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    Immortal Songs of Camp and Field The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History
    Immortal Songs of Camp and Field The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History
    Immortal Songs of Camp and Field The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History
    Ebook228 pages2 hours

    Immortal Songs of Camp and Field The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History

    By Louis Albert Banks

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    Immortal Songs of Camp and Field The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History

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      Immortal Songs of Camp and Field The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking Anecdotes connected with their History - Louis Albert Banks

      Project Gutenberg's Immortal Songs of Camp and Field, by Louis Albert Banks

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license

      Title: Immortal Songs of Camp and Field

             The Story of their Inspiration together with Striking

                    Anecdotes connected with their History

      Author: Louis Albert Banks

      Release Date: August 22, 2013 [EBook #43539]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMMORTAL SONGS OF CAMP AND FIELD ***

      Produced by K Nordquist, Chuck Greif and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

      file was produced from images generously made available

      by The Internet Archive)

      IMMORTAL SONGS

      OF

      CAMP AND FIELD

      BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL

      (From the celebrated painting by Trumbull)

      Copyright, 1898

      by

      The Burrows Brothers Co.

      ———

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      Imperial Press

      CLEVELAND

      To my sister

      Lacibel Ainsworth Wood

      this volume is lovingly and gratefully

      dedicated by the author

      Bunker Hill Monument

      Washington Monument

      JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

      THE AMERICAN FLAG.

      When Freedom, from her mountain height,

      Unfurled her standard to the air,

      She tore the azure robe of night,

      And set the stars of glory there!

      She mingled with its gorgeous dyes

      The milky baldric of the skies,

      And striped its pure celestial white

      With streakings of the morning light;

      Then, from his mansion in the sun,

      She called her eagle bearer down,

      And gave into his mighty hand

      The symbol of her chosen land!

      Majestic monarch of the cloud!

      Who rear’st aloft thy regal form,

      To hear the tempest trumpings loud,

      And see the lightning-lances driven,

      When stride the warriors of the storm

      And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven!

      Child of the sun! To thee ’tis given

      To guard the banner of the free,

      To hover in the sulphur smoke,

      To ward away the battle stroke,

      And bid its blendings shine afar

      Like rainbows on the cloud of war,

      The harbingers of Victory.

      Flag of the brave! Thy folds shall fly,

      The sign of hope and triumph high!

      When speaks the signal trumpet tone

      And the long line comes gleaming on

      (Ere yet the life-blood warm and wet

      Has dimmed the glistening bayonet),

      Each soldier eye shall brightly turn

      To where thy sky-born glories burn,

      And, as his springing steps advance,

      Catch war and vengeance from the glance.

      And when the cannon mouthing cloud

      Heaves in wild wreaths the battle shroud,

      And gory sabres rise and fall,

      Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall;

      There shall thy meteor-glances glow,

      And cowering foes shall shrink beneath

      Each gallant arm that strikes below

      That lovely messenger of death.

      Flag of the seas! On ocean wave

      Thy stars shall glitter o’er the brave;

      When death, careering on the gale,

      Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,

      And frighted waves rush wildly back

      Before the broadside’s reeling rack,

      Each dying wanderer of the sea

      Shall look at once to heaven and thee,

      And smile to see thy splendors fly

      In triumph o’er his closing eye.

      Flag of the free heart’s hope and home,

      By angel hands to valor given;

      Thy stars have lit the welkin dome

      And all thy hues were born in heaven!

      As fixed as yonder orb divine,

      That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,

      Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,

      The guard and glory of the world.

      —Joseph Rodman Drake.

      The author of The American Flag was born to poverty, but by hard work he obtained a good education, and studied medicine under Dr. Nicholas Romayne, by whom he was greatly beloved. He obtained his degree and shortly afterward, in October, 1816, he was married to Sarah Eckford, who brought him a good deal of wealth. Two years later, his health failing, he visited New Orleans for the winter, hoping for its recovery. He returned to New York in the spring, only to die in the following autumn, September, 1820, at the age of twenty-five. He is buried at Hunt’s Point, in Westchester County, New York, where he spent some of the years of his boyhood. On his monument are these lines, written by his friend, Fitz-Green Halleck,—

      "None knew him but to love him,

      Nor named him but to praise."

      Drake was a poet from his childhood. The anecdotes preserved of his early youth show the fertility of his imagination. His first rhymes were a conundrum which he perpetrated when he was but five years old. He was one day, for some childish offense, punished by imprisonment in a portion of the garret shut off by some wooden bars. His sisters stole up to witness his suffering condition, and found him pacing the room, with something like a sword on his shoulder, watching an incongruous heap on the floor, in the character of Don Quixote at his vigils over the armor in the church. He called a boy of his acquaintance, named Oscar, Little Fingal; his ideas from books thus early seeking embodiment in living shapes. In the same spirit the child listened with great delight to the stories of an old neighbor lady about the Revolution. He would identify himself with the scene, and once, when he had given her a very energetic account of a ballad which he had read, upon her remarking that it was a tough story, he quickly replied, with a deep sigh: Ah! we had it tough enough that day, ma’am.

      Drake wrote The Mocking-Bird, one of his poems which has lived and will live, when a mere boy. It shows not only a happy facility but an unusual knowledge of the imitative faculty in the young poets of his time.

      MOUNT HOOD

      The American Flag was written in May, 1819, when the author was not quite twenty-four. It has remained unchanged except the last four lines. It originally concluded:—

      "As fixed as yonder orb divine,

      That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled,

      Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine,

      The guard and glory of the world."

      These lines were very unsatisfactory to Drake, and he said to Fitz-Green Halleck, Fitz, can’t you suggest a better stanza? Whereupon the brilliant author of Marco Bozzaris sat down and wrote in a glowing burst of inspiration the four concluding lines:—

      "Forever float that standard sheet!

      Where breathes the foe but falls before us?

      With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet,

      And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us?"

      Drake immediately agreed that these were a splendid improvement on the former ending, and incorporated them into his one poem that is certain of immortality. It was first published in the New York Evening Post, in a series known as the Croaker Pieces, The American Flag being the last one of the series.

      The young poet was entirely free from vanity and affectation, and had no morbid seeking for popular applause. When he was on his deathbed, at his wife’s request, Doctor DeKay collected and copied all his poems which could be found and took them to him. See, Joe, said he to him, what I have done. Burn them, he replied; they are valueless.

      Drake’s impulsive nature, as well as the spirit and force, yet simplicity, of expression, with his artless manner, gained him many friends. He had that native politeness which springs from benevolence—that would stop to pick up the hat or the crutch of an old servant, or fly to the relief of a child. His acquaintance with Fitz-Green Halleck arose in a romantic incident on the Battery one day when, in a retiring shower, the heavens were spanned by a rainbow. DeKay and Drake were together, and Halleck, a new acquaintance, was talking with them; the conversation taking the turn of some passing expression of the wishes of the moment, Halleck whimsically remarked that it would

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