Fold him in his country’s stars.
Roll the drum and fire the volley!
What to him are all our wars,
What but death bemocking folly?George Henry Booker
[Sonnet]
By George Henry Boker
Brave comrade, answer! When you joined the war,
What left you? “Wife and children, wealth and friends,
A storied home whose ancient roof-tree bends
Above such thoughts as love tells o’er and o’er.”
Had you no pang or struggle? “Yes; I bore
Such pain on parting as at hell’s gate rends
The entering soul, when from its grasp ascends
The last faint virtue which on earth it wore.”
You loved your home, your kindred, children, wife;
You loathed yet plunged into war’s bloody whirl!—
What urged you? “Duty! Something more than life.
That which made Abraham bare the priestly knife,
And Isaac kneel, or that young Hebrew girl
Who sought her father coming from the strife.”
Another poet closely linked with the Union was George Henry Boker. Boker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania into a wealthy family. His father Charles Boker was the president of several banks, and by whose intelligence and financial wisdom was able to successfully steer them through the troubled economic cycle of the late 1830’s. His son took advantage of his privileged economic station by pursuing interests other than business, becoming an accomplished poet, playwright and dancer.
The Civil War focused Boker’s writing on the Union Cause, and changed him forever politically, from a Democrat to a Republican. Boker published widely during the war in periodicals and magazines, including a volume in 1864 titled fittingly, “Poems of the War.” Boker’s writing fit the times he lived. He did not push any new boundaries in terms of style and form, but hidden among his words are some interesting phrases and ideas, the guilt of the Northern upper class caught in the maelstrom of the times, he himself, his father’s Abraham.
In the Wilderness
By George Henry Boker
Mangled, uncared for, suffering thro’ the night
With heavenly patience the poor boy had lain;
Under the dreary shadows, left and right,
Groaned on the wounded, stiffened out the slain.
What faith sustained his lone,
Brave heart to make no moan,
To send no cry from that blood-sprinkled sod,
Is a close mystery with him and God.
But when the light came, and the morning dew
Glittered around him, like a golden lake,
And every dripping flower with deepened hue
Looked through its tears for very pity’s sake,
He moved his aching head
Upon his rugged bed,
And smiled as a blue violet, virgin-meek,
Laid her pure kiss upon his withered cheek.
At once there circled in his waking heart
A thousand memories of distant home;
Of how those same blue violets would start
Along his native fields, and some would roam
Down his dear humming brooks,
To hide in secret nooks,
And, shyly met, in nodding circles swing,
Like gossips murmuring at belated Spring.
And then he thought of the beloved hands
That with his own had plucked the modest flower.
The blue-eyed maiden, crowned with golden bands,
Who ruled as sovereign of that sunny hour.
She at whose soft command
He joined the mustering band,
She for whose sake he lay so firm and still,
Despite his pangs, not questioned then her will.
So, lost in thought, scarce conscious of the deed,
Culling the violets, here and there he crept
Slowly—ah! slowly,—for his wound would bleed;
And the sweet flowers themselves half smiled, half wept,
To be thus gathered in
By hands so pale and thin,
By fingers trembling as they neatly laid
Stem upon stem, and bound them in a braid.
The strangest posy ever fashioned yet
Was clasped against the bosom of the lad,
As we, the seekers for the wounded, set
His form upon our shoulders bowed and sad;
Though he but seemed to think
How violets nod and wink;
And as we cheered him, for the path was wild,
He only looked upon his flowers and smiled.
Fourteen Lines 