Herman Melville – The Complete Collection

Chapter 11

The shock of ships, the jar of walls,

The rush through thick and thin--

The flaring fire-rafts, glare and gloom--

Eddies, and shells that spin--

The boom-chain burst, the hulks dislodged,

The jam of gun-boats driven,

Or fired, or sunk--made up a war

Like Michael's waged with leven.

The manned Varuna stemmed and quelled

The odds which hard beset;

The oaken flag-ship, half ablaze,

Passed on and thundered yet;

While foundering, gloomed in grimy flame,

The Ram Manassas--hark the yell!--

Plunged, and was gone; in joy or fright,

The River gave a startled swell.

They fought through lurid dark till dawn;

The war-smoke rolled away

With clouds of night, and showed the fleet

In scarred yet firm array,

Above the forts, above the drift

Of wrecks which strife had made;

And Farragut sailed up to the town

And anchored--sheathed the blade.

The moody broadsides, brooding deep,

Hold the lewd mob at bay,

While o'er the armed decks' solemn aisles

The meek church-pennons play;

By shotted guns the sailors stand,

With foreheads bound or bare;

The captains and the conquering crews

Humble their pride in prayer.

They pray; and after victory, prayer

Is meet for men who mourn their slain;

The living shall unmoor and sail,

But Death's dark anchor secret deeps detain.

Yet glory slants her shaft of rays

Far through the undisturbed abyss;

There must be other, nobler worlds for them

Who nobly yield their lives in this.

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, and 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._

The Victor of Antietam.[5]

(1862.)

When tempest winnowed grain from bran;

And men were looking for a man,

Authority called you to the van,

McClellan:

Along the line the plaudit ran,

As later when Antietam's cheers began.

Through storm-cloud and eclipse must move

Each Cause and Man, dear to the stars and Jove;

Nor always can the wisest tell

Deferred fulfillment from the hopeless knell--

The struggler from the floundering ne'er-do-well.

A pall-cloth on the Seven Days fell,

Mcclellan--

Unprosperously heroical!

Who could Antietam's wreath foretell?

Authority called you; then, in mist

And loom of jeopardy--dismissed.

But staring peril soon appalled;

You, the Discarded, she recalled--

Recalled you, nor endured delay;

And forth you rode upon a blasted way,

Arrayed Pope's rout, and routed Lee's array,

McClellan:

Your tent was choked with captured flags that day,

McClellan.

Antietam was a telling fray.

Recalled you; and she heard your drum

Advancing through the glastly gloom.

You manned the wall, you propped the Dome,

You stormed the powerful stormer home,

McClellan:

Antietam's cannon long shall boom.

At Alexandria, left alone,

McClellan--

Your veterans sent from you, and thrown

To fields and fortunes all unknown--

What thoughts were yours, revealed to none,

While faithful still you labored on--

Hearing the far Manassas gun!

McClellan,

Only Antietam could atone.

You fought in the front (an evil day,

McClellan)--

The fore-front of the first assay;

The Cause went sounding, groped its way;

The leadsmen quarrelled in the bay;

Quills thwarted swords; divided sway;

The rebel flushed in his lusty May:

You did your best, as in you lay,

McClellan.

Antietam's sun-burst sheds a ray.

Your medalled soldiers love you well,

McClellan:

Name your name, their true hearts swell;

With you they shook dread Stonewall's spell,[6]

With you they braved the blended yell

Of rebel and maligner fell;

With you in shame or fame they dwell,

McClellan:

Antietam-braves a brave can tell.

And when your comrades (now so few,

McClellan--

Such ravage in deep files they rue)

Meet round the board, and sadly view

The empty places; tribute due

They render to the dead--and you!

Absent and silent o'er the blue;

The one-armed lift the wine to _you_,

McClellan,

And great Antietam's cheers renew.

Battle of Stone River, Tennessee.

A View from Oxford Cloisters.

(January, 1863.)

With Tewksbury and Barnet heath

In days to come the field shall blend,

The story dim and date obscure;

In legend all shall end.

Even now, involved in forest shade

A Druid-dream the strife appears,

The fray of yesterday assumes

The haziness of years.

In North and South still beats the vein

Of Yorkist and Lancastrian.

Our rival Roses warred for Sway--

For Sway, but named the name of Right;

And Passion, scorning pain and death,

Lent sacred fervor to the fight.

Each lifted up a broidered cross,

While crossing blades profaned the sign;

Monks blessed the fraticidal lance,

And sisters scarfs could twine.

Do North and South the sin retain

Of Yorkist and Lancastrian?

But Rosecrans in the cedarn glade,

And, deep in denser cypress gloom,

Dark Breckenridge, shall fade away

Or thinly loom.

The pale throngs who in forest cowed

Before the spell of battle's pause,

Forefelt the stillness that shall dwell

On them and on their wars.

North and South shall join the train

Of Yorkist and Lancastrian.

But where the sword has plunged so deep,

And then been turned within the wound

By deadly Hate; where Climes contend

On vasty ground--

No warning Alps or seas between,

And small the curb of creed or law,

And blood is quick, and quick the brain;

Shall North and South their rage deplore,

And reunited thrive amain

Like Yorkist and Lancastrian?

Running the Batteries,

As observed from the Anchorage above Vicksburgh.

(April, 1863.)

