THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY. LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
OF
X.—JULY, 1862.-NO. LVII.
SOLDIER-POETRY.
IT is certain that since the time of Homer the deeds and circumstances of If war have not been felicitously sung. any ideas have been the subject of the it,
strife, they seldom appear to advantage or in the in the poems which chronicle verses devoted to the praise of heroes. Re move the “Iliad,” the “ Nibelungenlied,” some English, Spanish, and Northern bal the lads, two or three Old-Bohemian, war-songs composed by Ziska, and one
ty
is
or two Romaic, from the field of investi astonished at the scan gation, and one gleaning of battle-poetry, camp-songs, and rhymes that have been scattered in the wake of great campaigns, and many of the above-mentioned are more histor ical or mythological than descriptive of
abound in all countries; but even the “ Marseillaise,” the gay, ferocious “ Carma gnole," and the “ Qa Ira,” which somebody wrote upon drum-head in the Champ de Mars, do not belong to fighting-poetry.
The actual
business of following into the field the men who represent the tenden cies of any time, and of helping to get
through with the unavoidable fighting jobs which they organize, seems to inspire the same rhetoric in every age, and to reproduce the same set of conventional nar war-images. The range of feeling row; the enthusiasm for great generals in pompous commonplaces; expressed is
SOME
a
VOL.
is
A MAGAZINE
war.
dramatic circumstances of campaign full of the movement and suf fering of great masses of men, in bivouac, upon the march, in the gloomy and peril
of modern history, immense. Every country has, or might have, its own pe— culiar collections. In France the troub les of the League gave an impulse to
retreat, and in the hours when wavering victory suddenly turns and lets her hot lips be kissed, are The scarcely seen, or feebly hinted at. limited, horizon of the battle-field itself total im and impossible to obtain
song-writing, and the productions of Des portes and Bertaut are relics of that time. Historical and revolutionary songs
pression of the picturesque and terrible fact. After the smoke has rolled away, the historian finds position whence the
a
a
a
is
it
is
a
ous defile, during
1
is
The quantity of political songs and ballads, serious and satirical, which were suggested by the great critical moments
even the
VOL- X.
1
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862,by Treason. Al") Frans, of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
in the Clerk‘s Office
