Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War | Page 7

"Day brings the trial:
Then
be it proved if I have part
With men whose manhood never took
denial."
A prayer went up--a champion's. Morning
Beheld you in the Turret
walled
by adamant, where a spirit forewarning
And all-deriding
called:
"Man, darest thou--desperate, unappalled--
Be first to lock
thee in the armored tower?
I have thee now; and what the battle-hour

To me shall bring--heed well--thou'lt share;
This plot-work,
planned to be the foeman's terror,
To thee may prove a goblin-snare;

Its very strength and cunning--monstrous error!"
"Stand up, my heart; be strong; what matter
If here thou seest thy
welded tomb?
And let huge Og with thunders batter--
Duty be still
my doom,
Though drowning come in liquid gloom;
First duty, duty
next, and duty last;
Ay, Turret, rivet me here to duty fast!--"
So
nerved, you fought wisely and well;
And live, twice live in life and
story;

But over your Monitor dirges swell,
In wind and wave that
keep the rites of glory.

The Temeraire.[3]
_(Supposed to have been suggested to an Englishman of the old order
by the fight of the Monitor and Merrimac.)_
The gloomy hulls, in armor grim,
Like clouds o'er moors have met,

And prove that oak, and iron, and man
Are tough in fibre yet.
But Splendors wane. The sea-fight yields
No front of old display;

The garniture, emblazonment,
And heraldry all decay.
Towering afar in parting light,
The fleets like Albion's forelands
shine--
The full-sailed fleets, the shrouded show
Of
Ships-of-the-Line.
The fighting Temeraire,
Built of a thousand trees,
Lunging out her
lightnings,
And beetling o'er the seas--
O Ship, how 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,