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Herman Melville - Stonewall Jackson (Ascribed To A Virginian)
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One man we claim of wrought reknown
  Which not the North shall care to slur;
A Modern lived who sleeps in death,
  Calm as the marble Ancients are:
    `Tis he whose life, though a vapor`s wreath,
    Was charged with the lightning`s burning breath —
      Stonewall, stormer of the war.
      
But who shall hymn the Roman heart?
  A stoic he, but even more:
The iron will and lion thew
  Were strong to inflict as to endure:
Who like him could stand, or pursue?
His fate the fatalist followed through;
In all his great soul found to do
      Stonewall followed his star.
    
He followed his star on the Romney march
  Through the sleet to the wintry war;
And he followed it on when he bowed the grain —
  The Wind of the Shenandoah;
    At Gaines`s Mill in the giants` strain —
    On the fierce forced stride to Manassas-plain,
    Where his sword with thunder was clothed again,
        Stonewall followed his star.
        
His star he followed athwart the flood
  To Potomac`s Northern shore,
When midway wading, his host of braves
  "My Maryland!" loud did roar —
      To red Antietam`s field of graves,
      Through mountain-passes, woods, and waves,
      They followed their pagod with hymns and glaives,
          For Stonewall followed a star.
          
Back it led him to Marye`s slope,
  Where the shock and the fame he bore;
And to green Moss-Neck it guided him —
  Brief respite from throes of war:
    To the laurel glade by the Wilderness grim,
    Through climxed victory naught shall dim,
    Even unto death it piloted him —
          Stonewall followed his star.
          
Its lead he followed in gentle ways
  Which never the valiant mar;
A cap we sent him. bestarred, to replace
  The sun-scorched helm of war:
    A fillet he made of the shining lace
    Childhood`s laughing brow to grace —
           Not his was a goldsmith`s star.
           
O, much of doubt in after days
  Shall cling, as now, to the war;
Of the right and the wrong they`ll still debate,
   Puzzled by Stonewall`s star:
     "Fortune went with the North elate,"
     "Ay, but the South had Stonewall`s weight,
            And he fell in the South`s great war."
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