Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) is Herman Melville's collection of Civil War poetry — among the earliest and most significant poetic responses to the conflict. Written between 1861 and 1866, these poems move from the war's anxious beginnings through its bloodiest battles to its uneasy aftermath. Melville drew on newspaper accounts, battlefield reports, and his own 1864 visit to the Virginia front to capture the war's terrible grandeur and human cost.

The collection opens with The Portent, a vision of John Brown's hanging as prophecy, and closes with meditative poems on reconciliation and national healing. Throughout, Melville balances admiration for individual courage with horror at industrialized slaughter, and patriotic feeling with sympathy for the defeated South.

Poems in This Collection

• A Meditation
• America
• An Uninscribed Monument
• A Requiem
• Aurora Borealis
• A Utilitarian View Of The Monitor's Fight
• Ball's Bluff
• Chattanooga
• Commemorative Of A Naval Victory
• "Formerly A Slave"
• From The Conflict Of Convictions
• Inscription
• In The Prison Pen
• Malvern Hill
• On The Grave Of A Young Cavalry Officer Killed In The Valley Of Virginia
• On The Photograph Of A Corps Commander
• On The Slain At Chickamauga
• On The Slain Collegians
• Rebel Color-Bearers At Shiloh
• Sheridan At Cedar Creek
• Stonewall Jackson
• The College Colonel
• The Fortitude Of The North
• The House-Top
• The March Into Virginia
• The Martyr
• The Mound By The Lake
• The Portent
• The Released Rebel Prisoner
• The Stone Fleet
• The Swamp Angel
• The Temeraire