Fort Fisher Sounds by Dennis Allen Lange

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Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! The Union navy fires!
Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! – the Civil War’s bass choirs.
Boom, boom! Fort Fisher’s what the cannon’s see
As North tests its invincibility.

Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! Shells whistle, fall, and crash!
Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! They fall like fists and smash!
Boom, boom! Boom, boom!  And one by one the guns
Within the fort become exploding suns.

Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! The navy’s cannons roar!
Boom, boom!  Boom, boom! Can ears take any more?!
Boom, boom!  Midst shells, the fort can see (boom, boom!)
The blue ranks forming in the smoke and gloom.

Then silence yawns –
…………………………………..a bird, if live, could sing,
Be clearly heard if ears did not still ring.
A caterpillar, in his softest crawl
Would sound like chalk that screeches on the wall.

Did some slip to the ugly booming brutes
And quickly push on all the buttons – Mute?
Or did the noisy nightmare swiftly end
And all awake at once, calm comprehend?

And then –
…………………shrieks, moans, and whistles – boats begin!
Shriek, shriek! Whistle, whistle! A hellish din!
And all the demons in the devil’s hell
Were screaming, shrieking, moaning – whistles tell

Two armies of the blue to charge the fort
That guarded well the Carolina port.
A rata, a rata, a rat tat tat!
Crescendo swells! A rata tat tat!

Shriek, shriek! Whistle, whistle! They blow and moan!
Guns roar! Men yell! They fall dead with a groan.
The cannons more selective now – boom, boom!
And midst the sounds, Fort Fisher meets its doom.

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Another poem of mine about Fort Fisher:
https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/impregnable-fort-fisher-by-dennis-allen-lange/

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http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/fortfisher/history-articles/fort-fisher.html

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Almost Worth It by Dennis Allen Lange

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Atlanta lost, like some prized wedding ring
Whose bride can ne’er recover from the sting,
Hood’s Rebel army marched to Tennessee
To search the western vales for victory.

And on the trek, Pat Cleburne saw a place
So beautiful a smile came on his face –
A church and cemetery, and Pat swore,
“Why, this is almost worth one’s dying for!”

Just two weeks later, it became his bed
For he, at Franklin, was among the dead.
And though he laid there, blind to e’en the stars,
The nations foolishly keep fighting wars.

—

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The picture is mine of a mural of General Pat Cleburne
that is on a wall of a building in downtown Cleburne, Texas.

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Cleburne was at first buried elsewhere, but someone
remembering his words urged that he be buried at that
site.  He was, but was later buried in his “hometown” of
Helena, Arkansas.

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2016.

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