PEARL RIVERS
I can not listen to your words, the land is long and wide;
Go seek some happy Northern girl to be your loving bride;
My brothers they were soldiers—the youngest of the three
Was slain while fighting by the side of gallant FITZHUGH LEE!
They left his body on the field (your side the day had won),
A soldier spurn’d him with his foot—you might have been the one;
My lover was a soldier—he belonged to GORDON’S band;
A saber pierced his gallant heart—yours might have been the hand.
He reel’d and fell, but was not dead, a horseman spurred his steed,
And trampled on the dying brain—you may have done the deed:
I hold no hatred in my heart, no cold, unrighteous pride,
For many a gallant soldier fought upon the other side:
But still I can not kiss the hand that smote my country sore,
Nor love the foes who trampled down the colors that she bore;
Between my heart and yours there rolls a deep and crimson tide—
My brother’s and my lover’s blood forbid me be your bride.
The girls who loved the boys in gray—the girls to country true—
May ne’er in wedlock give their hands to those who wore the blue.
S. A. JONAS
This poem was found, it is said, written on the back of a five-hundred-dollar Confederate note after the surrender. Jonas had been a Confederate officer from Mississippi.
Representing nothing on God’s earth now,
And naught in the water below it—
As a pledge of the nation that’s dead and gone,
Keep it, dear friend, and show it.
Show it to those who will lend an ear
To the tale that this paper can tell,
Of liberty born, of patriot’s dream
Of the storm-cradled nation that fell.
Too poor to possess the precious ores,
And too much of a stranger to borrow,
We issued today our promise to pay,
And hoped to redeem on the morrow.
The days rolled on, and weeks became years,
But our coffers were empty still;
Coin was so rare that the Treasury quaked
If a dollar should drop in the till.
But the faith that was in us was strong, indeed,
And our poverty well discerned;
And these little checks represented the pay
That our suffering volunteers earned.
We knew it had hardly a value in gold,
Yet as gold our soldiers received it;
It gazed in our eyes with a promise to pay,
And each patriot soldier believed it.
But our boys thought little of price or pay,
Or of bills that were over-due;
We knew if it brought us bread today,
It was the best our poor country could do.
Keep it, it tells our history o’er,
From the birth of its dream to the last;
Modest, and born of the angel Hope,
Like the hope of success it passed.
HERMAN MELVILLE
(A plea against the vindictive cry raised by civilians shortly after the surrender at Appomattox.)
The color-bearers facing death
White in the whirling sulphurous wreath,
Stand boldly out before the line;
Right and left their glances go,
Proud of each other, glorying in their show;
Their battle-flags about them blow,
And fold them as in flame divine:
Such living robes are only seen
Round martyrs burning on the green—
And martyrs for the Wrong have been.
Perish their Cause! but mark the men—
Mark the planted statues, then
Draw trigger on them if you can.
The leader of a patriot-band
Even so could view rebels who so could stand;
And this when peril pressed him sore,
Left aidless in the shivered front of war—
Skulkers behind, defiant foes before,
And fighting with a broken brand.
The challenge in that courage rare—
Courage defenseless, proudly bare—
Never could tempt him; he could dare
Strike up the leveled rife there.
Sunday at Shiloh, and the day
When Stonewall charged—McClellan’s crimson May,
And Chickamauga’s wave of death,
And of the Wilderness the cypress wreath—
All these have passed away.
The life in the veins of Treason lags,
Her daring color-bearers drop their flags,
And yield. Now shall we fire?
Can poor spite be?
Shall nobleness in victory less aspire
Than in reverse? Spare Spleen her fire,
And think how Grant met Lee.
FRANCIS MILES FINCH
The occasion for this 1867 tribute by New York State’s Judge Finch was his learning, on Decoration Day, that women in Columbus, Mississippi, had lain flowers not only on the graves of Confederate soldiers but on those of the Union soldiers.
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:—
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
’Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done;
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.
WALT WHITMAN
While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The engagement opens there and then, in fantasy unreal;
The skirmishers begin—they crawl cautiously ahead—I hear the irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles—the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle balls;
I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds—I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!)
All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;
The crashing and smoking—the pride of the men in their pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the right time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly of to note the effect;
—Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging—(the young colonel leads himself this time, with brandish’d sword;)
I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no delay;)
I breathe the suffocating smoke—then the ff at clouds hover low, concealing all;
Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side;
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers;
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success;)
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, (rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul;)
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions—batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither;
(The falling, dying, I heed not—the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not—some to the rear are hobbling;)
Grime, heat, rush—aid-de-camps galloping by, or on a full run;
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs busting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.