be called on to give
last full measure could never ..
understand, define
Adapted from this passage:
The road ahead was long, and it was to lead them to worse than they had had: to Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, to Gettysburg and the Wilderness, to the sickening meadows at Cold Harbor and the squalid trenches around Petersburg; to the ultimate misery and bleak wisdom that lie at the end of all the roads of war.
They were on their own now, fighting for something they had not been asked about; they had made the victory through which the war had been given its lasting meaning, and now they would have to go on to the end of it, marching doggedly to the dark fields where they would be called on to give the last full measure of a devotion which they themselves could never understand or define.
From Mr. Lincoln’s Army: Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Volume One by Bruce Catton (Doubleday & Company, inc., Garden City, NY, 1951).
I find it hard to accept that the last full measure fought for during the American Civil War was going to end up where we are today.
Maybe our turn is coming to sum a last full measure of devotion to something we cannot understand or define.
No Haiku For You 