Second quatrain: "If we must die" to "honor us though dead"
Summary
This second quatrain begins once again with the eponymous line, but this time moves into a direct address with elevated, intentionally archaic language: "O, let us nobly die." McKay constructs this quatrain as an "if...then" statement, creating a kind of logical deduction that shows the speaker's careful use of rhetoric. This quatrain as a whole moves beyond the negative depiction in the first to suggest the kind of death they should have—and one they might have, if they face their enemy with honor. A noble death, according to the speaker, will make even their monstrous antagonists respect them after they are gone.
Analysis
The argument in this quatrain clearly centers on a traditional notion of "honor," one that the speaker assumes his allies as well as his enemies share. In contrast to the "inglorious" death sketched in the first quatrain, here the speaker calls for an honorable death, importantly using the word "noble," which has slightly more virtuous and upright connotations than the earlier, potentially profane "glorious." These connotations continue with the "precious blood" mentioned in the following line, which subtly suggests Christ on the cross, another innocent man who died willingly but not "in vain." These shades of a biblical resonance paint the speaker and his allies as martyrs, and calling their blood "precious" confirms that the speaker himself is not bloodthirsty and has no desire for violence or death for its own sake.
Ending in an exclamation point rather than the earlier period, this quatrain also reveals an increasing intensity in the speaker's rhetoric. The rhyme on "die/defy" importantly suggests that a good death can be a kind of defiance, and McKay even replicates this idea of defiance formally by including 11 syllables in his line instead of the usual 10—"defying" the standard conventions of iambic pentameter. Ratcheting up from his earlier "dogs," the speaker now declares his enemy to be "monsters," a description that casts them even further into inhumanity and makes them even easier to dislike. Despite this "us vs. them" mentality, however, the speaker also suggests that these enemies "shall be constrained to honor us." This implies a common standard of honor among friend and foe, demonstrating the speaker's appeal to traditional, "universal" values of heroism. It is this sense of "nobility," the speaker suggests, that can give their deaths meaning and let them live on in memory after they are gone—even in the memory of their enemies.
