The Full Text of “Elegy for the Native Guards”
The Full Text of “Elegy for the Native Guards”
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Introduction
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Natasha Trethewey published "Elegy for the Native Guards" in her 2006 book Native Guard, a collection that explores the neglected history of the titular Civil War regiment of Black soldiers. In this poem, Trethewey describes a tour group visiting Ship Island, the little spit of land from which the Native Guards fought for the Union. Looking around now, the poem's speaker observes that the Native Guards—whose graves were lost to a hurricane—aren't commemorated here at all. The White Confederate soldiers who were buried here, by contrast, most certainly are, their names "raised hard / in bronze" on a plaque. The poem becomes its own kind of monument to the people whom American history has chosen to overlook, as well as a quiet indictment of the racism that leaves Black Americans out of the historical picture.
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Summary
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The speaker describes taking a boat from Gulfport at midday, amid the ruckus of gulls (which follow the boat) and the sounds of a celebration, arriving at last at Ship Island. The first thing that the speaker remembers seeing is the old fort, overgrown with grass, one side sheltered from the wind—a building that feels like a partial, battered monument to the soldiers who served on the island (or to some of them, at least).
The speaker and her companions follow a park ranger inside the remains of the fort (though they're eager to go to the beach). He explains how many of the burial sites on the island were destroyed by Hurricane Camille in 1969, which split the island in half. He shows them old gunrooms, cannons, the souvenir shop—all little reminders of long-lost histories.
The neo-Confederate group the Daughters of the Confederacy has installed a bronze memorial plaque at the door to the fort. It lists the names of all the Confederate soldiers who were once buried here. But it doesn't mention the Native Guards: a regiment of Black Union soldiers who died here too. Where, the speaker wonders, is their monument?
All their battered old tombstones are now drowned, the speaker reflects; fish are swimming among their remains. She and her companions can only listen for what the waves have to say in their solemn voices. The only thing left here is the fort: almost 40 feet tall, round, and broken open. The weather can come in—and God's thoughtful, purposeful eye can look in, too.
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Themes
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History, Memory, and Racism in the United States
In Natasha Trethewey's "Elegy for the Native Guards," a historical monument becomes an ironic reminder of forgotten and neglected American history. Trethewey's speaker joins a tour group on a visit to Ship Island, the home of an important fortress during the American Civil War. Ship Island was also the home of the Native Guards, a regiment of Black soldiers who famously fought for the Union. But as Trethewey's speaker observes, there's no memorial to these soldiers on the island now. While the White soldiers who fought for the Confederacy are named on a plaque "at the fort's entrance," the Black soldiers' names go unmentioned. Even their graves are gone, lost in a hurricane that split the island in two.
The absence of a memorial to the Guards, the poem suggests, reflects the enduring legacy of the Civil War (which split the U.S. as surely as "Hurricane Camille" split Ship Island). Even 150 years after the end of the war, divisions between Confederate and Union, White and Black, are still playing out on American soil. And Black history in particular is neglected in the official narrative. The "Daughters of the Confederacy" (a Ku Klux Klan-adjacent Southern women's group) is allowed to "place[] a plaque" on the island that honors only White Confederate soldiers, while the history of the Black soldiers who fought here erodes and vanishes.
The United States's historical memory, this poem suggests, is short and compromised by racism. As the speaker takes a last look out over the sea around the island, they can only imagine "God's deliberate eye" keeping watch over the bodies of the lost Native Guards—for human beings certainly aren't doing so.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-27
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Elegy for the Native Guards”
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Before Line 1, Lines 1-6
Now that the ...
... of the dead."Elegy for the Native Guards" begins with an epigraph taken from Allen Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead," a poem in which a speaker reflects on a cemetery dedicated to Confederate soldiers who died in the American Civil War. That poem contemplates the uneasy and enduring legacy of that war in the United States and describes soldiers' bodies lost in the "oblivion of the sea"; so will this poem. Like Robert Lowell before her, Trethewey will use Tate's poem as a jumping-off point for a reflection on the Civil War, historical memory—and historical forgetting.
As the poem proper starts, the speaker leaves from "Gulfport," a town in Mississippi, on a boat bound for "Ship Island." They're traveling as a member of a group: they refer to themselves as "we." Perhaps this is a tourist group, for there's a festive air around this journey, with "streamers, noisy fanfare." But they're headed toward something solemn.
