An anonymous reader clicked on a Memorial Day, 2008 post in the last few hours. I clicked on it myself to see what it was. I have heavily excerpted Captain Holmes' 1884 Memorial Day speech to emphasize the rhythm of its parallel construction. I have kept the format, strangely unrationalized, of the original post because I find it better captures what I presume to be Holmes' cadence.

Holmes' speech reminds me, in its construction, the parallelism, repetition and cadence of JFK's 1962 speech in West Berlin. The beginnings of both speeches are similar. Holmes, "Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day and it set me thinking of the answer." JFK, "There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world." I am sure that Theodore Sorensen drew on Holmes for the Berlin speech.

The parallelism and repetition in Holmes' speech also reminds me of that in the lyrics to the 1968 pop song Abraham, Martin, and John. "Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham/Can you tell me where he's gone?...But I just looked around and he's gone...Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby/Can you tell me where he's gone?...I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill" but I am sure that Dion DiMucci did not draw on Holmes.

I see them now

…

I see a fair-haired lad

…

I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days, when I looked down the line at Glendale.

The officers were at the head of their companies.

The advance was beginning. We caught each other's eye and saluted.

When next I looked, he was gone.

I see the brother of the last

the flame of genius and daring on his face

as he rode before us into the wood of Antietam, out of which came only dead and deadly wounded men.

So, a little later, he rode to his death at the head of his cavalry in the Valley.

...

But the men, not less, perhaps even more, characteristic of New England, were the Puritans of our day. For the Puritan still lives in New England, thank God!

and will live there so long as New England lives and keeps her old renown.

New England is not dead yet.

She still is mother of a race of conquerors,

stern men, little given to the expression of their feelings,

sometimes careless of their graces,

but fertile, tenacious, and knowing only duty.

Each of you, as I do, thinks of a hundred such that he has known.

I see one,

grandson of a hard rider of the Revolution and bearer of his historic name who was with us at Fair Oaks, and afterwards for five days and nights in front of the enemy. The only sleep that he would take was what he could snatch sitting erect in his uniform and resting his back against a hut.

He fell at Gettysburg.

His brother

a surgeon, who rode, as our surgeons so often did, wherever the troops would go, I saw kneeling in ministration to a wounded man just in rear of our line at Antietam, his horse's bridle round his arm the next moment his ministrations were ended.

I see another quiet figure

of virtuous life and quiet ways

...

There is one who on this day is always present on my mind.

He entered the army at nineteen

I saw him in camp

on the march, in action. I crossed debatable land with him when we were rejoining the Army together.

I observed him in every kind of duty

and never in all the time I knew him did I see him fail to choose that alternative of conduct which was most disagreeable to himself.

He was indeed a Puritan in all his virtues, without the Puritan austerity

His few surviving companions will never forget the awful spectacle of his advance alone with his company in the streets of Fredericksburg.

In less than sixty seconds he would become the focus of a hidden and annihilating fire from a semicircle of houses.

His first platoon had vanished under it in an instant

ten men falling dead by his side.

He had quietly turned back to where the other half of his company was waiting

had given the order, "Second Platoon, forward!" and was again moving on, in obedience to superior command, to certain and useless death

when the order he was obeying was countermanded.

The end was distant only a few seconds;

 ...

There is one grave and commanding presence that you all would recognize

for his life has become a part of our common history.

Who does not remember the leader of the assault of the mine at Petersburg?

The solitary horseman in front of Port Hudson

I knew him

and I may even say I knew him well

I had admired him as a hero.

...

Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the dead sweep before us

"wearing their wounds like stars."

I speak of those whom I have seen. But you all have known such; you, too, remember!

...

I think of one whom the poor of a great city know as their benefactress and friend.

I think of one who has lived not less greatly in the midst of her children

to whom she has taught such lessons as may not be heard elsewhere from mortal lips.

 ...

But,

nevertheless

the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.

 ...

But grief is not the end of all.

I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean.

I see

beyond the forest

the moving banners of a hidden column.

Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death

of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring.

As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again

and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers

and destinies of good and evil

our trumpets sound once more a note of daring

hope

and will.