Chapter III: Part I (2)

The enemy now manoeuvred to cut us off from the road, and pressed us so hard that we were obliged to oblique to the left. Moving on the double-quick, receiving an occasional volley, and barely escaping capture, we at length emerged from the woods on the outskirts of the little village of Campbell's Station. We were soon under cover of our artillery, which General Potter, under the direction of General Burnside, had placed in position on high ground just beyond the village. This village is situated between two low ranges of hills, which are nearly a mile apart. Across the intervening space, our infantry was drawn up in a single line of battle, Ferrero's division of the Ninth Corps held the right, White's division of the Twenty-third Corps held the centre, and Hartranft's division of the Ninth Corps held the left. Benjamin's, Buckley's, Getting's, and Van Schlein's batteries were on the right of the road. Roemer's battery was on the left. The Thirty-sixth Massachusetts supported Roemer.

The enemy, meanwhile, had disposed his forces for an attack on our position. At noon he came out of the woods, just beyond the village, in two lines of battle, with a line of skirmishers in front. The whole field was open to our view. Benjamin and Roemer opened fire at once; and so accurate was their range, that the Rebel lines were immediately broken, and they fell back into the woods in confusion. The enemy, under cover of the woods on the slope of the ridge, now advanced against our right. Christ's brigade, of our division, at once changed front. Buckley executed the same movement with his battery, and, by a well-directed fire, checked the enemy's progress in that direction. The enemy next manoeuvred to turn our left. Falling back, however, to a stronger position in our rear, we established a new line about four o'clock in the afternoon. This was done under a heavy fire from the enemy's batteries. Ferrero was now on the right of the road. Morrison's brigade was placed in rear of a rail fence, at the foot of the ridge on which Benjamin's battery had been planted. The enemy did not seem inclined to attack us in front, but pushed along the ridge, on our left, aiming to strike Hartranft in flank and rear. He was discovered in this attempt; and, just as he was moving over ground recently cleared, Roemer, changing front at the same time with Hartranft, opened his three-inch guns on the Rebel line, and drove it back in disorder, followed by the skirmishers. Longstreet, foiled in all these attempts to force us from our position, now withdrew beyond the range of our guns, and made no further demonstrations that day. Our troops were justly proud of their success; for, with a force not exceeding five thousand men, they had held in check, for an entire day, three times their own number,--the flower of Lee's army. Our loss in the Ninth Corps was twenty-six killed, one hundred and sixty-six wounded, and fifty-seven missing. Of these, the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts lost one officer and three enlisted men killed, three officers and fourteen enlisted men wounded, and three enlisted men missing.

At six o'clock, P. M., Ferrero's division, followed by Hartranft's, moved to the rear, taking the road to Knoxville. White's division of the Twenty-third Corps covered the retreat. Campbell's Station is a little more than sixteen miles from Knoxville; but the night was so dark, and the road so muddy, that our progress was much retarded, and we did not reach Knoxville till about four o'clock the next morning. We had now been without sleep forty-eight hours. Moreover, since the previous morning we had marched twenty-four miles and fought a battle. Halting just outside of the town, weary and worn, we threw ourselves on the ground, and snatched a couple of hours of sleep. Early in the day--it was the 17th of November--General Burnside assigned the batteries and regiments of his command to the positions they were to occupy in the defence of the place. Knoxville is situated on the northern bank of the Holston River. For the most part, the town is built on a table-land, which is nearly a mile square, and about one hundred and fifty feet above the river. On the northeast, the town is bounded by a small creek. Beyond this creek is an elevation known as Temperance Hill. Still farther to the east is Mayberry's Hill. On the northwest, this table-land descends to a broad valley; on the southwest, the town is bounded by a second creek. Beyond this is College Hill; and still farther to the southwest is a high ridge, running nearly parallel with the road which enters Knoxville at this point. Benjamin's and Buckley's batteries occupied the unfinished bastion-work on the ridge just mentioned. This work was afterwards known as Fort Sanders. Roemer's battery was placed in position on College Hill. These batteries were supported by Ferrero's division of the Ninth Corps, his line extending from the Holston River on the left to the point where the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad crosses the creek mentioned above as Second Creek. Hartranft connected with Ferrero's right, supporting Getting's and the Fifteenth Indiana Batteries. His lines extended as far as First Creek. The divisions of White and Hascall, of the Twenty-third Corps, occupied the ground between this point and the Holston River, on the northeast side of the town, with their artillery in position on Temperance and Mayberry's Hills.

