Civil War Poems

Poetry flourished as one of the arts during the 19th century, particularly during the sentimental Victorian era. Newspapers and magazines dedicated hundreds of inches of space – sometimes in one issue – to poetry. While some of these poems were written by authors who are still well known today, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, many were written by poets less illustrious, whether a poet of local renown or a nationally famous poet whose name has fallen by the wayside of history.

The American Civil War inspired countless poets, both published and private, to put to words his or her thoughts and feelings about the war. Yet few of these poems have enjoyed lasting popularity with the public. Considering the importance of the Civil War in American history, the fleeting reputations of these historically relevant poems may seem strange. However, when one considers that most of the well-known Civil War poems of the war era were written in the Victorian style, which can seem wordy and inscrutable to modern readers, this is not so surprising.

Consider Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Timrod. Both were Civil War-era poets, but one’s reputation has grown with time while the other’s has languished.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote one of the first poems that dealt directly with the impending Civil War. Brother Jonathan’s Lament for Sister Caroline, written upon South Carolina’s secession from the Union, does not its name lie. A flowery lament, the poem ends:
Go, then, our rash sister! Afar and aloof, —
Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof;
But when your heart aches and your feet have grown sore,
Remember the pathway that leads to our door!

Henry Timrod, considered the poet laureate of the South after his death, was an accomplished poet who saw little reward for his works during his lifetime. He wrote these words about Charleston on the eve of an 1863 naval attack:

We know not; in the temple of the Fates
God has inscribed her doom:
And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits
The triumph or the tomb.

Although Holmes and Timrod wrote from different perspectives, Holmes a staunch Unionist and Timrod a Southern-bred Confederate, and wrote with entirely different styles, they both feared for the fate of South Carolina and the South as a whole, a fear that was ripe fodder for poetry. But while Holmes was wildly popular during his lifetime, his poetry published in many of the leading newspapers and magazines of the era, his poetry, with its Victorian sentimentality, has not stood the test of time. Timrod, on the other hand, was little-known and rarely published during his lifetime, but his more classical and understated style seems contemporary even today.

Poetry was one of the more popular forms of literature during the Civil War-era, and as a result, many poems were written during that time period that deal with the War. While many of these poems can seem outdated and flowery to modern readers, some of stood the test of time and remain as a record of the war in literature.