Shiloh
by Herman Melville

American novelist, poet and short story writer.

Best known for his novels of the sea including Moby Dick (1851). His other works include Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), White-Jacket (1850), Pierre, or the Ambiguities (1852), Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), the satirical The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), four collections of verse including Timoleon (1891) and a number of sketches and short stories for magazines, some of which were collected in The Piazza Tales (1856).

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Shiloh
by Herman Melville

A Requiem

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
O'er the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh -
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain,
Through the pauses of the night -
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh, -
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there -
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve -
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

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Shiloh by Herman Melville