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Title: Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

Author: Herman Melville

Release Date: May 19, 2004 [EBook #12384]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ASPECTS OF WAR ***

Produced by David Maddock

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War.

By Herman Melville.

1866.

The Battle-Pieces in this volume are dedicated to the memory of the
THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND who in the war for the maintenance of the Union
fell devotedly under the flag of their fathers.

[With few exceptions, the Pieces in this volume originated in an impulse
imparted by the fall of Richmond. They were composed without reference
to collective arrangement, but being brought together in review,
naturally fall into the order assumed.

The events and incidents of the conflict--making up a whole, in varied
amplitude, corresponding with the geographical area covered by the
war--from these but a few themes have been taken, such as for any cause
chanced to imprint themselves upon the mind.

The aspects which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are
the moods of involuntary meditation--moods variable, and at times widely
at variance. Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not
inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without
purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to
have but placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted airs which
wayward wilds have played upon the strings.]

The Portent.
(1859.)

Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo, John Brown),
And the stabs shall heal no more.

Hidden in the cap
Is the anguish none can draw;
So your future veils its face,
Shenandoah!
But the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the the war.

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 m