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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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.<
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. Following a period of financial trouble, the Melville family moved from New York City to Albany, where Allan, Herman’s father, entered the fur business. When Allan died in 1832, the family struggled to make ends meet, and Herman and his brothers were forced to leave school in order to work. A small inheritance enabled Herman to enroll in school from 1835 to 1837, during which time he studied Latin and Shakespeare. The Panic of 1837 initiated another period of financial struggle for the Melvilles, who were forced to leave Albany. After publishing several essays in 1838, Melville went to sea on a merchant ship in 1839 before enlisting on a whaling voyage in 1840. In July 1842, Melville and a friend jumped ship at the Marquesas Islands, an experience the author would fictionalize in his first novel, Typee (1845). He returned home in 1844 to embark on a career as a writer, finding success as a novelist with the semi-autobiographical novels Typee and Omoo (1847), befriending and earning the admiration of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and publishing his masterpiece Moby-Dick in 1851. Despite his early success as a novelist and writer of such short stories as “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno,” Melville struggled from the 1850s onward, turning to public lecturing and eventually settling into a career as a customs inspector in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Melville’s reputation as a writer had faded immensely, and most of his work remained out of print until critical reappraisal in the early twentieth century recognized him as one of America’s finest writers.
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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,