Children’s Poetry for Memorial Day

This charming poem by Wisconsin educator Ninette Maine Lowater (1844–1932) is perfect for remembering Memorial Day with younger children. Published in 1904, it delicately addresses how the living care for and “keep alive” their dead.

What is the mood of the poem? How—and why—do Roy and his Grandma care for Grandpa as they do? What is the meaning of the last two lines? Why is the poem called “Roy’s Decoration Day”?

I brought blue violets from the dell
For Grandpa’s grave today,
For Grandma says he loved them well
Before he marched away.

The other Grandpas all are old,
With thin hair almost gray,
But he has curls that shine like gold,
And blue eyes full of play.

Grandma showed me his picture, hung
Upon a chain of gold;
How strange that he should be so young,
And she should be so old.

Lesson Plan Idea: Compare Two Versions of a Civil War Song

Looking for ideas to remember Memorial Day with your students? Read and listen to two versions of one of the Civil War’s most popular songs, “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Originally written in 1862 by prolific patriotic composer George F. Root (1820–95), it was so highly demanded that printing presses could not produce enough copies. Ultimately, 500,000 to 700,000 copies were produced.

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The African American Experience and Memorial Day

Many cities claim to be the progenitor of Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day. The best claim might be made by Charleston, South Carolina, where, in 1865, 10,000 Charlestonians—many of them former slaves—re-buried the Union dead who had been buried in a mass grave and paraded around the city, with the procession led by 3,000 black children carrying flowers and singing “John Brown’s Body.” 

To celebrate Memorial Day’s forgotten roots, our selection today is the Marching Song of the First Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This song, taken from our Memorial Day collection, is a personal favorite of the WSPWH editors, who find it a supreme expression of human dignity.

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Arlington National Cemetery and Memorial Day

Rest on embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood ye gave,
No impious footstep shall here tread
The herbage of your grave.

These lines are inscribed on the west face of the McClellan Gate at Arlington National Cemetery. During the Civil War, as the cemetery was being established (1864), Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs ordered lines from the poem inscribed on the cemetery’s gate, although without attributing them to their author—Kentucky-born journalist and poet Theodore O’Hara. 

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