and elsewhere not infrequently to dactylic hexameters and pentameters : "Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! . "My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; But I, with mournful tread, Civil War. This is from "Drum Taps," a volume of poems of the Civil War. Whitman also wrote prose having much the same Prose writings. quality as his poetry: "Democratic Vistas," "Memoranda of the Civil War," and, more recently, "Specimen Days." His residence during his last years was at Camden, New Jersey, where a centennial edition of his writings was published in 1876. 1. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT: "Thanatopsis"; "To a Waterfowl"; "Green River" "'; "Hymn to the North Star"; "A Forest Hymn"; "O Fairest of the Rural Maids" "June" ; "The Death of the Flowers"; "The Evening Wind" ; The Battle-Field"; "The Planting of แ the Apple-tree"; "The Flood of Years." 2. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER: "Cassandra Southwick"; "The New Wife and the Old"; "" The Virginia Slave Mother"; "Randolph of Roanoke"; "Barclay of Ury"; "The Witch of Wenham"; "" Skipper Ireson's Ride"; "Marguerite"; "Maud Muller"; "Telling the Bees"; "My Playmate"; "Barbara Frietchie "; "Ichabod"; "Laus Deo"; "Snow-Bound." 66 3. EDGAR ALLAN POE: "The Raven " "" ; The Bells" ; "Israfel"; "Ulalume"; "To Helen"; "The City in the Sea" Annabel Lee"; "; "To One in Paradise"; The Sleeper"; "The Valley of Unrest" "The Fall of the House of Usher"; แ Ligeia" แ "William Wilson " ; ; 'The Cask of Amontillado"; "The Assignation"; "The Masque of the Red Death"; "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym." 4. N. P. WILLIS : "Select Prose Writings." New York: 1886. 5. MRS. H. B. STOWE: town Folks." แ "Uncle Tom's Cabin" "'; Old 6. W. G. SIMMS: "The Partisan"; "The Yemassee." 7. BAYARD TAYLOR: "A Bacchic Ode"; "Hylas"; "Kubleh"; "The Soldier and the Pard"; "Sicilian Wine"; "Taurus"; "Serapion"; "The Metempsychosis of the Pine";" The Temptation of Hassan Ben Khaled"; "Bedouin Song"; "Euphorion"; "The Quaker Widow"; "John Reid"; "Lars"; แ "Views Afoot"; "Byways of Europe"; "The Story of Kennett"; "The Echo Club." 8. WALT WHITMAN: "My Captain"; "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"; "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"; "Pioneers, O Pioneers"; "The Mystic Trumpeter"; "A Woman at Auction"; "Sea-shore Memoirs"; "" Passage to India"; Mannahatta"; "The WoundDresser '' ; "Longings for Home." 9. "Poets of America." By E. C. Stedman. Boston: 1885. CHAPTER VII. LITERATURE SINCE 1861. Literature of the Civil War. A GENERATION has passed since the outbreak of the Civil War, and although public affairs are still mainly in the hands of men who had reached manhood before the conflict opened, or who were old enough at that time to remember clearly its stirring events, the younger men who are daily coming forward to take their places know it only by tradition. It makes a definite break in the history of our literature, and a number of new literary schools and tendencies have appeared since its close. As to the literature of the war itself, it was largely the work of writers who had already reached or passed middle age. All of the more important authors described in the last three chapters survived the Rebellion except Poe, who died in 1849, Prescott, who died in 1859, and Thoreau and Hawthorne, who died in the second and fourth years of the war, respectively. The final and authoritative history of the struggle has not yet been written, and cannot be written for many years to come. Many partial and tentative accounts have, however, appeared, among which may be mentioned, on the northern side, Horace Greeley's "American Conflict," 1864-66, Vicepresident Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in Histories. America," and J. W. Draper's "American Civil War," 1868-70; on the southern side, Alexander H. Stephens's "" Confederate States of America," Jefferson Davis's "Rise and Fall of the Confederate States of America,” and E. A. Pollard's "Lost Cause." These, with the exception of Dr. Draper's philosophical narrative, have the advantage of be War lyrics. "John Brown's Body." ing the work of actors in the political or military events which they describe, and the disadvantage of being, therefore, partisan-in some instances passionately partisan. A storehouse of materials for the coming historian is also at hand in Frank Moore's great collection, "The Rebellion Record"; in numerous regimental histories of special armies, departments, and battles, like W. Swinton's "Army of the Potomac "; in the autobiographies and recollections of Grant and Sherman and other military leaders; in the แ war papers," published in the Century Magazine, and reprinted in book form, as "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," 1887-89, and innumerable sketches and reminiscences by officers and privates on both sides. The war had its poetry, its humors, and its general literature, some of which have been mentioned in connection with Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Whitman, and others, and some of which remain to be mentioned, as the work of new writers, or of writers who had previously made little mark. There were war songs on both sides, few of which had much literary value excepting, perhaps, James R. Randall's southern ballad, “Maryland, My Maryland," sung to the old college air of "Lauriger Horatius"; and the grand martial chorus of "John Brown's Body," an old Methodist hymn, to which the northern armies beat time as they went "marching on." Randall's song, though spirited, was marred by its fire-eating absurdities about "vandals" and "minions" and "northern scum," the cheap insults of the southern newspaper press. To furnish the "John Brown" chorus with words worthy of the music, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe wrote her "Battle Hymn of the Republic," a noble poem, but rather too fine and literary for a song, and so never fully accepted by the soldiers. Among the many verses which voiced the anguish and the patriotism of that stern time, which told of partings and home-comings, of women waiting by desolate hearths, "Of nameless graves on battle plains, When the war was over a poet of New York State, F. M. Brownell, whose "Lyrics of a Day" and "War Lyrics" Henry Tim rod's Confed erate verse. Finch's "The Blue and the Gray.” |