Knoxville at this time was by no means in a defensible condition. The bastion-work, occupied by Benjamin's and Buckley's batteries, was not only not finished, but was little more than begun. It required two hundred negroes four hours to clear places for the guns. There was also a fort in process of construction on Temperance Hill. Nothing more had been done. But the work was now carried forward in earnest. As fast as the troops were placed in position, they commenced the construction of rifle-pits. Though wearied by three days of constant marching and fighting, they gave themselves to the work with all the energy of fresh men. Citizens and contrabands also were pressed into the service. Many of the former were loyal men, and devoted themselves to their tasks with a zeal which evinced the interest they felt in making good the defence of the town; but some of them were bitter Rebels, and, as Captain Poe, Chief-Engineer of the Army of the Ohio, well remarked, "worked with a very poor grace, which blistered hands did not tend to improve." The contrabands engaged in the work with that heartiness which, during the war, characterized their labors in our service.

At noon, the enemy's advance was only a mile or two distant; and four companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts--A, B, D, G--were thrown out as skirmishers,--the line extending from the Holston River to the Kingston road. But the enemy was held in check at some little distance from the town by Sanders's division of cavalry. The hours thus gained for our work in the trenches were precious hours, indeed. There was a lack of intrenching tools, and much remained to be done; but all day and all night the men continued their labors undisturbed; and, on the morning of the 18th, our line of works around the town presented a formidable appearance.

Throughout the forenoon of that day there was heavy skirmishing on the Kingston road; but our men--dismounted cavalry--still maintained their position. Later in the day, however, the enemy brought up a battery, which, opening a heavy fire, soon compelled our men to fall back. The Rebels, now pressing forward, gained the ridge for which they had been contending, and established their lines within rifle range of our works.

It was while endeavoring to check this advance that General Sanders was mortally wounded. He was at once borne from the field, and carried into Knoxville. While a surgeon was examining the wound, he asked, "Tell me, Doctor, is my wound mortal?"

Tenderly the surgeon replied, "Sanders, it is a fearful wound, and mortal. I am sorry to say it, my dear fellow, but the odds are against you."

Calmly the General continued, "Well, I am not afraid to die. I have made up my mind upon that subject. I have done my duty, and have served my country as well as I could."

The next day he called the attention of the surgeon to certain symptoms which he had observed, and asked him what they meant.

The surgeon replied, "General, you are dying."

"If that be so," he said, "I would like to see a clergyman."

Rev. Mr. Hayden, chaplain of the post, was summoned. On his arrival, the dying soldier expressed a desire that the ordinance of baptism should be administered. This was done, and then the minister in prayer commended the believing soul to God,--General Burnside and his staff, who were present, kneeling around the bed. When the prayer was ended, General Sanders took General Burnside by the hand. Tears--the language of that heartfelt sympathy and tender love belonging to all noble souls--dropped down the bronzed cheeks of the chief as he listened to the last words which followed. The sacrament was now about to be administered, but suddenly the strength of the dying soldier failed, and like a child he gently fell asleep. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

The enemy did not seem inclined to attack our position at once, but proceeded to invest the town on the north bank of the Holston. He then commenced the construction of a line of works. The four companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts which had been detailed for picket duty on the morning of the 17th, remained on post till the morning of the 19th. Thenceforward, throughout the siege, both officers and men were on picket duty every third day. During this twenty-four hours of duty no one slept. The rest of the time we were on duty in the trenches, where, during the siege, one third, and sometimes one fourth, of the men were kept awake. The utmost vigilance was enjoined upon all.

Meanwhile, day by day, and night by night, with unflagging zeal, the troops gave themselves to the labor of strengthening the works. Immediately in front of the rifle-pits, a _chevaux-de-frise_ was constructed. This was formed of pointed stakes, thickly and firmly set in the ground, and inclining outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees. The stakes were bound together with wire, so that they could not easily be torn apart by an assaulting party. They were nearly five feet in height. In front of Colonel Haskins's position, on the north side of the town, the _chevaux-de-frise_ was constructed with the two thousand pikes which were captured at Cumberland Gap early in the fall. A few rods in front of the _chevaux-de-frise_ was the abatis, formed of thick branches of trees, which likewise were firmly set in the ground. Still farther to the front, were wire entanglements stretched a few inches above the ground, and fastened here and there to stakes and stumps. In front of a portion of our lines another obstacle was formed by constructing dams across First and Second Creeks, so called, and throwing back the water. The whole constituted a series of obstacles which could not be passed, in face of a heavy fire, without great difficulty and fearful loss.

Just in rear of the rifle-pits occupied by the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts was an elegant brick mansion, of recent construction, known as the Powell House. When the siege commenced, fresco-painters were at work ornamenting its parlors and halls. Throwing open its doors, Mr. Powell, a true Union man, invited Colonel Morrison and Major Draper to make it their head-quarters. He also designated a chamber for the sick of our regiment. Early during the siege, the southwestern and northwestern fronts were loopholed by order of General Burnside, and instructions were given to post in the house, in case of an attack, two companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. When the order was announced to Mr. Powell, he nobly said, "Lay this house level with the ground, if it is necessary." A few feet from the southwestern front of the house, a small earthwork was thrown up by our men, in which was placed a section of Buckley's battery. This work was afterwards known as Battery Noble.

