Enoch Adams poems

[underlined text is indicated with the [u] tag throughout]

Sonnets.

My Libby Prison.
By [Lieutenant Enoch G. Adams]
[Company D.] [2nd New Hampshire Regiment]

Not in the damp, the loathsome prisoner-cell
Where our brave soldiers eke reluctant time
While the fierce glance of rebel guards, like hell,
Burns out amid the darkness and the grime
Would I refuse, Great God deliverance give
In battle’s hour when rampant Hate stalks out
With all her harpy brood, like angry hive
That swarms the more, the more you fight and shout.
Avert the captive’s fate, the captive’s lot!
In the pure heart of her I love so well,
Who bore [u] that name [/u] before connubial knot
Would I forever like a pilgrim dwell,
Till overpast was every fierce baptism
And e’en in death that heart should yield me chrism

The Freed Contrabands.

O list the beat of oars upon the tide!
From yon black gunboat lying long and low
Like a leviathan the waves astride —
Comes a swift boat across the azure flow,
That kisses like a lover the fleet keel
That nears the strand. What freightage bear
The jolly tars so well they laugh and feel?
The swarthy forms, at once, the truth declare;
They bring the slave to Freedom’s priceless boon.
E’en now they scarcely touch her garment’s hem
How their eyes glitter like the rising moon
That gives completeness to night’s diadem
And when they dance on Freedom’s soil, there swells
In their dark hearts the flame that fired a Tell’s

Shells & Pebbles.

In the fierce struggle of the watery flood
When waves, like white innumerable hands,
Wrung at the agony some deed of blood
Hath made, toss round, in maniac wrath, the sands
Pebbles are moulded, and their oval shape,
Ever the mark of beauty, then they win.
From shells their roughness the wild waters scrape
As sad adversity will wash off sin.
And they have glorious hues which ‘mid a calm
Lay hidden till the storm the casket broke
And ‘mid the tempest and its wild alarm
Their varied splendor into being woke,
As some great soul when daylight’s rays expire
Gleams in the gathering gloom like minster’s spire.

To an Owl that Frequents the Camp
of the Second New Hampshire Regiment
Point Lookout, Maryland

Say, thou tame owl, that frequents this spot,
Art thou the ghost of Secession or not?
Thine eyes are closed in the daylight so clear
But ope to their full when the darkness is here.
Thou’rt befitting type of Rebellion’s chief
Who sits in the midst of his kingdom brief
On his hollow throne, like a heartless oak
And hoots to his confreres his desolate croak.
And the press that is then like mocking-bird,
A vagabond wand’rer, repeats every word.
It echoes likewise, what he fain would conceal
The throes that a people in agony feel,
Who know that their chief, whom their hopes were upon,
Is blind as an owl in the light of the sun.
Go, thou sad bird, to the sand-covered graves
That hold in their bosoms Jeff. Davis’s slaves,
Who died that a Grant might grind them to dust,
And there hoot thy fill, if be hooting thou must,
Or else where the children are starving and cold,
Like lambs in the winter’s storm lost from the fold,
While the embers are low, and the wind whistles bleak,
Superadd to the darkness thy ill-omened shriek,

Where woman is cowering in solitude dumb,
And watches for footsteps that never will come
As a cavern the sun cannot visit with ray,
So scatter the damp and miasma away,
Is the whole southern country in sadness and gloom,
And haunted with robbers, like Edomite’s tomb:
O there build thy nest ‘midst the mold and the damp,
Where thy eyes are not dazzled by Liberty’s lamp,
And there rear thy nestlings, and learn them to shriek,
As thy prototype Jeff did his fool-hardy clique.
‘Tis no place for thee where the star-spangled banner
Floats up on the breeze like a nation’s hosanna,
And bugles and drums sound the march of the free,
Progressing resistless as wave on the sea.
But if thou wilt dwell on this side of the river,
Alight in the camp where the war pris’ners shiver,
And when their scant fires, like the cricket shall hum,
As they warm their thin fingers, uncleanly and numb,
Like a genius of ill, flutter down through the smoke,
And give for their vaunted Rebellion a croak,
Sure they will respond with a yell and a howl,
And own thee their brother, thou ill-visaged owl!

Dec 21st, 1863.