What stands on Ship Island is a "fort"—that is, Fort Massachusetts, though the poem never names this 19th-century fortress directly. Clearly, this fort is no longer in service. With its "weathered" walls and its "roof of grass," it seems as if it's been partly absorbed back into the earth. And it's only a "half reminder" of the Civil War soldiers who once fought there. As the speaker puts it, it's a "monument to some of the dead." Only some.
The very fact that the speaker alludes to Fort Massachusetts without naming it suggests that what we know and don't know about history is going to be a big idea in this poem. Readers won't necessarily be aware of the significance of Ship Island or the fort, which played an important role in the Civil War. The poem's title, "Elegy for the Native Guard," makes it clear that this will be a memorial poem (an "elegy") to a specific group of soldiers who fought here. But how and whether these soldiers get remembered will be the poem's central question.
Trethewey's elegy is written in free verse, but still uses a controlled and careful form. Every stanza is a sestet (a six-line stanza), and while there's no standard meter here, there is a predictable rhyme scheme—at least in the first three stanzas, which all rhyme ABCCBA. That rhyme scheme means that the poem might at first sound unrhymed, until the strong CC couplet hits right in the middle of the first stanza:
all the way to Ship Island. What we see
first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee—The couplet quietly draws attention to what will become a key idea in the poem: "what we see." Or what we don't see, for that matter.
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Lines 8-13
Inside we follow ...
... history long buried. -
Lines 15-20
The Daughters of ...
... to their legacy? -
Lines 22-27
All the grave ...
... rain—God’s deliberate eye.
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Symbols
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The Split Island
In this poem, Ship Island works as a neat symbol for the whole United States. Split in half by a storm, the little island reflects what happened to the U.S. when the metaphorical storm of the American Civil War tore a united country into two parts, the Union and the Confederacy.
What the speaker sees on Ship Island today also reflects a sad truth about the now-reunited States: even more than a century later, there's still a deep scar across the country. As reflected in the White-soldiers-only memorial plaque that the speaker notices on the island, White racism still excludes Black people from American history. And many people living in former Confederate states—like the "Daughters of the Confederacy," the organization that placed the racist plaque—still feel a deep cultural divide between the North and the South.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 9-11: “He tells / of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split / in half when Hurricane Camille hit,”
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
This poem is built on allusions to the history of the American Civil War. That grim and bloody conflict, Trethewey suggests, still scars the consciousness of the United States.
The poem is set on Ship Island, a tiny spit of land off the coast of Mississippi. Here stands what remains of "the fort"—a fort the speaker never names directly as Fort Massachusetts. This important strategic point was once the home base of the "Native Guards" to whom this poem is dedicated. As the speaker briskly explains, these men were the "2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx": one of the earliest of the Black regiments who would fight and die for the Union army.
The speaker describes the Union Guards and their post on Ship Island quickly and efficiently. This isn't so much a poem about what the Guards did as it is a poem about how and whether they're remembered. By merely tracing the outlines of what happened on Ship Island and who fought there, the speaker might invite readers to reflect on what they do and don't know about the war and its soldiers, especially its Black soldiers. As they put it, the fort stands as a "weathered monument to some of the dead"—but only some.
Trethewey underscores this idea when her speaker notices a memorial plaque placed on the fort by the "Daughters of the Confederacy." This Southern women's organization (which exists to this day) was founded by descendants of Confederate soldiers and had early ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that the only names the organization's plaque lists are those of the Confederate (and White) dead. The speaker merely notes this plaque, observing who it commemorates and who it does not. But the allusion to the Daughters of the Confederacy quietly makes the point that the racism that fueled the engine of the Civil War lingers even now.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 3-6: “What we see / first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee— / half reminder of the men who served there— / a weathered monument to some of the dead.”
- Lines 9-13: “He tells / of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split / in half when Hurricane Camille hit, / shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells / souvenirs, tokens of history long buried.”
- Lines 15-19: “The Daughters of the Confederacy / has placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance— / each Confederate soldier’s name raised hard / in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards— / 2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.”