Morrison's brigade now held the line of defences from the Holston River--the extreme left of our line--to Fort Sanders. The following was the position of the several regiments of the brigade. The Forty-fifth Pennsylvania was on the left, its left on the river. On its right lay the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts. Then came the Eighth Michigan. The Seventy-ninth New York (Highlanders) formed the garrison of Fort Sanders. Between the Eighth Michigan and Fort Sanders was the One Hundredth Pennsylvania (Roundheads).

On the evening of the 20th, the Seventeenth Michigan made a sortie, and drove the Rebels from the Armstrong House. This stood on the Kingston road, and only a short distance from Fort Sanders. It was a brick house, and afforded a near and safe position for the enemy's sharpshooters, which of late had become somewhat annoying to the working parties at the fort. Our men destroyed the house, and then withdrew. The loss on our part was slight.

For a few days during the siege, four companies of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts were detached to support Roemer's battery on College Hill. While on this duty the officers and men were quartered in the buildings of East Tennessee College. Prior to our occupation of East Tennessee, these buildings had been used by the Rebels as a hospital; but, after a vigorous use of the ordinary means of purification, they afforded us pleasant and comfortable quarters.

The siege had now continued several days. The Rebels had constructed works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November, however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our front that night; and orders were given to the men on duty in the outer works to exercise the utmost vigilance. But the night passed quietly.

With each day our confidence in the strength of our position increased; and we soon felt able to repel an assault from any quarter. But the question of supplies was a serious one. When the siege commenced, there was in the Commissary Department at Knoxville little more than a day's ration for the whole army. Should the enemy gain possession of the south bank of the Holston, our only means of subsistence would be cut off. Thus far his attempts in this direction had failed; and the whole country, from the French Broad to the Holston, was open to our foraging parties. In this way a considerable quantity of corn and wheat was soon collected in Knoxville. Bread, made from a mixture of meal and flour, was issued to the men, but only in half and quarter rations. Occasionally a small quantity of fresh pork was also issued. Neither sugar nor coffee was issued after the first days of the siege.

The enemy, foiled in his attempts to seize the south bank of the Holston, now commenced the construction of a raft at Boyd's Ferry. Floating this down the swift current of the stream, he hoped to carry away our pontoon, and thus cut off our communication with the country beyond. To thwart this plan, an iron cable, one thousand feet in length, was stretched across the river above the bridge. This was done under the direction of Captain Poe. Afterwards, a boom of logs, fastened end to end by chains, was constructed still farther up the river. The boom was fifteen hundred feet in length.

On the evening of the 23d the Rebels made an attack on our pickets in front of the left of the Second Division, Ninth Corps. In falling back, our men fired the buildings on the ground abandoned, lest they should become a shelter for the enemy's sharpshooters. Among the buildings thus destroyed were the arsenal and machine-shops near the depot. The light of the blazing buildings illuminated the whole town. The next day the Twenty-first Massachusetts and another picked regiment, the whole under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hawkes of the Twenty-first, drove back the Rebels at this point, and reoccupied our old position.

The same day an attack was made by the Second Michigan on the advanced parallel, which the enemy had so constructed as to envelop the northwest bastion of Fort Sanders. The works were gallantly carried; but before the supporting columns could come up, our men were repulsed by fresh troops which the enemy had at hand.

On the 25th of November the enemy, having on the day previous crossed the Holston at a point below us, made another unsuccessful attempt to occupy the heights opposite Knoxville. He succeeded, however, in planting a battery on a knob about one hundred and fifty feet above the river, and twenty-five hundred yards south of Fort Sanders. This position commanded Fort Sanders, so that it now became necessary to defilade the fort.

November 26th was our national Thanksgiving day, and General Burnside issued an order, in which he expressed the hope that the day would be observed by all, as far as military operations would allow. He knew the rations were short, and that the day would be unlike the joyous festival we were wont to celebrate in our distant homes; and so he reminded us of the circumstances of trial under which our fathers first observed the day. He also reminded us of the debt of gratitude which we owed to Him who during the year had not only prospered our arms, but had kindly preserved our lives. Accordingly, we ate our corn bread with thanksgiving; and, forgetting our own privations, thought only of the loved ones at home, who, uncertain of our fate, would that day find little cheer at the table and by the fireside.

Allusion has already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line, held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort, from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of eighty yards, and then abruptly descended to a wide ravine. Under the direction of Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery, and Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Ohio, the fort had now been made as strong as the means at his disposal and the rules of military art admitted. Eighty and thirty yards in front of the fort, rifle-pits were constructed. These were to be used in case our men were driven in from the outer line. Between these pits and the Fort were wire entanglements, running from stump to stump, and also an abatis. Sand-bags and barrels were arranged so as to cover the embrasures. Traverses, also, were built for the protection of the men at the guns, and in passing from one position to another. In the fort were four twenty-pounder Parrotts (Benjamin's battery), four light twelve-pounders (of Buckley's battery), and two three-inch guns.

