Letters From the Field

If Sophia was alive to speak to us today . . .

The war came to every household in the newspapers, and periodicals. We learned to read the names of places as if they were names of affliction—Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, then Atlanta. Porter County had sent its own men, and Chicago had sent many more, so that Illinois and Indiana seemed bound together upon the same hard road. No battle was wholly distant when some mother, sister, wife, or promised heart waited for tidings from it.

But the war came to me in another manner also. Richard wrote.

His letters carried what no newspaper column could carry. He did not write as other men wrote, or so it seemed to me then. Even when he spoke of hardship, of marches, of danger, of the suffering he had seen among men, there was in him that necessity of expression which belonged to his nature. He could not pass grief by in silence. He must give it form. Sometimes that form was a letter; sometimes it was a poem; sometimes a verse he had sent, or meant to send, into the world.

I was not only reading what the public read of him — his poetry was widely published. At times I was reading what came first to me in his own hand.

That was a tenderness I scarcely knew how to name, though I did not then understand it so. The newspapers told me where the armies had moved. Richard’s letters told me where his spirit had been. Between the two, the war entered my daily life. It came into the schoolroom, into the quiet hours after work was done, into my prayers, and to my hand as I penned my response to him from part of the heart where hope begins before it has given itself permission to speak.

My Sword Song

By Richard Realf

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 clangs in a lordly way,

Like the ring of an armed heel:

And this is the song which day by day

It sings with its lips of steel:

“Oh, friend from whom, a hundred times,

I have felt the steadfast grip

Of the all-renouncing love that climbs

The heights of fellowship,

Are you tired with treading the weary miles,

Are you faint with your bleeding limbs?

Do you hunger back for the olden smiles,

And the sound of the olden hymns?

“Has your heart grown weak since the radiant hour

When you leaped with a single bound

From your dreamy ease to the sovereign power

Of a living soul world-crowned?

Behold! the aloes of sacrifice

Are better than any wine;

And the bloody sweat of a Cause like this

Is an agony divine.

“Under the wail of the shuddering world,

A moaning for its dead sons:

Over the bellowing thunders hurled

From the throats of wrathful guns;

Above the roar of the plunging line

That rocks with the fury of hell,

Runs the absolute voice— ’0 Earth of mine,

Be patient, for all is well!’”

Thus sings my sword to my soul; and I,

Albeit the way is long,

And black clouds thicken athwart the sky,

Still keep my spirit strong;

For whether I live, or whether I lie

On the red ground ghastly arid stark,

Beyond the carnage I shall descry

God shining across the dark.

A SOLDIER’S PSALM OF WOMAN.

By Richard Realf

Down all the shining lapse of days

That grow, and grow forever

In truer love and better praise

Of the Almighty Giver—

Whatever God-like impulses

Have blossomed in the human,

The most divine and fair of these

Sprang from the soul of woman.

Her heart it is preserves the flower

Of sacrificial duty,

Which, blown across the blackest hour,

Transfigures it to beauty;

Her hands that streak these solemn years

With vivifying graces,

And crown the foreheads of our fears

With light from higher places.

O wives and mothers, sanctified

By holy consecrations,

Turning our weariness aside

With blessed ministrations!

O maidens, in whose dewy eyes

Perennial comforts glitter,

Untangling War’s dark mysteries

And making sweet the bitter;—

In desolate paths, on dangerous posts,

By places which, to-morrow,

Shall be unto these bannered hosts

Aceldamas of sorrow,

We hear the sound of helping feet,

We feel your soft caressing;

And all our life starts up to greet

Your lovingness and blessing!

On cots of pain, on beds of woe,

Where stricken heroes languish,

Wan faces smile and sick hearts grow

Triumphant over anguish;

While souls that starve in lonely gloom

Flush green in odorous praises,

And all the lovely pallets bloom

With Gratitude’s white daisies.

O lips that from our wounds have sucked

The fever and the burning!

O tender fingers that have plucked

The madness from our mourning!

O hearts that beat so loyal true

For soothing and for saving—

God send your own hopes back to you,

Crowned with immortal having!

Thank God!—O Love! whereby we know

Beyond our little seeing,

And feel serene compassions flow

Around the ache of being;—

Lo! clear o’er all our pain and dread

Of our most sore affliction,

The shining wings of Peace are spread

In brooding benediction!

Richard’s service in the army was not without honor. I knew, as others knew, that he had been noticed for bravery. At Missionary Ridge, when the color-bearer fell, he carried the colors forward himself; and at Franklin, where so many brave men were tried beyond measure, his conduct again drew praise.

It was not difficult to believe. There was always in him a courage that answered quickly to danger, especially when danger came clothed in a noble cause. I learned from those who served with him that Richard could be fearless before shot and shell, tender toward the poor and oppressed, and steady in harder duties by which one human heart becomes bound to another.