Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War

by Herman Melville

Monks blessed the fraticidal lance,

And sisters scarfs could twine.

Do North and South the sin retain

Of Yorkist and Lancastrian?

But Rosecrans in the cedarn glade,

And, deep in denser cypress gloom,

Dark Breckenridge, shall fade away

Or thinly loom.

The pale throngs who in forest cowed

Before the spell of battle’s pause,