Sunday 25 February 2018

America in the Oxford DNB | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography


I had anticipated finding something on the English-American poet Richard Realf (1832-1878), but alas, there's nowt there!  Wikipedia at least has an entry for him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Realf although, even here, there is, as yet,  no mention of Lady Byron in England or anything on this former connection in England.
I'm still left reeling, gasping almost, after having read his poem for the first time:
"Written on the Night of His Suicide", I won't include  Hinton's comments to this, which are quite remarkable, together with some of the American Civil War poems that are similarly quite astonishing: "Apocalypse", for example, with its monorhyme scheme (a, a, a):

Straight to his heart the bullet crushed;

Down from his breast the red blood gushed,

And over his face a glory rushed.


A sudden spasm shook his frame,

And in his ears there went and came

A sound as of devouring flame


The first stanza of his poem "My Sword Song"[published in the
Chicago Tribune late in the fall of 1862] sounds so much like Kipling's similar use of 8 lines per stanza and the rhyming scheme (a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d)  

Day in, day out, through the long campaign, 
I march in my place in the ranks; 
And whether it shine or whether it rain, 
My good sword cheerily clanks; 
It clanks and clanks in a knightly way 
Like the ring of an armored heel; 
And this is the song which day by day, 
It sings with its lips of steel: 

Further, when one reads the actual background to such a poem in his friend Richard J. Hinton's 'Memoir'(1898) and discovers its provenance, the comparison with Byron (and the immortal  John Brown), which William McDevitt in 1918 so wished to emphasize for the inhabitants of San Francisco, becomes much clearer: 

"Realf was in the brigade commanded by General Lytle, serving as a non-commissioned officer. Both met as such when duty permitted, and became warm 
friends. During the forward movement which closed 
for the time in the occupancy of Chattanooga and the 
great battle of Chickamauga, General Lytle made a 
speech at Bridgport, Alabama. " Vates " illustrates its 
effect on Realf , and expresses also the admiration he 
felt. The MS. of the sonnet was in the General's vest 
pocket, and was penetrated by the bullet that killed 
him during the early morning hours of September 20, 
1863, when directly in front of the regiment of which 
Realf was sergeant-major. It was the second day of 
the Chickamauga fighting. The sonnet and a MS. copy 
of "My Sword Song," were soaked red with Lytle's 
blood." (POEMS BY RICHARD REALF POET, SOLDIER, WORKMAN WITH A MEMOIR BY 
RICHARD J. HINTON  (New York & London: FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY,1898), p.cix.

The poet Richard Realf, born in Framfield, East Sussex 14 June 1832, didn't travel to the United States until 1854,  really does deserve a place in the ODNB. That Ambrose Bierce cited from Realf's poems in his letter to the young Herman George Scheffauer in 1895 [quote] must surely have something to do with his seeing something similar in their poetical approach, i.e. "speech that rushed up hotly from the heart"?
Astonishing too, if one considers that both Realf and Bierce were at the Battle of Chickamauga (September 18 – 20, 1863). Why was Bierce doing this?

Added Friday 10 April 2020

Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce (14:39 minutes) Audiobook,  spoken text of story


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a8fvofP-ps


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