Early in the evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so recently occupied on the opposite bank of the river. They were clearing away the trees in front of the earthwork which they had constructed the day before. Would they attack at daybreak? So we thought, connecting this fact with the cheers and music of the earlier part of the night; but the morning opened as quietly as its predecessors. Late in the afternoon the enemy seemed to be placing his troops in position in our front, and our men stood in the trenches, awaiting an attack; yet the day wore away without further demonstrations.

A little after eleven o'clock, P. M., November 28th, I was aroused by heavy musketry. I hurried to the trenches. It was a cloudy, dark night, and at a distance of only a few feet it was impossible to distinguish any object. The men were already at their posts. With the exception of an occasional shot on the picket-line, the firing soon ceased. An attack had evidently been made on our pickets; but at what point, or with what success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked _our_ line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front, however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated, and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade officer of the day.

It was now evident that the enemy intended an attack. But where would it be made? All that long, cold night--our men were without overcoats--we stood in the trenches pondering that question. Might not this demonstration in our front be only a feint to draw our attention from other parts of the line, where the chief blow was to be struck? So some thought. Gradually the night wore away.

A little after six o'clock the next morning, the enemy suddenly opened a furious cannonade. This was mostly directed against Fort Sanders; but several shots struck the Powell House, in rear of Battery Noble. Roemer immediately responded from College Hill. In about twenty minutes the enemy's fire slackened, and in its stead rose the well-known Rebel yell, in the direction of the fort. Then followed the rattle of musketry, the roar of cannon, and the bursting of shells. The yells died away, and then rose again. Now the roar of musketry and artillery was redoubled. It was a moment of the deepest anxiety. Our straining eyes were fixed on the fort. The Rebels had reached the ditch and were now endeavoring to scale the parapet. Whose will be the victory,--O, whose? The yells again died away, and then followed three loud Union cheers,--"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" How those cheers thrilled our hearts, as we stood almost breathless at our posts in the trenches! They told us that the enemy had been repulsed, and that the victory was ours. Peering through the rising fog towards the fort, not a hundred yards away,--O glorious sight!--we dimly saw that our flag was still there.

Let us now go back a little. Under cover of the ridge on which Fort Sanders was built, Longstreet had formed his columns for the assault. The men were picked men,--the flower of his army. One brigade was to make the assault, two brigades were to support it,[A] and two other brigades were to watch our lines and keep up a constant fire. Five regiments formed the brigade selected for the assaulting column. These were placed in position not more than eighty yards from the fort. They were "in column by division, closed in mass." When the fire of their artillery slackened, the order for the charge was given. The salient of the northwest bastion was the point of attack. The Rebel lines were much broken in passing the abatis. But the wire entanglements proved a greater obstacle. Whole companies were prostrated. Benjamin now opened his triple-shotted guns. Nevertheless, the weight of their column carried the Rebels forward, and in two minutes from the time the charge was commenced they had filled the ditch around the fort, and were endeavoring to scale the parapet. The guns, which had been trained to sweep the ditch, now opened a most destructive fire. Lieutenant Benjamin also took shells in his hand, and, lighting the fuse, tossed them over the parapet into the crowded ditch. One of the Rebel brigades in reserve now came up in support, and planted several of its flags on the parapet of the fort. Those, however, who endeavored to scale the parapet were swept away by the fire of our musketry. The men in the ditch, satisfied of the hopelessness of the task they had undertaken, now surrendered. They represented eleven regiments. The prisoners numbered nearly three hundred. Among them were seventeen commissioned officers. Over two hundred dead and wounded, including three colonels, lay in the ditch alone. The ground in front of the fort was also strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded. Over one thousand stands of arms fell into our hands, and the battle-flags of the Thirteenth and Seventeenth Mississippi and Sixteenth Georgia. Our loss was eight men killed and five wounded. Never was a victory more complete; and never were brighter laurels worn than were that morning laid on the brow of the hero of Fort Sanders,--Lieutenant Benjamin, Second United States Artillery.

Longstreet had promised his men that they should dine that day in Knoxville. But, in order that he might bury his dead, General Burnside now tendered him an armistice till five o'clock, P. M. It was accepted by the Rebel general; and our ambulances were furnished him to assist in removing the bodies to his lines. At five o'clock, two additional hours were asked, as the work was not yet completed. At seven o'clock, a gun was fired from Fort Sanders, the Rebels responded from an earthwork opposite, and the truce was at an end.

The next day, through a courier who had succeeded in reaching our lines, General Burnside received official notice of the defeat of Bragg. At noon, a single gun--we were short of ammunition--was fired from Battery Noble in our rear, and the men of the brigade, standing in the trenches, gave three cheers for Grant's victory at Chattanooga. We now looked for reinforcements daily, for Sherman was already on the road. The enemy knew this as well as we, and, during the night of the 4th of December, withdrew his forces, and started north. The retreat was discovered by the pickets of the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, under Captain Ames, who had the honor of first declaring the siege of Knoxville raised.

