Joyfully, joyfully marching

One of the hymns I grew up singing as a Mormon was "We Are All Enlisted," from the 1866 hymnal The New Golden Chain of Sabbath School Melodies. The first verse ends thus:

Haste to the battle, quick to the field;

Truth is our helmet, buckler, and shield.

Stand by our colors; proudly they wave!

We're joyfully, joyfully marching to our ----

And of course we kids would always belt out "GRA-AVE!" -- which, unlike the printed lyric, "home," at least rhymes. It was supposed to be a joke -- imagine joyfully marching to one's grave! -- but I actually think it's better than the New Golden Chain version in terms of both rhyme and reason. Johnny comes marching home again when the war is over, not when he's hasting to the battle. And countless martyrs have joyfully marched to their grave.

Only the first verse features this subverted rhyme. Is it possible that this not mere ineptitude on the part of our anonymous Sabbath School Melodian but rather an intentional evocation of the unspoken ghost-rhyme "grave" -- like the evocation of "hell" in "I Worry So for Dear Old Bill"?

Bruce Charlton has compared our situation to Ragnarök.

In the Norse myth of Ragnarok the prophecy is that, at the end, the gods will fight the giants; and will lose. So why do the gods fight?

The gods fight because that is how they win.

The gods are Men - the giants are demons. 

Ragnarok is the final battle of the spiritual war on earth. 

And Men will lose the last battle - on earth. 

(How could it be otherwise? The giants are just too powerful.)

But choosing to fight against the giants, the demons; we win in Heaven, and eternally.

So - like the Norse gods; we prepare for Ragnarok.  

We are all enlisted till the conflict is o'er -- and at the material level, yes, we are marching to our grave. Defeat is assured. At the spiritual level, though, the true destination of our march is God, who is our home.

Note: Checking William Wildblood's blog, I find a new post, "Be Cheerful." Something in the air.