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FOLK-SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR. 39 |
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popular in the Southern army as a song as it is vigorous and spirited as a piece of pure literature. But as a whole, songs which have been sung by large bodies of men, under stress of high excitement, have depended more upon their sound than their meaning for their vogue, and this would doubtless apply to the chants of the Crusaders as to the choruses of the Northern and Southern soldiers during the civil war. God save the King does not compare with Ye Mariners of England in any element of poetry, yet the one is always sung and the latter never; and Marching through Georgia depends upon its air rather than its commonplace words for its hold upon the martial heart. There was some good poetry written during the late civil war, although not much; and in the collections, as I have said, it is doubtful if the respectable verses, in which the incidents and feelings of the war were expressed with deliberate art, have the vitality, as they have not now the effect, of the rude rhymes and commonplace sentimentality of those songs which took hold of the hearts of the people, and were the living voices of the war. Too often they had the contortions of patriotism without its inspiration, and were forcible-feeble in appeal, or, when they attempted to interpret the spirit of battle, rang false to the real feeling and knowledge of the soldier. To |
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