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Aporia
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Alliteration
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Repetition
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"Elegy for the Native Guards" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Ship Island
- Lee
- Weathered
- The Gulf
- Hurricane Camille
- Casemates
- Daughters of the Confederacy
- Native Guards
- Phalanx
- Intone
- Deliberate
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(Location in poem: Line 3: “all the way to Ship Island”)
An island off the coast of Mississippi.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Elegy for the Native Guards”
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Form
"Elegy for the Native Guards" is, as its title reveals, an elegy: a memorial poem, a lament, and a tribute to the dead. Trethewey mourns the Native Guard, a famous regiment of Black soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War. These soldiers were stationed on Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi; many of them were buried there, too. But a lot of their graves were destroyed in a 1969 hurricane, and, as Trethewey's speaker observes, nobody has bothered to come and make another memorial for them. Meanwhile, the Daughters of the Confederacy—a KKK-adjacent women's organization—has placed a plaque there memorializing the White Confederate soldiers who were buried in the same spot. This poem itself becomes a kind of memorial plaque for the Black soldiers the state had not (at the time of this poem's writing) seen fit to remember.
"Elegy for the Native Guards" is written in free verse, poetry that doesn't stick to a traditional form, rhyme scheme, or meter. But it does take a predictable shape: each of its four stanzas is a sestet, a passage of six lines. What's more, each of those sestets is built from lines of just-about-equal length. The effect is slow, steady, and thoughtful. Even as the speaker describes an experience that clearly provokes deep feelings—alarm, sorrow, anger—her voice stays as steady as "God's deliberate eye."
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Meter
There's no set meter in this free verse poem. Instead, Trethewey creates a naturalistic rhythm with line breaks, caesurae, and enjambments.
For example, listen to the way that enjambments and caesurae play against each other in lines 7-10:
Inside we follow the ranger, || hurried
though we are to get to the beach. || He tells
of graves lost in the Gulf, || the island split
in half when Hurricane Camille hit,Caesurae interrupt most of these lines midway through, creating a thoughtful, swaying rhythm. The enjambments help with that, too, carrying ideas on over line breaks, so that the speaker's voice feels free-flowing, not measured out by sharply end-stopped lines. But the enjambment between lines 9-10 also creates a fitting little shock: the line abruptly "split[s]" just as the island does.
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Rhyme Scheme
In its first three stanzas, "Elegy for the Native Guards" uses this subtle, weaving rhyme scheme:
ABCCBA
This pattern only introduces itself slowly. For the first three lines of the poem, readers might think that Trethewey is writing without rhyme altogether. So when the rhymes begin to unfold, they add some special emphasis to the middle of each stanza, where the two C rhymes meet in a couplet.
Even when the rhymes come, though, they remain understated. Many of them are slant rhymes, like hurried / buried in lines 7 and 12 or entrance / phalanx in lines 14 and 17. These chimes add just a touch of thoughtful music.
Then, in the fourth and final stanza, the pattern changes. The rhymes here run like this:
AAABBB
After the gentler rhymes of the rest of the poem, this pattern sounds slow, solemn, and forceful—a fitting match for the speaker's images of lost graves, sunken bones, and "God's deliberate eye" watching over it all.
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a visitor to Ship Island (an island off the coast of Mississippi that hosted an important fort in the American Civil War). Or perhaps the speaker is a whole tour group of such visitors. They speak as a "we," describing what they saw collectively as a park ranger ushered them around the half-ruined fort.
Trethewey's choice to write as a "we" suggests that what happens on Ship Island on this day out was part of a collective experience of history. This poem is interested in how people memorialize history—and in what they choose to forget. The poem's "we" gets shown "casemates, cannons, the store that sells / souvenirs." But nobody points out the memorial plaque that the "Daughters of the Confederacy" (a neo-Confederate women's group historically aligned with the racist Ku Klux Klan) has installed at the fort's entrance—a plaque that only names and honors the White Confederate soldiers who died here, not the Black Union soldiers.
In the stanza where the speaker describes this plaque, the "we" disappears. It sounds a lot as if it's just one person—perhaps a voice for the poet herself—taking note of something the park ranger has not chosen to point out.
Though the poem's voice remains calm and solemn throughout, readers can feel the speaker's sorrow and anger at the fact that only the White dead are memorialized here, while the graves and bones of the Black dead are "water-lost," drowned and forgotten.
