Explore "On the Slain at Chickamauga (Poems from Battle Pieces)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Happy are they and charmed in life / Who through long wars arrive unscarred / At peace. To such the wreath be given, / If they unfalteringly have striven- / In honor, as in limb, unmarred.
Let cheerful praise be rife, / And let them live their years at ease, / Musing on brothers who victorious died- / Loved mates whose memory shall ever please.
And yet mischance is honorable too- / Seeming defeat in conflict justified / Whose end to closing eyes is hid from view.
The will, that never can relent- / The aim, survivor of the bafflement, / Make this memorial due.