I received the sad intelligence
Of Juliet’s demise.
That sweet good girl now peaceful sleeps,
At rest in Paradise.
We lay last night in Snickers Gap,
Endured a foul brass band.
Midst sharps and flats, I wrote to Jane;
My friends and I shook hands.
We hope that we shall meet again
As victors on the field.
Without a faith in God above
What thorns this life would yield.
Our cavalcade has halted
In a meadow by a stream.
Two drovers work to drown a mule.
We listen to it scream.
***
This is one of the "Chestnut Ridge" poems I've included in my new manuscript, Vocation. Along with incorporating mid-nineteenth-century-esque rhythm, rhyme, and themes, the poem borrows incidents from a collection of Civil War-era letters: Extracts
from the Letters of Alfred B. McCalmont, Late Lt.-Col., 142d Regt., Col. 208th
Regt., and Brev. Brig.-Gen. Pennsylvania Volunteers, from the Front during the
War of the Rebellion, which were privately published by McCalmont's family in 1908. I have not been able to ascertain where McCalmont himself was from, but the regiment drew recruits from many western Pennsylvania counties, among them Fayette, Somerset, and Westmoreland. McCalmont took command of the regiment at Gettysburg, after the colonel fell, and led the men through many terrible battles, including those at Spotsylvania and the Wilderness. The regiment was present at Appomattox, when Lee surrendered.
3 comments:
An authentic-sounding rendering of a period "verse voice", Dawn. No mean feat.
The ending is contemporary, though. Even Whitman wouldn't have finished with such a raw image.
I loved this poem the first time I read it and my experience was even better the second time. So vivid and musical. I'm trying to remember why you said they drowned mules, was it when the animals were injured or simply because they no longer had any use for them?
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