{"id":171,"date":"2025-08-17T18:37:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T18:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/?page_id=171"},"modified":"2025-09-27T19:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T19:53:09","slug":"herman-melville-shiloh-a-requiem-1866","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/texts\/herman-melville-shiloh-a-requiem-1866\/","title":{"rendered":"Herman Melville, \u201cShiloh: A Requiem\u201d (1866)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Melville\"<\/a>
Herman Melville, c. 1860 (Library of America<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Herman Melville<\/a> (1819\u20131891) was born in New York to a family with a distinguished American pedigree –his paternal grandfather had participated in the Boston Tea Party while his maternal grandfather (from Albany) had been a military hero and high ranking officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.\u00a0 But Melville’s childhood was difficult as the family struggled with unexpected financial setbacks and especially after his father died when he was thirteen.\u00a0 Melville worked in various jobs but eventually found a career in the whaling industry and ended up traveling the world in his 20s and 30s.\u00a0 He then wrote about these experiences, culminating in his masterwork, the novel\u00a0Moby-Dick\u00a0<\/em>(1851).\u00a0 Melville was a published author and respected by critics, but he was unable to earn enough income to support his family, even after he turned mostly to magazine journalism and short story writing.\u00a0 During the Civil War, Melville lived in the North, and continued to pursue various money-making endeavors.\u00a0 He also began writing poetry. He published his first volume of poem, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War<\/em>, in 1866.\u00a0 “Shiloh: A Requiem” appeared in this collection.\u00a0 The poem described one of the bloodiest and most important battles of the early phase of the war, the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862.\u00a0 The battle took place near Pittsburg Landing, along the Mississippi River, in southwestern Tennessee.\u00a0 Union general Ulysses Grant’s Federal troops defeated Confederate forces, but only after nearly retreating in the face of a surprise attack.\u00a0 There were nearly 24,000 casualties in total, including about 3,400 dead across both armies.\u00a0 \u00a0Melville’s poems were not well regarded in his lifetime and he spent most of the rest of his career working in the U.S. Customs office in New York.\u00a0 He died in near obscurity in 1891.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Shiloh: A Requiem (April 1862)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
\nThe swallows fly low
\nOver the field in clouded days,
\nThe forest-field of Shiloh\u2014
\nOver the field where April rain
\nSolaced the parched ones stretched in pain
\nthrough the pause of night
\nThat followed the Sunday fight
\nAround the church of Shiloh\u2014
\nThe church so lone, the log-built one,
\nThat echoed to many a parting groan
\nAnd natural prayer
\nOf dying foemen mingled there\u2014
\nFoemen at morn, but friends at eve\u2014
\nFame or country least their care:
\n(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
\nBut now they lie low,
\nWhile over them the swallows skim,
\nAnd all is hushed at Shiloh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herman Melville (1819\u20131891) was born in New York to a family with a distinguished American pedigree –his paternal grandfather had participated in the Boston Tea Party while his maternal grandfather (from Albany) had been a military hero and high ranking officer in the Continental Army […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"parent":258,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-171","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":831,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions\/831"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/fys-pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}