring vision Of the Victory Maid, sublime.
I have battled for fresh mammoth, I have warred for pastures new, I have listed to the whispers When the race trek instinct grew.
I have known the call to battle In each changeless changing shape From the high souled voice of conscience To the beastly lust for rape.
I have sinned and I have suffered, Played the hero and the knave; Fought for belly, shame, or country, And for each have found a grave.
I cannot name my battles For the visions are not clear, Yet, I see the twisted faces And I feel the rending spear.
Perhaps I stabbed our Savior In His sacred helpless side. Yet, I've called His name in blessing When after times I died.
In the dimness of the shadows Where we hairy heathens warred, I can taste in thought the lifeblood; We used teeth before the sword.
While in later clearer vision I can sense the coppery sweat, Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.
Hear the rattle of the harness Where the Persian darts bounced clear, See their chariots wheel in panic From the Hoplite's leveled spear.
See the goal grow monthly longer, Reaching for the walls of Tyre. Hear the crash of tons of granite, Smell the quenchless eastern fire.
Still more clearly as a Roman, Can I see the Legion close, As our third rank moved in forward And the short sword found our foes.
Once again I feel the anguish Of that blistering treeless plain When the Parthian showered death bolts, And our discipline was in vain.
I remember all the suffering Of those arrows in my neck. Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage As I died upon my back.
Once again I smell the heat sparks When my Flemish plate gave way And the lance ripped through my entrails As on Crecy's field I lay.
In the windless, blinding stillness Of the glittering tropic sea I can see the bubbles rising Where we set the captives free.
Midst the spume of half a tempest I have heard the bulwarks go When the crashing, point blank round shot Sent destruction to our foe.
I have fought with gun and cutlass On the red and slippery deck With all Hell aflame within me And a rope around my neck.
And still later as a General Have I galloped with Murat When we laughed at death and numbers Trusting in the Emperor's Star.
Till at last our star faded, And we shouted to our doom Where the sunken road of Ohein Closed us in it's quivering gloom.
So but now with Tanks a'clatter Have I waddled on the foe Belching death at twenty paces, By the star shell's ghastly glow.
So as through a glass, and darkly The age long strife I see Where I fought in many guises, Many names, but always me.
And I see not in my blindness What the objects were I wrought, But as God rules o'er our bickerings It was through His will I fought.
So forever in the future, Shall I battle as of yore, Dying to be born a fighter, But to die again, once more.
Poster Comment:
"A man must know his destiny. if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder. if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it."
* Some exerpts from recent Patton biographies regarding the General's feelings about reincarnation, including his poem "Through a Glass Darkly":
At dinner, say, after grandly intoning Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" ("If I should die, think only this of me/There is some corner in a foreign field/That is forever England" [sic]), Georgie [Patton] might offer his fond prediction that he would die in a foreign land, since, as Napoleon said, the boundaries of an empire are marked by the graves of her soldiers. Beatrice [Patton's wife] would nod, the fire in the fireplace would crackle significantly, and the meal would resume as the girls furtively eyed their father in expectation of his next trick.
If discussing reincarnation (one of his favorite topics), he would offer up as evidence pertinent bits of The Bhagavad Gita ("For sure is the death of him that is born, and sure the birth of him that is dead"), and his old standby, Revelations 3:12: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out." To these he added the fifth stanza of Papa's [Patton's father] favorite poem, Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,/The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,/Hath had elsewhere its setting/And cometh from afar." Clearly, Georgie said, Wordsworth shared his belief in reincarnation.
(Patton, The Pattons: A Portrait of an American Family, 198)
The best expression of his past lives appears in a lengthy poem written in 1922 . . . .Titled "Through a Glass Darkly," Patton demonstrates a powerful belief in God and alludes to earlier lives, the first of which may have been as a caveman. He even suggests that while Christ was on the cross
Perhaps I stabbed our Savior In His sacred helpless side. Yet I've called His name in blessing When in after times I died.
More stanzas from this poem come from Patton, The Pattons: A Portrait of an American Family (the first and third stanzas reproduced here were quoted in the movie 1970 film Patton, starring George C. Scott):
Through the travail of the ages Midst the pomp and toil of war Have I fought and strove and perished Countless times upon this star.
I have sinned and I have suffered Played the hero and the knave Fought for belly, shame or country And for each have found a grave.
So as through a glass and darkly The age long strife I see Where I fought in many guises, Many names -- but always me.
(198-199)
This most moving and complex of his poems concludes with the words:
So forever in the future Shall I battle as of yore, Dying to be born a fighter But to die again once more.
Militarism is in our DNA to an extent. You will not find anyone more anti-war than I am and yet, when I was three or four years old, I spent many hours playing with toy soldiers and engaging them with each other in mock battles in my backyard.
I grew out of it before I was even 10 years old because, being from a rural Southern area, I began to read about real-(formerly)live young men from my county coming home from Vietnam in body bags on a regular basis. All the miserable criminal Johnson could say is that they were deterring "aggression" and "we seek no wider war." My grandparents knew LBJ personally, but their propaganda didn't work on me.
I view those who remain militaristic their entire lives as cases of arrested development. They have remained three or four years old mentally.
Apparently he wised up, though, by the time he gave his Farewell Address. From the tone of it, he could be categorized as America's first great isolationist:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.