War Songs

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.

  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.

One noonday, at my window in the town,
    I saw a sight -- saddest that eyes can see --
    Young soldiers marching lustily
      Unto the wars,
With fifes, and flags in mouthed pageantry;
      While all the porches, walks, and doors
Were rich with ladies cheering royally.
  
They moved like June morning on the wave,
  Their hearts were fresh as clover in its prime
  (It was the breezy summer time),
       Life throbbed so strong,
How should they dream that Death in a rosy clime
  Would come to thin their shining throng?
Youth feels immortal, like the gods sublime.

Weeks passed; and at my window, leaving bed,
    By night I mused, of easeful sleep bereft,
    On those brave boys (Ah War! thy theft);
      Some marching feet
Found pause at last by cliffs Potomac cleft;
     Wakeful I mused, while in the street
Far footfalls died away till none were left.

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
  The swallows fly low
Over the fields 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.