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    Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War: "At the height of their madness, The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves, But no lull is those wars"
    Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War: "At the height of their madness, The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves, But no lull is those wars"
    Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War: "At the height of their madness, The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves, But no lull is those wars"
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    Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War: "At the height of their madness, The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves, But no lull is those wars"

    By Herman Melville

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    About this ebook

    Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1st, 1819, the third of eight children.

    At the age of 7 Melville contracted scarlet fever which was to permanently diminish his eyesight.

    At this time Melville was described as being "very backwards in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension."

    His father died when he was 12 leaving the family in very straitened times. Just 14 Melville took a job in a bank paying $150 a year that he obtained via his uncle, Peter Gansevoort, who was one of the directors of the New York State Bank.

    After a failed stint as a surveyor he signed on to go to sea and travelled across the Atlantic to Liverpool and then on further voyages to the Pacific on adventures which would soon become the architecture of his novels. Whilst travelling he joined a mutiny, was jailed, fell in love with a South Pacific beauty and became known as a figure of opposition to the coercion of native Hawaiians to the Christian religion.

    He drew from these experiences in his books Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket. These were published as novels, the first initially in London in 1846.

    By 1851 his masterpiece, Moby Dick, was ready to be published. It is perhaps, and certainly at the time, one of the most ambitious novels ever written. However, it never sold out its initial print run of 3,000 and Melville’s earnings on this masterpiece were a mere $556.37.

    In succeeding years his reputation waned and he found life increasingly difficult. His family was growing, now four children, and a stable income was essential.

    With his finances in a disappointing state Melville took the advice of friends that a change in career was called for. For many others public lecturing had proved very rewarding. From late 1857 to 1860, Melville embarked upon three lecture tours, where he spoke mainly on Roman statuary and sightseeing in Rome.

    In 1876 he was at last able to publish privately his 16,000 line epic poem Clarel. It was to no avail. The book had an initial printing of 350 copies, but sales failed miserably.

    On December 31st, 1885 Melville was at last able to retire. His wife had inherited several small legacies and provide them with a reasonable income.

    Herman Melville, novelist, poet, short story writer and essayist, died at his home on September 28rh 1891 from cardiovascular disease.<

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateMar 12, 2018
    ISBN9781780007205
    Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War: "At the height of their madness, The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves, But no lull is those wars"
    Author

    Herman Melville

    Herman Melville was born in 1819 in New York City. Both his grandfathers were Revolutionary War heroes but his father, a merchant, died bankrupt in 1833. Melville left school and worked at various jobs before shipping on the whaler Achshnet in 1841. The next year he deserted, travelled the South Seas and joined the US Navy. After three years he retired, settled in Massachusetts and started to write. His first two novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), were fictionalized accounts of his travels: they remained his most popular works during his lifetime. In 1847 Melville married and wrote a series of novels he considered potboilers for money. With Moby-Dick (1851) he changed course, partly under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne; but the novel's extravagant intensity lost him readers. Pierre (1852) fared no better, and after publishing one more novel Melville took a job as a customs inspector in the New York City harbour and turned to writing poetry. He died there in 1891; an unfinished novel, Billy Budd, Sailor, was published in 1924.

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      Book preview

      Battle Pieces & Aspects of the War - Herman Melville

      Battle-Pieces And Aspects Of The War by Herman Melville

      Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1st, 1819, the third of eight children.

      At the age of 7 Melville contracted scarlet fever which was to permanently diminish his eyesight. At this time Melville was described as being very backwards in speech and somewhat slow in comprehension.

      His father died when he was 12 leaving the family in very straitened times. Just 14 Melville took a job in a bank paying $150 a year that he obtained via his uncle, Peter Gansevoort, who was one of the directors of the New York State Bank.

      After a failed stint as a surveyor he signed on to go to sea and travelled across the Atlantic to Liverpool and then on further voyages to the Pacific on adventures which would soon become the architecture of his novels.  Whilst travelling he joined a mutiny, was jailed, fell in love with a South Pacific beauty and became known as a figure of opposition to the coercion of native Hawaiians to the Christian religion.

      He drew from these experiences in his books Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket. These were published as novels, the first initially in London in 1846.

      By 1851 his masterpiece, Moby Dick, was ready to be published.  It is perhaps, and certainly at the time, one of the most ambitious novels ever written.   However, it never sold out its initial print run of 3,000 and Melville’s earnings on this masterpiece were a mere $556.37.

      In succeeding years his reputation waned and he found life increasingly difficult.  His family was growing, now four children, and a stable income was essential.

      With his finances in a disappointing state Melville took the advice of friends that a change in career was called for.  For many others public lecturing had proved very rewarding.  From late 1857 to 1860, Melville embarked upon three lecture tours, where he spoke mainly on Roman statuary and sightseeing in Rome.

      In 1876 he was at last able to publish privately his 16,000 line epic poem Clarel. It was to no avail.  The book had an initial printing of 350 copies, but sales failed miserably.

