To my mother and to the memory of my father....

As this is a poem, not a history, it has seemed unnecessary to me to encumber it with notes, bibliography, and other historical apparatus. Nevertheless⁠—besides such original sources as the Official R...

American muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land, As mountainous-deep, as flowered wi...

He closed the Bible carefully, putting it down As if his fingers loved it. Then he turned. “Mr. Mate.” “Yes, sir.” The captain’s eyes held a shadow. “I think, while this weather lasts,” he said, after...

Jack Ellyat had been out all day alone, Except for his new gun and Ned, the setter, The old wise dog with Autumn in his eyes, Who stepped the fallen leaves so delicately They barely rustled. Ellyat tr...

A smoke-stained Stars-and-Stripes droops from a broken toothpick and ninety tired men march out of fallen Sumter to their ships, drums rattling and colors flying. Their faces are worn and angry, their...

By Pittsburg Landing, the turbid Tennessee Sucks against black, soaked spiles with soil-colored waters. That country is huge and disorderly, even now. —This is Ellyat’s tune, this is no tune but his⁠—...

Strike up, strike up for Wingate’s tune, Strike up for Sally Dupré! Strike up, strike up for the April moon, And the rain on the lilac spray! For Wingate Hall in its pride once more, For the branch of...

It was still hot in Washington, that September, Hot in the city, hot in the White House rooms, Desiccate heat, dry as a palmleaf fan, That makes hot men tuck cotton handkerchiefs Between their collars...

Cudjo breathed on the silver urn And rubbed till his hand began to burn, With his hoarded scrap of chamois-skin. The metal glittered like bright new tin And yet, as he labored, his mouth was sad⁠— “Ti...

They came on to fish-hook Gettysburg in this way, after this fashion. Over hot pikes heavy with pollen, past fields where the wheat was high. Peaches grew in the orchards; it was a fertile country, Fu...

It is over now, but they will not let it be over. It was over with John Brown when the sun rose up To show him the town in arms and he did not flee, Yet men were killed after that, before it was over,...