How many hearts have sighed.
How many like that drummer boy,
Who prayed before he died.
—Will S. Hays.
The years intervening between the Battle of Shiloh and the present have softened the harshness of the engagement and wrapped it in a shroud of sentimental romanticism. Most twentieth-century writers are content to view the battle from that perspective. Occasionally a realist, such as Shelby Foote in his historical novel, “Shiloh,” penetrates the rosy glow and brings forth interesting and all-but-forgotten facts. Dr. Merrick F. McCarthy, another twentieth-century writer, presents an accurate and vivid picture of the battle in the following poem:
FOUR VOICES FROM SHILOH[2]
Stern Johnston came in April from the South
To spread the Shiloh fields with threatening Gray!
Hard Sherman set his unrelenting mouth,
And Grant knew not the season or the day,