It would be interesting to recount the facts connected with the retreat of the Rebel army, and then to follow our men to their winter quarters, among the mountains of East Tennessee, where, throughout the icy season, they remained, without shoes, without overcoats, without new clothing of any description, living on quarter rations of corn meal, with occasionally a handful of flour, and never grumbling; and where, at the expiration of their three years of service, standing forth under the open skies, amid all these discomforts, and raising loyal hands towards heaven, they swore to serve their country yet three years longer. But I must pause. I have already illustrated their fortitude and heroic endurance.

The noble bearing of General Burnside throughout the siege won the admiration of all. In a speech at Cincinnati, a few days after the siege was raised, with that modesty which characterizes the true soldier, he said that the honors bestowed on him belonged to his under officers and the men in the ranks. These kindly words his officers and men will ever cherish; and in all their added years, as they recall the widely separated battle-fields, made forever sacred by the blood of their fallen comrades, and forever glorious by the victories there won, it will be their pride to say, "We fought with Burnside at Campbell's Station and in the trenches at Knoxville."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] This statement is confirmed by the following extract from Pollard's (Rebel) "Third Year of the War." Speaking of his charge on Fort Sanders, he says: "The force which was to attempt an enterprise which ranks with the most famous charges in military history should be mentioned in detail. It consisted of three brigades of McLaw's division;--that of General Wolford, the Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-fourth Georgia Regiments, and Cobb's and Phillip's Georgia Legions; that of General Humphrey, the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Mississippi Regiments; and a brigade composed of General Anderson's and Bryant's brigades, embracing, among others, the Palmetto State Guard, the Fifteenth South Carolina Regiment, and the Fifty-first, Fifty-third, and Fifty-ninth Georgia Regiments."--pp. 161, 162.

RELEASED.

A little low-ceiled room. Four walls
Whose blank shut out all else of life,
And crowded close within their bound
A world of pain, and toil, and strife.

Her world. Scarce furthermore she knew
Of God's great globe, that wondrously
Outrolls a glory of green earth,
And frames it with the restless sea.

Four closer walls of common pine:
And therein lieth, cold and still,
The weary flesh that long hath borne
Its patient mystery of ill.

Regardless now of work to do;
No queen more careless in her state;
Hands crossed in their unbroken calm;
For other hands the work may wait.

Put by her implements of toil;
Put by each coarse, intrusive sign;
She made a Sabbath when she died,
And round her breathes a Rest Divine.

Put by, at last, beneath the lid,
The exempted hands, the tranquil face;
Uplift her in her dreamless sleep,
And bear her gently from the place.

Oft she hath gazed, with wistful eyes,
Out from that threshold on the night;
The narrow bourn she crosseth now;
She standeth in the Eternal Light.

Oft she hath pressed, with aching feet,
Those broken steps that reach the door;
Henceforth with angels she shall tread
Heaven's golden stair forevermore!

FRIEDRICH RUeCKERT.

The last of the grand old generation of German poets is dead. Within ten years Eichendorff, Heine, Uhland, have passed away; and now the death of Friedrich Rueckert, the sole survivor of the minor gods who inhabited the higher slopes of the Weimar Olympus, closes the list of their names. Yet, although with these poets in time, Rueckert was not of them in the structure of his mind or the character of his poetical development. No author ever stood so lonely among his contemporaries. Looking over the long catalogue, not only of German, but of European poets, we find no one with whom he can be compared. His birthplace is supposed to be Schweinfurt, but it is to be sought, in reality, somewhere on the banks of the Euphrates. His true contemporaries were Saadi and Hariri of Bosrah.

Rueckert's biography may be given in a few words, his life having been singularly devoid of incident. He seems even to have been spared the usual alternations of fortune in a material, as well as a literary sense. With the exception of a somewhat acridly hostile criticism, which the _Jahrbuecher_ of Halle dealt out to him for several years in succession, his reputation has enjoyed a gradual and steady growth since his first appearance as a poet. His place is now so well defined that death--which sometimes changes, while it fixes, the impression an author makes upon his generation--cannot seriously elevate or depress it. In life he stood so far aloof from the fashions of the day, that all his successes were permanent achievements.

He was born on the 16th of May, 1788, in Schweinfurt, a pleasant old town in Bavaria, near the baths of Kissingen. As a student he visited Jena, where he distinguished himself by his devotion to philological and literary studies. For some years a private tutor, in 1815 he became connected with the _Morgenblatt_, published by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The year 1818 he spent in Italy. Soon after his return, he married, and established himself in Coburg, of which place, I believe, his wife was a native. Here he occupied himself ostensibly as a teacher, but in reality with an enthusiastic and untiring study of the Oriental languages and literature. Twice he was called away by appointments which were the result of his growing fame as poet and scholar,--the first time in 1826, when he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages at the University of Erlangen; and again in 1840, when he was appointed to a similar place in the University of Berlin, with the title of Privy Councillor. Both these posts were uncongenial to his nature. Though so competent to fill them, he discharged his duties reluctantly and with a certain impatience; and probably there were few more joyous moments of his life than when, in 1849, he was allowed to retire permanently to the pastoral seclusion of his little property at Neuses, a suburb of Coburg.