The Old Cedar Tree of Point Lookout
By [Lieutenant Enoch G. Adams]
Company D., [Second New Hampshire Regiment]

There’s a cedar-tree, neither a giant nor dwarf
That stands by the roadside half down to the wharf,
It standeth alone and without compeers,
A monument green of the withered years,
Which purple and yellow, and soon are lost,
Like the leaves of the Autumn when touched by the frost.
O many the scenes that have passed o’er the land
Since a chrysalis shrub it first peered from the sand
Uplifting its branches the Heaven to gain,
But bound to the Earth by its roots like a chain!
Here roamed the red chieftains and shook their gay plumes,
But there’s not one lone mourner to weep at their tombs,
All gone to the hunting-grounds distant and far
From the clime of the Earth as the furthermost star.
The winds they bewail them, the waters bemoan,
But on Earth to their honor is seared not a stone
No trace is there left but the name of each river,
That echoes their memory forever and ever
Their camp-fires are smothered, their war-dance is ended
Their arrows are broken and cannot be mended,
Their peace-pipe has fallen amid the dead embers,
Nor their hate nor their love is there one that remembers.

But Nature as if the sad wrong to atone
Each mood that they had has made one of her own,
When she comes in the wind, ‘tis the whar-whoop so loud
That falls like a terror from dusky-hued cloud,
When she comes in the storm, ‘tis the portrait of chief
That stands in the sky in an alto-relief,
And when all the rage is displayed he desires
With a rainbow he girds himself as he retires,
When she walks o’er the heaven with myriads of stars,
They shine like the gallant braves home from the wars,
When the rays of the morning first redden the East,
It glows like a camp-village making a feast,
And when in the West has the chief called the Sun,
His grand daily pilgrimage ended and done,
With spirit unconquered sand undaunted ire
He dies, for he kindles his own funeral pyre.
From Time’s tablet no hand their remembrance can rub
Till the wheel of the Universe breaks at the hub.
This cedar-tree saw them that stands by this river,
But they’re gone like the arrows from war-chieftain’s quiver.
While they wasted and withered, it flourished and grew,
From the bowl of the sky drinking brimmers of dew;
Though firmer the roots by which held to the sod,
Its green branches even kept reaching to God,
While Time was of other things close-handed gleaner,
‘Mid all changes it only grew stronger and greener,
And next from the Eastern world saw it a bark,
Like single star ploughing abyss of the dark,

It held in its forecastle gleam of a light,
LIke the seed of Prometheus to scatter the night. *
And here on this little lone headland of sand
Was scared the first altar of free Maryland,
And still in its glory the vestal fire burns,
And shall while the wheel of the Universe turns.
This cedar-tree next our forefathers beheld
When they gallantly tide of oppression repelled,
When the boom of their cannon, the sear of their guns
Proclaimed to the world they were Liberty’s sons,
As the lion they drove to his far island lair
While the eagle of freedom soared high in the air,
And bore as a motto in triumphant beak,
A song that was born of the blue Chesapeake,
“The star-spangled banner”, the hymn of the free
That like Venus in beauty rose out of the sea †
And last in a green and a hearty old age,
This cedar-tree saw in their impotent rage
A base band of sailors assail the old slate
That had weathered such tempests of anger and hate,
Unquenched was the fire and unrisen the altar,
It stood in the whirlwind like rock of Gibraltar,
The clouds round its base, but its summit all clear,
And over it hung in the blue hemisphere
The star-spangled banner, like rainbow unfurled,
Creation of Heaven, yet touching the world,

A promise that Slavery with dark crimson flood
Should nevermore deluge the nation with blood.

* It is to the lasting honor of Maryland to have been
the first of the Colonies to pass an act tolerating
all religious sects and creeds, and the first of
the States to adopt universal suffrage.
Baltimore American

† It was a son of Maryland who penned within
sight of Baltimore [on board a British
ship as a Prisoner of war] our great National
Ode, the inspiring strains of which have stirred
to enthusiasm the brave soldiers of the Republic
Baltimore American

The Holly Tree
By [Lieutenant Enoch G. Adams], Co. D. 2d N. H. V.

