Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War - Herman Melville

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rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">An uninscribed Monument

       On Sherman's Men

       On the Grave

       A Requiem

       On a natural Monument

       Commemorative of a Naval Victory.

       Presentation to the Authorities,

       The Returned Volunteer to his Rifle.

       The Scout toward Aldie.

       Lee in the Capitol.

       Lee in the Capitol. [24]

       A Meditation

       Attributed to a northerner after attending the last of two funerals from the same homestead—those of a national and a confederate officer (brothers) , his kinsmen, who had died from the effects of wounds received in the closing battles.

       A Meditation.

       Supplement.

       Table of Contents

       On the Home Guards who perished in the Defense of Lexington, Missouri

       Inscription for Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas

       The Fortitude of the North Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas

       On the Men of Maine killed in the Victory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

       An Epitaph

       Inscription for Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg

       The Mound by the Lake

       On the Slain at Chickamauga

       An uninscribed Monument on one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness

       On Sherman's Men Who fell in the Assault of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia

       On the Grave of a young Cavalry Officer killed in the Valley of Virginia

       A Requiem for Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports

       On a natural Monument in a field of Georgia

       Commemorative of a Naval Victory

       Presentation to the Authorities, by Privates, of Colors captured in Battles ending in the Surrender of Lee

       The Returned Volunteer to his Rifle

       The Scout toward Aldie

       Lee in the Capitol

       A Meditation

       Supplement

       Table of Contents

      (1860.)

      When ocean-clouds over inland hills

      Sweep storming in late autumn brown,

      And horror the sodden valley fills,

      And the spire falls crashing in the town,

      I muse upon my country's ills—

      The tempest bursting from the waste of Time

      On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.

      Nature's dark side is heeded now—

      (Ah! optimist-cheer disheartened flown)—

      A child may read the moody brow

      Of yon black mountain lone.

      With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,

      And storms are formed behind the storm we feel:

      The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

      (1860–1.)

      [1] The gloomy lull of the early part of the winter of 1860–1, seeming big with final disaster to our institutions, affected some minds that believed them to constitute one of the great hopes of mankind, much as the eclipse which came over the promise of the first French Revolution affected kindred natures, throwing them for the time into doubt and misgivings universal.

      On starry heights

      A bugle wails the long recall;

      Derision stirs the deep abyss,

      Heaven's ominous silence over all.

      Return, return, O eager Hope,

      And face man's latter fall.

      Events, they make the dreamers quail;

      Satan's old age is strong and hale,

      A disciplined captain, gray in skill,

      And Raphael a white enthusiast still;

      Dashed aims, at which Christ's martyrs pale,

      Shall Mammon's slaves fulfill?

      (Dismantle the fort,

      Cut down the fleet—

      Battle no more shall be!

      While the fields for fight in æons to come

      Congeal beneath the sea.)

      The terrors of truth and dart of death

      To faith alike are vain;

      Though comets, gone a thousand years,

      Return again,

      Patient she stands—she can no more—

      And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.

      (At a stony gate,

      A statue of stone,

      Weed overgrown—

      Long 'twill wait!)

      But God his former mind retains,

      Confirms his old decree;

      The generations are inured to pains,

      And strong Necessity

      Surges, and heaps Time's strand with wrecks.

      The People spread like a weedy grass,

      The thing they will they bring to pass,

      And prosper to the apoplex.

      The rout it herds around the heart,

      The

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