Explore "An Uninscribed Monument (Poems from Battle Pieces)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"On one of the Battle-fields of the Wilderness"
Silence and solitude may hint / (Whose home is in yon piney wood) / What I, though tableted, could never tell- / The din which here befell, / And striving of the multitude.
The iron cones and spheres of death / Set round me in their rust, / These, too, if just, / Shall speak with more than animated breath.
Thou who beholdest, if thy thought, / Not narrowed down to personal cheer, / Take in the import of the quiet here- / The after-quiet-the calm full fraught; / Thou too wilt silent stand- / Silent as I, and lonesome as the land.