O look at the beautiful evergreen holly,
And banish the demon of Melancholy,
Though girded around with a cordon of wire,
Let thy fingers as light play over the lyre,
Confined in the army that vast iron cage
The demon of Slavery has forged for the Age,
Like Bunyan that gilded his dungeon with glory,
And wrote for all ages the Pilgrim’s sweet story.
So sing on, thou pact soul, ‘midst the wild rattle
That heralds the still wilder din of the battle.
When the forest is naked and shame-facѐd grieves
As our first Mother did without garment of leaves,
Though unending verdure we lost by her folly
God spared us the beautiful evergreen holly.
Its leaves they are mailed ‘gainst the ice and the frost,
A living memento of Paradise lost.
As the sweet hope of heaven through all the dark years
The holly grows greener as winter appears,
And its berries as brightly and smilingly glow

As the babe Jesus did in the time long ago
When the wise men assembled from regions afar,
Like stray beams of light back returned to their star.
O would that the warfare of nations would cease
As they did at his birth-time, the sweet Prince of Peace,
And tyranny perish and anger and folly,
But freedom still flourish like evergreen holly.

Maryland Inaugurating Emancipation.
By Lieut. Enoch G. Adams
Company D. Second New Hampshire Regt.

The morning has come with its rosy blooms
To the maniac that wandered amongst the tombs,
She sits at the feet of Omnipotence
With the first bright dawn of returning sense,
She has cast the ancient tablets aside
Whereon were graven her shame and her pride,
And takes the law that the Savior gave,
“Unloose the shackles and free the slave.”
From the Alleghenies’ blue-lipped peak
To the southern shores on the Chesapeake
The cry goes forth and the blue air sings,
As its depths we stirred with angelic wings.
The cry is “Peace and Good-will to man”
The same that the era of Christ began.
Mary who brought alabaster box,
Wiping the Savior’s feet with her locks,
Who forever lives in remembrance sweet
As the ointment wherewith she anointed his feet,
Not more the regard of Jehovah gained
Than Maryland freeing the long-enchained,
More precious than ointment the highest priced
What she does to them she has done to Christ.

Chattanooga *
By Lieut. Enoch G. Adams C. D. 2d N. H. R.

A newborn glory gildeth our flag
Since the victory over the boastful Bragg,
The sky is brighter, the canopy huger
Since the gallant triumph of Chattanooga.
From Lookout’s summit I see the day
Dispelling the night of Rebellion away,
And Peace upreareth her rainbow bridge
With one end resting on Mission Ridge.
As the ark of humanity erst-times times sat
On the glorious summit of Ararat,
And sent out her dove, which returned with a branch,
Unwithered left from the avalanche
Of waters that God in his wrath had hurled
From the mount of his might on the vale of the world,
So the ark of Freedom on Lookout’s crest
Is a gorgeous herald of coming rest,
Above it is floating the flay of stars
On a breeze that is born on a nations huzzas,
And all freemen of earth, as they catch the glad sight,

Rim the horizon with the shout of delight.
In the midst of the wildness, barren and dark,
A focus of glory was Israelite’s ark,
When a pale of deep blackness enshrouded Earth’s things
Still wafted was light from the cherubim’s wings,
(For the clouds of the earth are like motes in a beam,
When the fount is the Godhead whence light in the stream)
So ‘midst the wild tempest that over us broke
When the land was beclouded with war’s sulphur smoke,
When perished our young men like things of an hour,
The wheat of our country mown down in its flour,
When Manhood that grew through the full-rounded years
The hail of the musketry cut like a shears,
While we stood on the verge of Destruction’s abyss,
And could hear the wild surges of Anarchy hiss,
When all stars that we saw were the stars of our flag,
So riddled with bullets, it hung like a rag,
When the sky was all black and no cloud-rent of blue
Let one beam of glory the hurricane through,
Still then, although hid from our battle-dimmed sight,
Our eagle soared high in the smile of God’s light,
No arrow from quiver a Rebel e’er drew
Could bring that proud bird from his home in the blue,
When the smoke of the battle from Lookout was whirled

And lay in the vale like a night on the world,
As our comrades that eminence valiantly trod,
The prophets of Freedom as Moses of God,
Far over the summit in thin atmosphere,
The tempest just ended had rendered more clear,
Our emblem of glory, unfettered, unstained,
Soared out from his nest on the crest they had gained,
And upward his flight, as our nation’s shall be,
For God has ordained that this world shall be free.


* Chattanooga is an Indian word meaning
“Eagle’s nest.”