One of his German critics remarks that the poem in which he celebrates his release embodies a nearer approach to passion than all his Oriental songs of love, sorrow, or wine. It is a joyous dithyrambic, which, despite its artful and semi-impossible metre, must have been the swiftly-worded expression of a genuine feeling. Let me attempt to translate the first stanza:--

"Out of the dust of the
Town o' the king,
Into the lust of the
Green of spring,--
Forth from the noises of
Streets and walls,
Unto the voices of
Waterfalls,--
He who presently
Flies is blest:
Fate thus pleasantly
Makes my nest!"[B]

The quaint old residence at Neuses thus early became, and for nearly half a century continued to be, the poet's home. No desire to visit the Orient--the native land of his brain--seems to have disturbed him. Possibly the Italian journey was in some respects disenchanting. The few poems which date from it are picturesque and descriptive, but do not indicate that his imagination was warmed by what he saw. He was never so happy as when alone with his books and manuscripts, studying or writing, according to the dominant mood. This secluded habit engendered a shyness of manner, which frequently repelled the strangers who came to see him,--especially those who failed to detect the simple, tender, genial nature of the man, under his wonderful load of learning. But there was nothing morbid or misanthropical in his composition; his shyness was rather the result of an intense devotion to his studies. These gradually became a necessity of his daily life; his health, his mental peace, depended upon them; and whatever disturbed their regular recurrence took from him more than the mere time lost.

When I first visited Coburg, in October, 1852, I was very anxious to make Rueckert's acquaintance. My interest in Oriental literature had been refreshed, at that time, by nearly ten months of travel in Eastern lands, and some knowledge of modern colloquial Arabic. I had read his wonderful translation of the _Makamat_ of Hariri, and felt sure that he would share in my enthusiasm for the people to whose treasures of song he had given so many years of his life. I found, however, that very few families in the town were familiarly acquainted with the poet,--that many persons, even, who had been residents of the place for years, had never seen him. He was presumed to be inaccessible to strangers.

It fortunately happened that one of my friends knew a student of the Oriental languages, then residing in Coburg. The latter, who was in the habit of consulting Rueckert in regard to his Sanskrit studies, offered at once to conduct me to Neuses. A walk of twenty minutes across the meadows of the Itz, along the base of the wooded hills which terminate, just beyond, in the castled Kallenberg (the summer residence of Duke Ernest II.), brought us to the little village, which lies so snugly hidden in its own orchards that one might almost pass without discovering it. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and a hazy, idyllic atmosphere veiled and threw into remoteness the bolder features of the landscape. Near at hand, a few quaint old tile-roofed houses rose above the trees.

My guide left the highway, crossed a clear little brook on the left, and entered the bottom of a garden behind the largest of these houses. As we were making our way between the plum-trees and gooseberry-bushes, I perceived a tall figure standing in the midst of a great bed of late-blossoming roses, over which he was bending as if to inhale their fragrance. The sound of our steps startled him; and as he straightened himself and faced us, I saw that it could be none other than Rueckert. I believe his first impulse was to fly; but we were already so near that his moment of indecision settled the matter. The student presented me to him as an American traveller, whereat I thought he seemed to experience a little relief. Nevertheless, he looked uneasily at his coat,--a sort of loose, commodious blouse,--at his hands, full of seeds, and muttered some incoherent words about flowers. Suddenly, lifting his head and looking steadily at us, he said, "Come into the house!"

The student, who was familiar with his habits, led me to a pleasant room on the second floor. The windows looked towards the sun, and were filled with hot-house plants. We were scarcely seated before Rueckert made his appearance, having laid aside his blouse, and put on a coat. After a moment of hesitation, he asked me, "Where have you been travelling?" "I come from the Orient," I answered. He looked up with a keen light in his eyes. "From the Orient!" he exclaimed, "Where? let me know where you have been, and what you have seen!" From that moment he was self-possessed, full of life, enthusiasm, fancy, and humor.

He was then in his sixty-fifth year, but still enjoyed the ripe maturity of his powers. A man of more striking personal appearance I have seldom seen. Over six feet in height, and somewhat gaunt of body, the first impression of an absence of physical grace vanished as soon as one looked upon his countenance. His face was long, and every feature strongly marked,--the brow high and massive, the nose strong and slightly aquiline, the mouth wide and firm, and the jaw broad, square, and projecting. His thick silver hair, parted in the middle of his forehead, fell in wavy masses upon his shoulders. His eyes were deep-set, bluish-gray, and burned with a deep, lustrous fire as he became animated in conversation. At times they had a mystic, rapt expression, as if the far East, of which he spoke, were actually visible to his brain. I thought of an Arab sheikh, looking towards Mecca, at the hour of prayer.

