Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. Herman Melville

is yielded in the gloom;

      Kings wag their heads—Now save thyself

      Who wouldst rebuild the world in bloom.

      (Tide-mark

      And top of the ages' strike,

      Verge where they called the world to come,

      The last advance of life—

      Ha ha, the rust on the Iron Dome!)

      Nay, but revere the hid event;

      In the cloud a sword is girded on,

      I mark a twinkling in the tent

      Of Michael the warrior one.

      Senior wisdom suits not now,

      The light is on the youthful brow.

      (Ay, in caves the miner see:

      His forehead bears a blinking light;

      Darkness so he feebly braves—

      A meagre wight!)

      But He who rules is old—is old;

      Ah! faith is warm, but heaven with age is cold.

      (Ho ho, ho ho,

      The cloistered doubt

      Of olden times

      Is blurted out!)

      The Ancient of Days forever is young,

      Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;

      I know a wind in purpose strong—

      It spins against the way it drives.

      What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?

      So deep must the stones be hurled

      Whereon the throes of ages rear

      The final empire and the happier world.

      (The poor old Past,

      The Future's slave,

      She drudged through pain and crime

      To bring about the blissful Prime,

       Then—perished. There's a grave!)

      Power unanointed may come—

      Dominion (unsought by the free)

      And the Iron Dome,

      Stronger for stress and strain,

      Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;

      But the Founders' dream shall flee.

      Agee after age shall be

      As age after age has been,

      (From man's changeless heart their way they win);

      And death be busy with all who strive—

      Death, with silent negative.

      Yea, and Nay—

      Each hath his say;

      But God He keeps the middle way.

      None was by

      When He spread the sky;

      Wisdom is vain, and prophesy.

Apathy and Enthusiasm.

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      (1860–1.)

      I.

      O the clammy cold November,

      And the winter white and dead,

      And the terror dumb with stupor,

      And the sky a sheet of lead;

      And events that came resounding

      With the cry that All was lost,

      Like the thunder-cracks of massy ice

      In intensity of frost—

      Bursting one upon another

      Through the horror of the calm.

      The paralysis of arm

      In the anguish of the heart;

      And the hollowness and dearth.

      The appealings of the mother

      To brother and to brother

      Not in hatred so to part—

      And the fissure in the hearth

      Growing momently more wide.

      Then the glances 'tween the Fates,

      And the doubt on every side,

      And the patience under gloom

      In the stoniness that waits

      The finality of doom.

      II.

      So the winter died despairing,

      And the weary weeks of Lent;

      And the ice-bound rivers melted,

      And the tomb of Faith was rent.

      O, the rising of the People

      Came with springing of the grass,

      They rebounded from dejection

      And Easter came to pass.

      And the young were all elation

      Hearing Sumter's cannon roar,

      And they thought how tame the Nation

      In the age that went before.

      And Michael seemed gigantical,

      The Arch-fiend but a dwarf;

      And at the towers of Erebus

      Our striplings flung the scoff.

      But the elders with foreboding

      Mourned the days forever o'er,

      And re called the forest proverb,

      The Iroquois' old saw:

      Grief to every graybeard

      When young Indians lead the war.

The March into Virginia,

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      Ending in the First Manassas.

      (July, 1861.)

      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 ardors 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