Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/85

Civil War Songs 497 is the relation between words and music. The colourless, seven- syllabled, thrice-repeated line, "Say brothers, will you meet us," is plaintive, if not dreary, in effect. The eleven syllables of "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave," with their stronger vocal quality and their sinister suggestiveness, have a primitive folk-quality and a martial vigour. The iambic heptameters of ' ' Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" rise to the elevation of a religious processional. From the Civil War period the lapse of time and popular consent have elected to preserve a few other melodies, and incidentally the words attached to them, unless these have been displaced by later versions. George F. Root's Battle Cry of Freedom and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching, Henry Clay Work's Marching through Georgia, and Patrick S. Gilmore's When Johnny Comes Marching Home are examples of original words and music'; and James R. Randall's Mary- land, of the successful setting of words to a favourite melody — this time the German Tannenbaum. But they are not genuinely national songs. Maryland belongs, of course, to a state; the others are all marching songs, widely played by bands, occa- sionally resorted to at "patriotic exercises," and kept alive chiefly by their use with special words in colleges, fraternities, and other social groups. Since the Civil War there has been no significant addition to the anthology of patriotic song. The depressing years of Reconstruction, the general trend of industrial development, the tiding in of an enormous immigrant population, and the relaxing effect of the " magnificent isolation " and the "mani- fest destiny" illusions, were all disintegrating rather than uni- fying influences; and songs thrive only with group feeling. Even the Spanish War failed to inspire a lasting song, a fact which is intelligible in the light of the two most insistent memories from that conflict — resentment at the maladministra- tion of the War Department and perplexity before the ominous problems of imperialism. There is a temptation to generalize on the passing favourite song of the World War — Over There. It does not contain great music or any kind of poetry. It meets only one of the require- ments laid down for the fruitless competition of 1861; it is I See, also. Book III, Chap. ii. " See, also, Book III, Chap. in. VOL. Ill — 33