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The Saint-Gaudens in Boston Common
A Tribute to Colonel Shaw and His Colored Regiment

   Hear Michael Barone reading the inscription
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Shaw Memorial   On October 31, 1998, Hugh Wolff and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra performed Three Places in New England by Charles Ives. These musical postcards evoke American places and experiences, including the memorial to Colonel Shaw and the 54th Regiment that fought in the Civil War. Here is the statue and it's inscription that inspired Ives and a bit of the broadcast that introduced the piece.

Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907)
1897 Bronze, 11' x 14' Boston, MA

Click image for larger view.


The St. Gaudens' in Boston Common

Moving - Marching - Faces of Souls!
Marked with generations of pain,
Part-freers of a Destiny,
Slowly, restlessly - swaying us on with you
Towards other Freedom!

The man on horseback, carved from a native quarry of the world Liberty
And from what your country was made.

You images of a Divine Law
Carved in the shadow of a saddened heart -
Never light abandoned -
Of an age and of a nation.

Above and beyond that compelling mass
Rises the drum-beat of the common heart
In the silence of a strange and sounding afterglow
Moving - Marching - Faces of Souls!

Images Courtesy U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

 



 

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