The Portent
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
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 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 storms we feel:
The hemlock shakes
in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
The
March Into Virginia
Did all the lets
and bars appear
To every just or
larger end,
Whence should come
the trust and cheer?
Youth must its ignorant
impulse lend --
Age finds place
in the rear.
All wars are boyish,
and are fought by boys,
The champions and
enthusiasts of the state:
Turbid adors and
vain joys
Not barrenly abate
--
Stimulants to the
power mature,
Preparatives of
fate.
Who here forecasteth
the event?
What heart but spurns
at precedent
And warnings of
the wise,
Contemned foreclosures
of surprise?
The banners play,
the bugles call,
The air is blue
and prodigal.
No berrying party,
pleasure-wooed,
No picnic party
in the May,
Ever went less loth
than they
Into that leafy
neighborhood.
In Bacchic glee
they file toward Fate,
Moloch's uninitiate;
Expectancy, and
glad surmise
Of battle's unknown
mysteries,
All they feel is
this: 'tis glory,
A rapture sharp,
though transitory,
Yet lasting in belaureled
story.
So they gayly go
to fight,
Chanting left and
laughing right.But
some who this blithe mood present,
As on in lightsome
files they fare,
Shall die experienced
ere three days are spent --
Perish, enlightened
by the vollied glare;
Or shame survive,
and, like to adamant,
The throe of Second
Manassas share.
Malvern
Hill (July 1862)
Ye elms that
wave on Malvern Hill
In prime of morn
and May,
Recall ye how McClellan's
men
Here stood at bay?
While deep within
yon forest dim
Our rigid comrades
lay --
Some with the cartridge
in their mouth,
Others with fixed
arms lifted South --
Invoking so
The cypress glades?
Ah wilds of woe!
The spires of Richmond,
late beheld
Through rifts in
musket-haze,
Were closed from
view in clouds of dust
On leaf-walled ways,
Where streamed our
wagons in caravan;
And the Seven Nights
and Days
Of march and fast,
retreat and fight,
Pinched our grimed
faces to ghastly plight --
Does the elm wood
Recall the haggard
beards of blood?
The battle-smoked
flag, with stars eclipsed,
We followed (it
never fell!) --
In silence husbanded
our strength --
Received their yell;
Till on this slope
we patient turned
With cannon ordered
well;
Reverse we proved
was not defeat;
But, ah, the sod
what thousands meet! --
Does Malvern Wood
Bethink itself,
amd muse and brood?
We elms of Malvern
Hill
Remember every thing;
But sap the twig
will fill:
Wag the world how
it will,
Leaves must be green
in spring.
A Utilitarian
View Of The Monitor's
Fight
Plain be the phrase,
yet apt the verse,
More ponderous than
nimble;
For since grimed
War here laid aside
His Orient pomp,
'twould ill befit
Overmuch to ply
The rhyme's barbaric
cymbal.
Hail to victory without
the gaud
Of glory; zeal that
needs no fans
Of banners; plain
mechanic power
Plied cogently in
War now placed --
Where War belongs
--
Among the trades
and artisans.
Yet this was battle,
and intense --
Beyond the strife
of fleets heroic;
Deadlier, closer,
calm 'mid storm;
No passion; all
went on by crank,
Pivot, and screw,
And calculations
of caloric.
Needless to dwell;
the story's known.
The ringing of those
plates on plates
Still ringeth round
the world --
The clangour of
that blacksmiths' fray.
The anvil-din
Resounds this message
from the Fates:
War shall yet be,
and to the end;
But war-paint shows
the streaks of weather;
War yet shall be,
but warriors
Are now but operatives;
War's made
Less grand than
Peace,
And a singe runs
through lace and feather.
The College
Colonel
He rides at their
head;
A crutch by his
saddle just slants in view,
One slung arm is
in splints, you see,
Yet he guides his
strong steed--how coldly too.
He brings his regiment
home--
Not as they filed
two years before,
But a remnant half-tattered,
and battered, and worn,
Like castaway sailors,
who--stunned
By the surf’s loud
roar,
Their mates dragged
back and seen no more--
Again and again
breast the surge,
And at last crawl,
spent, to shore.
A still rigidity
and pale--
An Indian aloofness
lones his brow;
He has lived a thousand
years
Compressed in battle’s
pains and prayers,
Marches and watches
slow.
There are welcoming
shouts, and flags;
Old men off hat
to the Boy,
Wreaths from gay
balconies fall at his feet,
But to him--there
comes alloy.
It is not that a
leg is lost,
It is not that an
arm is maimed,
It is not that the
fever has racked--
Self he has long
disclaimed.
But all through the
Seven Days’ Fight,
And deep in the
Wilderness grim,
And in the field-hospital
tent,
And Petersburg crater,
and dim
Lean brooding in
Libby, there came--
Ah heaven!--what
truth to him.
Shiloh:
A Requiem.
(April 1862.)
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
one 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.
The
House-Top: A Night Piece
(July 1863)
No sleep.
The sultriness pervades the air
And blinds the brain--a
dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers
feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood
and making apt for ravage.
Beneath the stars
the roofy desert spreads
Vacant as Libya.
All is hushed near by.
Yet fitfully from
far breaks a mixed surf
Of muffled sound,
the Atheist roar of riot.
Yonder, where parching
Sirius set in drought,
Balefully glares
red Arson--there--and there.
The town is taken
by its rats--ship-rats
And rats of the
wharves. All civil charms
And priestly spells
which late held hearts in awe--
Fear-bound, subjected
to a better sway
Than sway of self;
these like a dream dissolve
And man rebounds
whole aeons back in nature.
Hail to the low
dull rumble, dull and dead,
And ponderous drag
that jars the wall.
Wise Draco comes,
deep in the midnight roll
Of black artillery;
he comes, though late;
In code corroborating
Calvin's creed
And cynic tyrranies
of honest kings;
He comes, nor parlies;
and the Town, redeeemed,
Gives thanks devout;
nor, being thankful, heeds
The grimy slur on
the Republic's faith implied,
Which holds that
man is naturally good,
And--more--is Nature's
Roman, never to be scourged.
The
Martyr [Lincoln]
Indicative of the
passion of the people on the 15th of April, 1865.
Good Friday was the
day
Of the prodigy and
crime,
When they killed
him in his pity,
When they killed
him in his prime
Of clemency and
calm --
When with yearning
he was filled
To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror,
be kind;
But they killed
him in his kindness,
In their madness
and their blindness,
And they killed
him from behind.
There is sobbing
of the strong,
And a pall upon
the land;
But the People in
their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People
weeping
When they bare the
iron hand.
He lieth in his blood
--
The father in his
face;
They have killed
him, the Forgiver --
The Avenger takes
his place,
The Avenger wisely
stern,
Who in righteousness
shall do
What the heavens
call him to,
And the parricides
remand;
For they killed
him in his kindness,
In their madness
and their blindness,
And his blood is
on their hand.
There is sobbing
of the strong,
And a pall upon
the land;
But the People in
their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People
weeping
When they bare the
iron hand.