The Fortitude Of The North

Under the Disaster of the Second Manassas

They take no shame for dark defeat
While prizing yet each victory won,
Who fight for the Right through all retreat,
Nor pause until their work is done.
The Cape-of-Storms is proof to every throe;
Vainly against that foreland beat
Wild winds aloft and wilder waves below:
The black cliffs gleam through rents in sleet
When the livid Antarctic storm-clouds glow.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His most famous work, Moby-Dick, was published in 1851 and initially was not a commercial success. Melville's writing draws on his experiences at sea, philosophical musings, and criticisms of society. While he died in relative obscurity, his reputation grew significantly in the 20th century, and he is now considered one of America’s greatest writers. Melville’s other works include Typee, White-Jacket, and Billy Budd.

Herman Melville

Gettysburg.

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

Ball's Bluff

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

Far Off-Shore

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

The Swamp Angel

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

A Meditation

How often in the years that close,
When truce had stilled the sieging gun,
The soldiers, mounting on their works,
With mutual curious glance have run
From face to face along the fronting show,
And kinsman spied, or friend--even in a foe.

What thoughts conflicting then were shared,
While sacred tenderness perforce
Welled from the heart and wet the eye;
And something of a strange remorse
Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood,
And Christian wars of natural brotherhood.

Then stirred the god within the breast--
The witness that is man's at birth;
A deep misgiving undermined
Each plea and subterfuge of earth;
They felt in that rapt pause, with warning rife,
Horror and anguish for the civil strife.

Of North or South they reeked not ...

Herman Melville

The Battle for the Bay.

(August, 1864.)


O mystery of noble hearts,
To whom mysterious seas have been
In midnight watches, lonely calm and storm,
A stern, sad disciple,
And rooted out the false and vain,
And chastened them to aptness for
Devotion and the deeds of war,
And death which smiles and cheers in spite of pain.

Beyond the bar the land-wind dies,
The prows becharmed at anchor swim:
A summer night; the stars withdrawn look down -
Fair eve of battle grim.
The sentries pace, bonetas glide;
Below, the sleeping sailor swing,
And it their dreams to quarters spring,
Or cheer their flag, or breast a stormy tide.

But drums are beat: Up anchor all!
The triple lines steam slowly on;
Day breaks, and through the sweep of decks each man
Stan...

Herman Melville

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,
...

Herman Melville

Sheridan At Cedar Creek

October, 1864

Shoe the steed with silver
That bore him to the fray,
When he heard the guns at dawning--
Miles away;
When he heard them calling, calling--
Mount! nor stay:
Quick, or all is lost;
They've surprised and stormed the post,
They push your routed host--
Gallop! retrieve the day.

House the horse in ermine--
For the foam-flake blew
White through the red October;
He thundered into view;
They cheered him in the looming.
Horseman and horse they knew.
The turn of the tide began,
The rally of bugles ran,
He swung his hat in the van;
The electric hoof-spark flew.

Wreathe the steed and lead him--
For the charge he led
Touched and turned the cypress
Into amaranths for the head
Of Philip, king of rid...

Herman Melville

The March Into Virginia

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
And warnings of the wise,
Contemned foreclosures of surprise?
The banners play, the bugles call,
The air is blue and prodigal.
No berrying party, pleasure-wooed,
No picnic party in the May,
Ever went less loth than they
Into that leafy neighborhood.

Herman Melville

The College Colonel

He rides at their head;
A crutch by his saddle just slants in view,
One slung arm is in splints, you see,
Yet he guides his strong steed--how coldly too.

He brings his regiment home--
Not as they filed two years before,
But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn,
Like castaway sailors, who--stunned
By the surf's loud roar,
Their mates dragged back and seen no more--
Again and again breast the surge,
And at last crawl, spent, to shore.

A still rigidity and pale--
An Indian aloofness lones his brow;
He has lived a thousand years
Compressed in battle's pains and prayers,
Marches and watches slow.

There are welcoming shouts, and flags;
Old men off hat to the Boy,
Wreaths from gay balconies fall at his feet,
But to ...

Herman Melville