Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. Herman MelvilleЧитать онлайн книгу.
rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">An uninscribed Monument
Commemorative of a Naval Victory.
Presentation to the Authorities,
The Returned Volunteer to his Rifle.
Verses Inscriptive and Memorial
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
Misgivings.
(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.
The Conflict of Convictions.[1]
(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