I regret that I made no notes of the conversation, in which, as may be guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge, and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting himself to the good Frau Rueckert, the "Luise" of her husband's _Liebesfruehling_ (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."

But we must not lose sight of Rueckert's poetical biography. His first volume, entitled "German Poems, by Freimund Raimar," was published at Heidelberg in the year 1814. It contained, among other things, his famous _Geharnischte Sonette_ (Sonnets in Armor), which are still read and admired as masterpieces of that form of verse. Preserving the Petrarchan model, even to the feminine rhymes of the Italian tongue, he has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty of mind.

These "Sonnets in Armor," although they may sound but gravely beside the Tyrtaean strains of Arndt and Koerner, are nevertheless full of stately and inspiring music. They remind one of Wordsworth's phrase,--

"In Milton's hand,
The thing became a trumpet,"--

and must have had their share in stimulating that national sentiment which overturned the Napoleonic rule, and for three or four years flourished so greenly upon its ruins.

Shortly afterwards, Rueckert published "Napoleon, a Political Comedy," which did not increase his fame. His next important contribution to general literature was the "Oriental Roses," which appeared in 1822. Three years before, Goethe had published his _Westoestlicher Divan_, and the younger poet dedicated his first venture in the same field to his venerable predecessor, in stanzas which express the most delicate, and at the same time the most generous homage. I scarcely know where to look for a more graceful dedication in verse. It is said that Goethe never acknowledged the compliment,--an omission which some German authors attribute to the latter's distaste at being surpassed on his latest and (at that time) favorite field. No one familiar with Goethe's life and works will accept this conjecture.

It is quite impossible to translate this poem literally, in the original metre: the rhymes are exclusively feminine. I am aware that I shall shock ears familiar with the original by substituting masculine rhymes in the two stanzas which I present; but there is really no alternative.

"Would you taste
Purest East,
Hence depart, and seek the selfsame man
Who our West
Gave the best
Wine that ever flowed from Poet's can:
When the Western flavors ended,
He the Orient's vintage spended,--
Yonder dreams he on his own divan!

"Sunset-red
Goethe led
Star to be of all the sunset-land:
Now the higher
Morning-fire
Makes him lord of all the morning-land!
Where the two, together turning,
Meet, the rounded heaven is burning
Rosy-bright in one celestial brand!"

I have not the original edition of the "Oriental Roses," but I believe the volume contained the greater portion of Rueckert's marvellous "Ghazels." Count Platen, it is true, had preceded him by one year, but his adaptation of the Persian metre to German poetry--light and graceful and melodious as he succeeded in making it--falls far short of Rueckert's infinite richness and skill. One of the latter's "Ghazels" contains twenty-six variations of the same rhyme, yet so subtly managed, so colored with the finest reflected tints of Eastern rhetoric and fancy, that the immense art implied in its construction is nowhere unpleasantly apparent. In fact, one dare not say that these poems are _all_ art. In the Oriental measures the poet found the garment which best fitted his own mind. We are not to infer that he did not move joyously, and, after a time, easily, within the limitations which, to most authors, would have been intolerable fetters.

In 1826 appeared his translation of the _Makamat_ of Hariri. The old silk-merchant of Bosrah never could have anticipated such an immortality. The word _Makamat_ means "sessions," (probably the Italian _conversazione_ best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of narrative throughout all the East. Rueckert called his translation "The Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"--the name of the hero of the story. In this work he has shown the capacity of one language to reproduce the very spirit of another with which it has the least affinity. Like the original, the translation can never be surpassed: it is unique in literature.

As the acrobat who has mastered every branch of his art, from the spidery contortions of the India-rubber man to the double somersault and the flying trapeze, is to the well-developed individual of ordinary muscular habits, so is the language of Rueckert in this work to the language of all other German authors. It is one perpetual gymnastic show of grammar, rhythm, and fancy. Moods, tenses, antecedents, appositions, whirl and flash around you, to the sound of some strange, barbaric music. Closer and more rapidly they link, chassez, and "cross hands," until, when you anticipate a hopeless tangle, some bold, bright word leaps unexpectedly into the throng, and resolves it to instant harmony. One's breath is taken away, and his brain made dizzy, by any half-dozen of the "Metamorphoses." In this respect the translation has become a representative work. The Arabic title, misunderstood, has given birth to a German word. Daring and difficult rhymes are now frequently termed _Makamen_ in German literary society.

