The Muster

[17]
Suggested by the Two Days' Review at Washington
(May, 1865.)


The Abrahamic river -
Patriarch of floods,
Calls the roll of all his streams
And watery mutitudes:
Torrent cries to torrent,
The rapids hail the fall;
With shouts the inland freshets
Gather to the call.

The quotas of the Nation,
Like the water-shed of waves,
Muster into union -
Eastern warriors, Western braves.

Martial strains are mingling,
Though distant far the bands,
And the wheeling of the squadrons
Is like surf upon the sands.

The bladed guns are gleaming -
Drift in lengthened trim,
Files on files for hazy miles -
Nebulously dim.

O Milky Way of armies -
Star rising after star,
New banners of the Commonwealths,
And eagles of the War.

The Abrahamic river
To sea-wide fullness fed,
Pouring from the thaw-lands
By the God of floods is led:
His deep enforcing current
The streams of ocean own,
And Europe's marge is evened
By rills from Kansas lone.

17. According to a report of the Secretary of War, there were on the first day of March, 1865, 965,000 men on the army pay-rolls. Of these, some 200,000 - artillery, cavalry, and infantry - made up from the larger portion of the veterans of Grant and Sherman, marched by the President. The total number of Union troops enlisted during the war was 2,668,000.

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

Formerly A Slave

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

An Epitaph.

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

On a Natural Monument in a field of Georgia.

Herman Melville, Simple Poetry

The College Colonel

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.

The March to the Sea.

(December, 1864.)


Not Kenesaw high-arching,
Nor Allatoona's glen -
Though there the graves lie parching -
Stayed Sherman's miles of men;
From charred Atlanta marching
They launched the sword again.
The columns streamed like rivers
Which in their course agree,
And they streamed until their flashing
Met the flashing of the sea:
It was glorious glad marching,
That marching to the sea.

The brushed the foe before them
(Shall gnats impede the bull?);
Their own good bridges bore them
Over swamps or torrents full,
And the grand pines waving o'er them
Bowed to axes keen and cool.
The columns grooved their channels.
Enforced their own decree,
And their power met nothing larger
Until it met the sea:
It was glorious gla...

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 Frenzy in the Wake.

[14]
Sherman's advance through the Carolinas.
(February, 1865.)


So strong to suffer, shall we be
Weak to contend, and break
The sinews of the Oppressor's knee
That grinds upon the neck?
O, the garments rolled in blood
Scorch in cities wrapped in flame,
And the African - the imp!
He gibbers, imputing shame.

Shall Time, avenging every woe,
To us that joy allot
Which Israel thrilled when Sisera's brow
Showed gaunt and showed the clot?
Curse on their foreheads, cheeks, and eyes -
The Northern faces - true
To the flag we hate, the flag whose stars
Like planets strike us through.

From frozen Maine they come,
Far Minnesota too;
They come to a sun whose rays disown -
May it wither them as the dew!
The ghosts o...

Herman Melville

The Victor of Antietam.

[5]
(1862.)


When tempest winnowed grain from bran;
And men were looking for a man,
Authority called you to the van,
McClellan:
Along the line the plaudit ran,
As later when Antietam's cheers began.

Through storm-cloud and eclipse must move
Each Cause and Man, dear to the stars and Jove;
Nor always can the wisest tell
Deferred fulfillment from the hopeless knell -
The struggler from the floundering ne'er-do-well.
A pall-cloth on the Seven Days fell,
Mcclellan -
Unprosperously heroical!
Who could Antietam's wreath foretell?

Authority called you; then, in mist
And loom of jeopardy - dismissed.
But staring peril soon appalled;
You, the Discarded, she recalled -
Recalled you, nor endured delay;
And forth you rod...

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

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