Sarah Luria

Latin epigraph to poem

Lowell takes his epigraph from St. Gauden's bronze relief (mentioned later in the poem) of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

In the upper right of the relief, St. Gauden's put the Latin motto of the Society for the Cincinnati:
"Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam" (He gives up everything to serve the republic).  Lowell's epigraph changes the quote from the singlular "he gives" to the plural "they give." (Ferguson, Norton Anthology of Poetry, 1496).

Helen Vendler translates the epigraph as:  "They leave everything behind to serve the Republic." (Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry, 270)

The Society for the Cincinnati was an honorary organization for military officers established shortly after the Revolutionary War.

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