Read, sweet, how others strove,
Till we are stouter;
What they renounced,
Till we are less afraid;
How many times they bore
The faithful witness,
Till we are helped,
As if a kingdom cared!
Read then of faith
That shone above the fagot;
Clear strains of hymn
The river could not drown;
Brave names of men
And celestial women,
Passed out of record
Into renown!
And who doesn’t love a good martyr tale? I’ve had a little experience of Catholicism, the sine qua non of martyrdom legends, but it’s a trope certainly not limited to Rome: what Protestant soul is not stirred by the story of Jan Hus, or of Latimer and Ridley? (. . . we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.) Not to mention Mary Dyer and the various Quaker martyrs. Or the secular martyrdoms of the Alamo and Little Big Horn and the whole Southern end of the War of Northern Aggression.
I can’t help but suspect that Dickinson had a bit of a smirk on her lips over this pornography of martyrdom; we, the non-martyrs, are made “stout” and “less afraid” by reading of their courage, but perhaps only while we’re engrossed in their tales. And if one passes “out of record / Into renown”, does this perhaps suggest that the record–the historical facts–fall away into legend?
Personally, I’m of the opinion that an ironic stance toward one’s valiant ancestors is the safest stance to maintain: to quote Hawthorne, “Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.”
