- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
- Location
- central NC
Cased ambrotype portrait of C.S.A. Corporal Anthony Sydnor Barksdale (1841-1923), taken 1861 with Mississippi rifle. Courtesy of CMLS.
While the Civil War was immortalized in countless famous poems by famous poets like Howe, Whitman and Timrod, Confederate soldiers wrote poetry too. Many of their poems can be found in the Confederate Memorial Literary Society Manuscript Collections (CMLS) managed by the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. These intimate, personal love poems were written by common soldiers to their wives, families, and sweethearts.
I think these poems can provide a window into a soldier’s life on the frontlines. When read from this perspective they are as remarkable as the writings of the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy. I hope you will enjoy taking a glimpse through the poems that follow.
The poem below was included in a letter written by Corporal Anthony Sydnor Barksdale (pictured above) of Halifax County, Virginia. Corporal Barksdale fought in Company G of the 14th Virginia Infantry and later in the 1st Virginia Artillery. He mailed this poem to his sister Elizabeth “Bettie” Armistead Barksdale on September 1, 1863, thanking her for flowers she had given him.
The bouquet of flowers thou gavest to me
I’ll keep to the last in remembrance of thee
Its beauty may wither, its fragrance depart
But the donor shall not cease to live in this heart.
I can not believe them who so often tell
Of friendship that’s riven by absence strong spell
Ah, no it would cheer us in life’s latest even
And grow brighter and fairer in the lap of heaven.
Yes, Lady the posey though now pale and dead,
Its leaflets all withered, its fragrance all fled
Shall often renew as upon them I gaze,
The mem’ry of holy and simpler days.
As precious will seem each remembrance of me
As the dew to the flower, the bud to the bee;
Deep hid shall they lie in my heart’s inmost shrine
Unfadingly bright, aye forever divine.
A soldier boy’s fate takes me far from my home
From those that I love, the land where I roam,
I’ll keep the sweet flowers, and will not repine.
Ah, no, for they’ll whisper the off’ring was thine.
Sources:
Marius, Richard. The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry. Columbia University Press, 1994.
Steinmetz, Lee. The Poetry of the American Civil War. Michigan State University Press, 1960.