His is a name most of us don't immediately associate with poetry, but Herman Melville actually wrote quite a bit of it in his later career, including one long epic about a trip to the Holy Land ('Clarel'). He was a relentless experimenter, and was constantly looking for new outlets for his creative genius and vision (and, unfortunately, new outlets to try and support his family... the fact that a writer as brilliant as Melville could be a commercial and critical failure throughout his writing career is as astonishing as it is discouraging!).
Robert Penn Warren once commented that "the Civil War made Melville a poet." He was referring more or less to Melville's debut poetry collection, Battle-Pieces, which was a cycle of vivid, moving poems inspired by the epic battles and personal tragedies of the war that tore the country apart from 1861-1865. The following is one of my favorites from that collection, and among the most well-known of all of Melville's poems. Its beauty and sadness pretty much speak for themselves, and its relevance to our age (every age?) is perhaps best captured in the powerful lines:
"...dying foemen mingled there -
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve -
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)"
*******
Shiloh (A Requiem)
Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
O'er the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh -
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain,
Through the pauses of the night -
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh, -
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there -
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve -
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
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