Trethewey's speaker in this poem obviously moves with the big "we" of the group sometimes. But they also notice some things that the whole group does not. The subtle voice of this poem invites readers to think about what it means to be part of the huge group of people that makes up the United States and how one might be made to feel included or excluded from that group.
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“Elegy for the Native Guards” Setting
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"Elegy for the Native Guards" is set on Ship Island, a small but strategically important island in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Mississippi. Here stands what remains of Fort Massachusetts, an important fort built during the War of 1812 but most famous for its role in the American Civil War, when it was a staging point for the Union in its battles with the coastal Confederate states.
The one-time home of the Native Guards—a renowned Union regiment composed almost entirely of Black soldiers—the Ship Island the speaker visits in this poem is ghostly, haunted by the past in more ways than one. The speaker observes that, while there's a plaque here honoring the White Confederate soldiers who were buried on the island, there's no such honor for the Native Guards, whose graves were mostly lost to the sea during Hurricane Camille in 1969. In an eerily symbolic disaster, that storm split the island in half—much as the American Civil War split the United States in half, and much as White racism continues to split off Black American stories from the historical narrative.
Through her depiction of this split island, Trethewey thus paints a portrait of the United States itself, with all its complex history and all its enduring divisions.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Elegy for the Native Guards”
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Literary Context
"Elegy for the Native Guards" appears in Natasha Trethewey's third collection of poems, Native Guard (2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Many of the poems in Native Guard explore intersections between American history and Trethewey's personal experience as a Black writer from the American South. Widely acclaimed throughout her career, Trethewey has served as both the Poet Laureate of her home state of Mississippi (2012) and the U.S. Poet Laureate (2012-2014).
In Native Guard, Trethewey reflects on the historical and literary legacy of the American Civil War and particularly the often overlooked legacy of Black soldiers who fought for the Union. In this, she joins a long tradition of American writers grappling with the Civil War and its aftereffects, a tradition that starts with writers like Frederick Douglass (whose autobiography was one of the most powerful texts of the abolition movement) and Walt Whitman (whose"I Sing the Body Electric" makes a passionate stand against the American racism that treats Black lives as other and lesser than White ones).
This poem, however, also responds to later Civil War writings. It begins with an epigraph taken from Allen Tate's 1937 poem "Ode to the Confederate Dead," an elegy for Confederate soldiers that has provoked more than one poetic response. Alongside this poem, readers might be interested to read Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," which likewise responds to Tate and reflects on a monument to a Black Union regiment.
Trethewey has noted that she is also inspired by the great American novelist Toni Morrison, and by Irish poets including Seamus Heaney and W.B. Yeats.
Historical Context
This poem draws on Trethewey's personal experience of a visit to Ship Island. On this hurricane-battered bit of land (split in half by Hurricane Camille in 1969) stands Fort Massachusetts, a fort built during the War of 1812 but most famous for the role it played in the American Civil War. Though Ship Island once belonged to the Confederacy, the Union captured it and used it as a staging area for attacks on the coastal Confederate states.
Ship Island became the home base of the 2nd Louisiana Regiment Native Guard Infantry, a Union regiment whose members were almost all Black. From their billet on the island, they made a successful raid on Confederate troops stationed in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Stories of their bravery inspired many other Black soldiers to join the Union army. Members of the regiment would also go on to play an active part in American public life and politics: for instance, a soldier named P.B.S. Pinchback would become the first Black man to serve as a state governor (for Louisiana).
Since the publication of Native Guard, the state of Mississippi has erected a monument to the Native Guard, which now stands at the dock in Gulfport from which boats embark for Ship Island.
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More “Elegy for the Native Guards” Resources
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External Resources
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The Native Guards — Learn more about the all-Black Civil War regiment this poem honors.
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The Poet's Life — Read a brief biography of Trethewey.
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An Interview with Trethewey — Watch a PBS interview with the poet.
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The Poem Aloud — Watch a video in which Trethewey visits the monument this poem describes and reads this poem aloud. A team of historical re-enactors dressed as the Native Guard themselves accompany her.
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Trethewey's Inspiration — Read an article which discusses Trethewey's interest in the Native Guard and the research that led her to write this poem.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Natasha Trethewey
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