Thursday, May 30, 2024

Memorialize II.


This is coolbert: 

Continuing and concluding. 

This one too! Poem by the American Herman Mellville in the aftermath of the Battle of Shiloh.  https://tinyurl.com/4fp9n6bh

"Requiem" by Herman Melville:

"requiem: noun - A mass for a deceased person. A musical composition for such a mass. A hymn, composition, or service for the dead."

"Skimming lightly, wheeling still,

The swallows fly low

Over the field in clouded days,

The forest-field of Shiloh—

Over the field where April rain

Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain

Through the pause of night

That followed the Sunday fight

Around the church of Shiloh—

The church so lone, the log-built one,

That echoed to many a parting groan

And natural prayer

Of dying foemen mingled there—

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—

Fame or country least their care:

(What like a bullet can undeceive!)

But now they lie low,

While over them the swallows skim,

And all is hushed at Shiloh."

See further from the wiki an entry, the collection of poems as written by Melville the American Civil War:

"Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War is the first book of poetry of the American author Herman Melville . . . is 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' and its 72 poems deal with the battles and personalities of the American Civil War and their aftermath"  https://tinyurl.com/2suedzxk

coolbert.





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