A moonless night--a friendly one;

A haze dimmed the shadowy shore

As the first lampless boat slid silent on;

Hist! and we spake no more;

We but pointed, and stilly, to what we saw.

We felt the dew, and seemed to feel

The secret like a burden laid.

The first boat melts; and a second keel

Is blent with the foliaged shade--

Their midnight rounds have the rebel officers made?

Unspied as yet. A third--a fourth--

Gun-boat and transport in Indian file

Upon the war-path, smooth from the North;

But the watch may they hope to beguile?

The manned river-batteries stretch for mile on mile.

A flame leaps out; they are seen;

Another and another gun roars;

We tell the course of the boats through the screen

By each further fort that pours,

And we guess how they jump from their beds on those shrouded shores.

Converging fires. We speak, though low:

"That blastful furnace can they thread"

"Why, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego

Came out all right, we read;

The Lord, be sure, he helps his people, Ned."

How we strain our gaze. On bluffs they shun

A golden growing flame appears--

Confirms to a silvery steadfast one:

"The town is afire!" crows Hugh: "three cheers"

Lot stops his mouth: "Nay, lad, better three tears."

A purposed light; it shows our fleet;

Yet a little late in its searching ray,

So far and strong, that in phantom cheat

Lank on the deck our shadows lay;

The shining flag-ship stings their guns to furious play.

How dread to mark her near the glare

And glade of death the beacon throws

Athwart the racing waters there;

One by one each plainer grows,

Then speeds a blazoned target to our gladdened foes.

The impartial cresset lights as well

The fixed forts to the boats that run;

And, plunged from the ports, their answers swell

Back to each fortress dun:

Ponderous words speaks every monster gun.

Fearless they flash through gates of flame,

The salamanders hard to hit,

Though vivid shows each bulky frame;

And never the batteries intermit,

Nor the boats huge guns; they fire and flit.

Anon a lull. The beacon dies:

"Are they out of that strait accurst"

But other flames now dawning rise,

Not mellowly brilliant like the first,

But rolled in smoke, whose whitish volumes burst.

A baleful brand, a hurrying torch

Whereby anew the boats are seen--

A burning transport all alurch!

Breathless we gaze; yet still we glean

Glimpses of beauty as we eager lean.

The effulgence takes an amber glow

Which bathes the hill-side villas far;

Affrighted ladies mark the show

Painting the pale magnolia--

The fair, false, Circe light of cruel War.

The barge drifts doomed, a plague-struck one.

Shoreward in yawls the sailors fly.

But the gauntlet now is nearly run,

The spleenful forts by fits reply,

And the burning boat dies down in morning's sky.

All out of range. Adieu, Messieurs!

Jeers, as it speeds, our parting gun.

So burst we through their barriers

And menaces every one:

So Porter proves himself a brave man's son.[7]

Stonewall Jackson.

Mortally wounded at Chancellorsville.

(May, 1863.)

The Man who fiercest charged in fight,

Whose sword and prayer were long--

Stonewall!

Even him who stoutly stood for Wrong,

How can we praise? Yet coming days

Shall not forget him with this song.

Dead is the Man whose Cause is dead,

Vainly he died and set his seal--

Stonewall!

Earnest in error, as we feel;

True to the thing he deemed was due,

True as John Brown or steel.

Relentlessly he routed us;

But _we_ relent, for he is low--

Stonewall!

Justly his fame we outlaw; so

We drop a tear on the bold Virginian's bier,

Because no wreath we owe.

Stonewall Jackson.

(Ascribed to a Virginian.)

One man we claim of wrought renown

Which not the North shall care to slur;

A Modern lived who sleeps in death,

Calm as the marble Ancients are:

'Tis he whose life, though a vapor's wreath,

Was charged with the lightning's burning breath--

Stonewall, stormer of the war.

But who shall hymn the roman heart?

A stoic he, but even more:

The iron will and lion thew

Were strong to inflict as to endure:

Who like him could stand, or pursue?

His fate the fatalist followed through;

In all his great soul found to do

Stonewall followed his star.

He followed his star on the Romney march

Through the sleet to the wintry war;

And he followed it on when he bowed the grain--

The Wind of the Shenandoah;

At Gaines's Mill in the giant's strain--

On the fierce forced stride to Manassas-plain,

Where his sword with thunder was clothed again,

Stonewall followed his star.

His star he followed athwart the flood

To Potomac's Northern shore,

When midway wading, his host of braves

"_My Maryland!_" loud did roar--

To red Antietam's field of graves,

Through mountain-passes, woods and waves,

They followed their pagod with hymns and glaives,

For Stonewall followed a star.

Back it led him to Marye's slope,

Where the shock and the fame he bore;

And to green Moss-Neck it guided him--

Brief respite from throes of war:

To the laurel glade by the Wilderness grim,

Through climaxed victory naught shall dim,

Even unto death it piloted him--

Stonewall followed his star.

Its lead he followed in gentle ways

Which never the valiant mar;

A cap we sent him, bestarred, to replace

The sun-scorched helm of war:

A fillet he made of the shining lace

Childhood's laughing brow to grace--

Not his was a goldsmith's star.

O, much of doubt in after days

Shall cling, as now, to the war;

Of the right and the wrong they'll still debate,

Puzzled by Stonewall's star:

"Fortune went with the North elate"

"Ay, but the south had Stonewall's weight,

And he fell in the South's vain war."