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Tag Archives: Herman Melville

Herman Melville, Ball’s Bluff. A Reverie.

22 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Ball's Bluff, Civil War, Herman Melville, poem, Poetry

Battle of Ball's Bluff Facts & Summary | American Battlefield Trust
(October, 1861.)
One noonday, at my window in the town,
  I saw a sight—saddest that eyes can see—
  Young soldiers marching lustily
      Unto the wars,
With fifes, and flags in mottoed pageantry;
    While all the porches, walks, and doors
Were rich with ladies cheering royally.
They moved like Juny morning on the wave,
  Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime
  (It was the breezy summer time),
      Life throbbed so strong,
How should they dream that Death in a rosy clime
    Would come to thin their shining throng?
Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime.
Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving bed,
  By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft,
  On those brave boys (Ah War! thy theft);
      Some marching feet
Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft;
    Wakeful I mused, while in the street
Far footfalls died away till none were left.

Herman Melville, Misgivings

21 Friday Feb 2020

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Civil War, Herman Melville, poem, Poetry, slavery

IMSO Westward Expansion FSP - Day 2
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.
This poem is dated 1860, just prior to the Civil War.  He sees a great cloud overshadowing the land. He refers to is coming as producing a “horror” in the valleys. The Spire, the highest point in the village is now crashing down.
The trouble is the paradox in American society: On one had here is the “fairest hope” of the world, freedom, self-government. On the other hand the country permit “man’s foulest crime”, slavery.
The trouble before the country is so obvious, that even a child can see it coming. A storm is coming.
It did.

What Like a Bullet Can Undeceive

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature

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Bullet, Death, Deception, Herman Melville, life, poem, Poetry, Shiloh: A Requiem

SHILOH: A REQUIEM (APRIL, 1862)

By Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh—
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh—
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there—
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

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