As you may know, that’s Hamlet...
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
At first, I was sure that this must have just been a common phrase that Nye used. There was no way that the son of a farmer from New Hampshire would be so familiar with the works of Shakespeare to quote them in his diary, right?
That was, until I found a mention of Nye in the History of the Fifteenth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers by Charles McGregor. He wrote of Nye:
“His constitution was not a robust one; his spirit, however, carried him through the trying ordeal of the siege of Port Hudson without a break. It is well remembered of him now, while lying in the dark wood in the night, and under the enemy’s guns, he could repeat with the skill of an actor, long sections from Shakespeare and other of the dramatic poets.”
That would explain the Hamlet quote.
I realized then, at this moment when I got a tantalizing look at Nye from an outsider perspective, how little I really knew about his personality.
In his diary he recounts the events that happened to him, but he makes no effort to justify himself to the reader.
During his time at the Seige of Port Hudson, he writes about sleeping “Soundly on the ground in the open field with the Blue Sky for our covering” and how the “Rebells Payed us their respects by sending over sevral shell which exploded in front and Some passed over our heads and Exploded Sevral of our Pickets”
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| Contemporary Newspaper Print of the Seige of Port Hudson |
Yet he fails to mention the very thing he was remembered for, and what, now, draws us in to try and fit the pieces of himself he left behind back together…
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