Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War | Page 7

brave and fair,?That fought so oft and well,?On open decks you manned the gun
Armorial.[4]?What cheering did you share,?Impulsive in the van,?When down upon leagued France and Spain?We English ran--?The freshet at your bowsprit?Like the foam upon the can.?Bickering, your colors?Licked up the Spanish air,?You flapped with flames of battle-flags--?Your challenge, Temeraire!?The rear ones of our fleet?They yearned to share your place,?Still vying with the Victory?Throughout that earnest race--?The Victory, whose Admiral,?With orders nobly won,?Shone in the globe of the battle glow--?The angel in that sun.?Parallel in story,?Lo, the stately pair,?As late in grapple ranging,?The foe between them there--?When four great hulls lay tiered,?And the fiery tempest cleared,?And your prizes twain appeared,
Temeraire!
But Trafalgar' is over now,?The quarter-deck undone;?The carved and castled navies fire?Their evening-gun.?O, Tital Temeraire,?Your stern-lights fade away;?Your bulwarks to the years must yield,?And heart-of-oak decay.?A pigmy steam-tug tows you,?Gigantic, to the shore--?Dismantled of your guns and spars,?And sweeping wings of war.?The rivets clinch the iron-clads,?Men learn a deadlier lore;?But Fame has nailed your battle-flags--?Your ghost it sails before:?O, the navies old and oaken,?O, the Temeraire no more!
A Utilitarian View of the Monitors 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 clangor of that blacksmith's 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.
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 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.
The Battle for the Mississipppi.?(April, 1862.)
When Israel camped by Migdol hoar,?Down at her feet her shawm she threw,?But Moses sung and timbrels rung?For Pharaoh's standed crew.?So God appears in apt events--?The Lord is a man of war!?So the strong wind to the muse is given
In victory's roar.
Deep be the ode that hymns the fleet--?The fight by night--the fray?Which bore our Flag against the powerful stream,?And led it up to day.?Dully through din of larger strife?Shall bay that warring gun;?But none the less to us who live?It peals--an echoing one.
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