The speaker begins with the glittering reasons soldiers give for going to war—flags, music, glory, duty—then immediately undercuts them. Those are just bright ideas we carry in ourselves. The real force behind war, he suggests, is something much older and beyond moral ideas: life itself, blind as the fire that builds mountains or the water that wears them away. That sets a cool, slightly ominous mood. The closing image makes it more personal and strange. A blacksmith once put an iron band around a live oak to hold a hammock where Janet could read Milton. The tree grew and burst the band; none of its living cells noticed or cared that the hammock and Milton’s poems fell into the dust. The speaker feels that human dreams—especially patriotic ones—are like that hammock: fragile things hung on a force that doesn’t share our meanings.
Many Soldiers — Summary
The idea danced before us as a flag; The sound of martial music; The thrill of carrying a gun; Advancement in the world on coming home; A glint of glory, wrath for foes; A dream of duty to country or to God. But these were things in ourselves, shining before us, They were not the power behind us, Which was the Almighty hand of Life, Like fire at earth’s center making mountains, Or pent up waters that cut them through. Do you remember the iron band The blacksmith, Shack Dye, welded Around the oak on Bennet’s lawn, From which to swing a hammock, That daughter Janet might repose in, reading On summer afternoons? And that the growing tree at last Sundered the iron band? But not a cell in all the tree Knew aught save that it thrilled with life, Nor cared because the hammock fell In the dust with Milton’s Poems.