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THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. X.—JULY, 1862.—NO. LVII.
SOME SOLDIER-POETRY.
It is certain that since the time of Homer the deeds and circumstancesof war have not been felicitously sung. If any ideas have been thesubject of the strife, they seldom appear to advantage in the poemswhich chronicle it, or in the verses devoted to the praise of heroes.Remove the "Iliad," the "Nibelungenlied," some English, Spanish, andNorthern ballads, two or three Old-Bohemian, the war-songs composed byZiska, and one or two Romaic, from the field of investigation, and oneis astonished at the scanty gleaning of battle-poetry, camp-songs, andrhymes that have been scattered in the wake of great campaigns, andmany of the above-mentioned are more historical or mythological thandescriptive of war. The quantity of political songs and ballads,serious and satirical, which were suggested by the great criticalmoments of modern history, is immense. Every country has, or mighthave, its own peculiar collections. In France the troubles of theLeague gave an impulse to song-writing, and the productions ofDesportes and Bertaut are relics of that time. Historical andrevolutionary songs abound in all countries; but even the"Marseillaise," the gay, ferocious "Carmagnole," and the "Ça Ira,"which somebody wrote upon a drum-head in the Champ de Mars, do notbelong to fighting-poetry. The actual business of following into thefield the men who represent the tendencies of any time, and of helpingto get through with the unavoidable fighting-jobs which they organize,seems to inspire the same rhetoric in every age, and to reproduce thesame set of conventional war-images. The range of feeling is narrow;the enthusiasm for great generals is expressed in pompous commonplaces;even the dramatic circumstances of a campaign full of the movement andsuffering of great masses of men, in bivouac, upon the march, in thegloomy and perilous defile, during a retreat, and in the hours whenwavering victory suddenly turns and lets her hot lips be kissed, arescarcely seen, or feebly hinted at. The horizon of the battle-fielditself is limited, and it is impossible to obtain a total impressionof the picturesque and terrible fact. After the smoke has rolled away,the historian finds a position whence the scenes deliberately reveal tohim all their connection, and reenact their passion. He is the realpoet of these solemn passages in the life of man. [1]
[Footnote 1: There is a little volume, called Voices from theRanks, in which numerous letters written by privates, corporals,etc., in the Crimea, are collected and arranged. They are full ofincident and pathos. Suffering, daring, and humor, the love of home,and the religious dependence of men capable of telling their own Iliad,make this a very powerful book. In modern times the best literature ofa campaign will be found in private letters. We have some from Magentaand Solferino, written by Frenchmen; the character stands very clear inthem. And here is one written by an English lad, who is describing alanding from boats in Finland, when he shot his first man. The actseparated itself from the whole scene, and charged him with it.Instinctively he walked up to the poor Finn; they met for the firsttime. The wounded man quietly regarded him; he leaned on his musket,and returned the fading look till it went out.]
One would think that a poet in the ranks would sometimes exchange thepike or musket for