Nantucketer in France
"Nantucketer in France" by Edwina Stanton Babcock is a narrative poem set during World War One that centers on a soldier from Nantucket, the small island off the coast of Massachusetts, who spends the night before a major assault in profound reflection and longing for home. Knowing that his regiment will be ordered to take a heavily defended hill the following day, and understanding full well the deadly nature of what lies ahead, the soldier cannot sleep. Instead, he passes the dark hours contemplating his life, his identity, and what it will mean to face death with courage. As the night deepens, he learns that the Eighty-second regiment is passing through, and he hopes desperately that among those soldiers there might be men who know Nantucket, men who have walked its moorlands, sailed its waters, or recognized the landmarks that define his sense of self and belonging. Driven by this hope, he stands in the darkness and calls out the name of his island home to the endless column of men marching past toward battle. He shouts the word "Nantucket" into the night like a distress signal, like an S.O.S. sent out across dark water, scanning the faces of the passing troops for any sign of recognition or kinship. The poem evokes with tenderness and specificity the images that haunt him: the hill by Polpis Harbor, the grey farmhouse rooftops, the sunset blazing through the sails of a windmill, the rolling moorland where plover and brant hide, the scallopers working through the autumn chill, the gilded dome of the Unitarian Church rising above the cobblestoned town square, and the beacon of Sankaty Light standing its solemn watch over the sea. These are not merely picturesque details but the very substance of the man's soul, the texture of the world that formed him and that he now fears he will never see again. Yet no answering voice comes back to him out of the darkness. The river of men flows grimly on, every face set hard toward the violence ahead, and no Islander responds to his cry. The silence is complete and devastating. He is entirely alone in his longing. The poem notes in a footnote that this scene is based on a true incident, lending the emotional core of the work a documentary weight that deepens its pathos. In the poem's final movement, the soldier does not collapse into despair. Instead, something in the very act of calling out, of asserting his identity, of summoning the spirit of Nantucket in that dark place, answers him from within. His own soul replies to the call. He returns to his trench not broken but resolved, having decided in his heart exactly how a man from Nantucket ought to face death. The island itself becomes a moral standard, a measure of character and dignity, and the act of remembering it becomes an act of self-definition and courage. The poem as a whole is an elegy for a particular kind of American identity rooted in place and community, and a meditation on how the memory of home can serve as both consolation and moral compass in the face of annihilation. Babcock uses the soldier's solitary vigil to argue that belonging to a specific, beloved landscape gives a man something to die for and, more importantly, a way of dying that honors who he is.
By Edwina Stanton Babcock · Genre: War Poetry, Historical Fiction, Lyric Poetry