      On December 31st, 1885 Melville was at last able to retire.  His wife had inherited several small legacies and provide them with a reasonable income.

      Herman Melville, novelist, poet, short story writer and essayist, died at his home on September 28rh 1891 from cardiovascular disease.

      Index of Contents

      Dedication

      The Portent

      Misgivings

      The Conflict of Convictions

      Apathy and Enthusiasm

      The March into Virginia

      Lyon

      Ball's Bluff

      Dupont's Round Fight

      The Stone Fleet

      Donelson

      The Cumberland

      In the Turret

      The Temeraire

      A Utilitarian View of the Monitors Fight

      Shiloh

      The Battle for the Mississipppi

      Malvern Hill

      The Victor of Antietam

      Battle of Stone River

      Running the Batteries

      Stonewall Jackson

      Stonewall Jackson (ascribed to a Virginian)

      Gettysburg

      The House-top

      Look-out Mountain

      Chattanooga

      The Armies of the Wilderness

      On the Photograph of a Corps Commander

      The Swamp Angel

      The Battle for the Bay

      Sheridan at Cedar Creek

      In the Prison Pen

      The College Colonel

      The Eagle of the Blue

      A Dirge for McPherson

      At the Cannon's Mouth

      The March to the Sea

      The Frenzy in the Wake

      The Fall of Richmond

      The Surrender at Appomattox

      A Canticle

      The Martyr

      The Coming Storm

      Rebel Color-bearers at Shiloh

      The Muster

      Aurora-Borealis

      The Released Rebel Prisoner

      A Grave near Petersburg, Virginia

      Formerly a Slave.

      The Apparition

      Magnanimity Baffled

      On the Slain Collegians

      America

      Verses Inscriptive and Memorial

      On the Home Guards who perished in the Defense of Lexington, Missouri

      Inscription for Graves at Pea Ridge, Arkansas

      The Fortitude of the North Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas

      On the Men of Maine killed in the Victory of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

      An Epitaph

      Inscription for Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg

      The Mound by the Lake

      On the Slain at Chickamauga

      An uninscribed Monument on one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness

      On Sherman's Men Who fell in the Assault of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia

      On the Grave of a young Cavalry Officer killed in the Valley of Virginia

      A Requiem for Soldiers lost in Ocean Transports

      On a natural Monument in a field of Georgia

      Commemorative of a Naval Victory

      Presentation to the Authorities, by Privates, of Colors captured in Battles ending in the Surrender of Lee

      The Returned Volunteer to his Rifle

      The Scout toward Aldie

      Lee in the Capitol

      A Meditation

      Supplement

      Misgivings

      Herman Melville – A Short Biography

      Herman Melville – A Concise Bibliography

      Dedication

      The Battle-Pieces in this volume are dedicated to the memory of the THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND who in the war for the maintenance of the Union fell devotedly under the flag of their fathers.

      With few exceptions, the Pieces in this volume originated in an impulse imparted by the fall of Richmond. They were composed without reference to collective arrangement, but being brought together in review, naturally fall into the order assumed.

      The events and incidents of the conflict―making up a whole, in varied amplitude, corresponding with the geographical area covered by the war―from these but a few themes have been taken, such as for any cause chanced to imprint themselves upon the mind.

      The aspects which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are the moods of involuntary meditation―moods variable, and at times widely at variance. Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted airs which wayward wilds have played upon the strings.

      The Portent

      (1859)

      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 storm we feel:

      The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.

      The Conflict of Convictions [1]

      (1860-1)

      On starry heights

      A bugle wails the long recall;

      Derision stirs the deep abyss,

      Heaven's ominous silence over all.

      Return, return, O eager Hope,

      And face man's latter fall.

      Events, they make the dreamers quail;

      Satan's old age is strong and hale,

      A disciplined captain, gray in skill,

      And Raphael a white enthusiast still;

      Dashed aims, at which Christ's martyrs pale,

      Shall Mammon's slaves fulfill?

      (Dismantle the fort,

      Cut down the fleet―

      Battle no more shall be!

      While the fields for fight in aeons to come

      Congeal beneath the sea.)

      The terrors of truth and dart of death

      To faith alike are vain;

      Though comets, gone a thousand years,

      Return again,

      Patient she stands―she can no more―

      And waits, nor heeds she waxes hoar.

      (At a stony gate,

      A statue of stone,

      Weed overgrown―

      Long 'twill wait!)

      But God his former mind retains,

      Confirms his old decree;

      The generations are inured to pains,

      And strong Necessity

      Surges, and heaps Time's strand with wrecks.

      The People spread like a weedy grass,

      The thing they will they bring to pass,

      And prosper to the apoplex.

      The rout it herds around the heart,

      The ghost 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

      (1860-1)

      I

      O the clammy cold November,

      And the winter white and dead,

      And the terror dumb with stupor,

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