Rueckert's studies were not confined to the Arabic and Persian languages; he also devoted many years to the Sanskrit. In 1828 appeared his translation of "Nal and Damayanti," and some years later, "Hamasa, or the oldest Arabian Poetry," and "Amrilkais, Poet and King." In addition to these translations, he published, between the years 1835 and 1840, the following original poems, or collections of poems, on Oriental themes,--"Legends of the Morning-Land" (2 vols.), "Rustem and Sohrab," and "Brahminical Stories." These poems are so bathed in the atmosphere of his studies, that it is very difficult to say which are his own independent conceptions, and which the suggestions of Eastern poets. Where he has borrowed images or phrases, (as sometimes from the Koran,) they are woven, without any discernible seam, into the texture of his own brain.

Some of Rueckert's critics have asserted that his extraordinary mastery of all the resources of language operated to the detriment of his poetical faculty,--that the feeling to be expressed became subordinate to the skill displayed by expressing it in an unusual form. They claim, moreover, that he produced a mass of sparkling fragments, rather than any single great work. I am convinced, however, that the first charge is unfounded, basing my opinion upon my knowledge of the poet's simple, true, tender nature, which I learned to appreciate during my later visits to his home. After the death of his wife, the daughter who thereafter assumed her mother's place in the household wrote me frequent accounts of her father's grief and loneliness, enclosing manuscript copies of the poems in which he expressed his sorrow. These poems are exceedingly sweet and touching; yet they are all marked by the same flexile use of difficult rhythms and unprecedented rhymes. They have never yet been published, and I am therefore withheld from translating any one of them, in illustration.

Few of Goethe's minor songs are more beautiful than his serenade, _O gib' vom weichen Pfuehle_, where the interlinked repetitions are a perpetual surprise and charm; yet Rueckert has written a score of more artfully constructed and equally melodious songs. His collection of amatory poems entitled _Liebesfruehling_ contains some of the sunniest idyls in any language. That his genius was lyrical and not epic, was not a fault; that it delighted in varied and unusual metres, was an exceptional--perhaps in his case a phenomenal--form of development; but I do not think it was any the less instinctively natural. One of his quatrains runs:--

"Much I make as make the others;
Better much another man
Makes than I; but much, moreover,
Make I which no other can."

His poetical comment on the translation of Hariri is given in prose:--"He who, like myself, unfortunate man! is philologist and poet in the same person, cannot do better than to translate as I do. My Hariri has illustrated how philology and poetry are competent to stimulate and to complete each other. If thou, reader, wilt look upon this hybrid production neither too philologically nor over-poetically, it may delight and instruct thee. That which is false in philology thou wilt attribute to poetic license, and where the poetry is deficient, thou wilt give the blame to philology."

The critics who charge Rueckert with never having produced "a whole," have certainly forgotten one of his works,--"The Wisdom of the Brahmin, a Didactic Poem, in Fragments." The title somewhat describes its character. The "fragments" are couplets, in iambic hexameter, each one generally complete in itself, yet grouped in sections by some connecting thought, after the manner of the stanzas of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." There are more than _six thousand_ couplets, in all, divided into twenty books,--the whole forming a mass of poetic wisdom, coupled with such amazing wealth of illustration, that this one volume, if sufficiently diluted, would make several thousand "Proverbial Philosophies." It is not a book to read continuously, but one which, I should imagine, no educated German could live without possessing. I never open its pages without the certainty of refreshment. Its tone is quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which Rueckert ever wrote so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of many poets.

With the exception of "Kaiser Barbarossa," and two or three other ballads, the amatory poems of Rueckert have attained the widest popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it usually contains a refrain, which is repeated to a constantly varied rhyme, throughout the whole song or poem, the labor at first becomes desperate, and then impossible. An example (the original of which I possess, in the author's manuscript) will best illustrate this particular difficulty. Here the metre and the order of rhyme have been strictly preserved, except in the first and third lines.

"He came to meet me
In rain and thunder;
My heart 'gan beating
In timid wonder:
Could I guess whether
Thenceforth together
Our paths should run, so long asunder?

"He came to meet me
In rain and thunder,
With guile to cheat me,--
My heart to plunder.
Was't mine he captured?
Or his I raptured?
Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!

"He came to meet me
In rain and thunder:
Spring-blessings greet me
Spring-blossoms under.
What though he leave me?
No partings grieve me,--
No path can lead our hearts asunder!"

The Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, (whose translations from the German comprise both the best and the worst specimens I have yet found,) has been successful in rendering one of Rueckert's ghazels. I am specially tempted to quote it, on account of the curious general resemblance (accidental, no doubt) which Poe's "Lenore" bears to it.

"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
'T was Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more.
Amid the throng she passed along the meadow-floor;
Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no more,
But whence she came, which way she went, what garb she wore,
I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more.

"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
'T was Paradise on earth awhile, and then no more.
Ah! what avail my vigils pale, my magic lore?
She shone before mine eyes awhile, and then no more.
The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore;
Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile, and then no more.

"I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:
Earth looked like Heaven a little while, and then no more.
Her presence thrilled and lighted to its inmost core
My desert breast a little while, and then no more.
So may, perchance, a meteor glance at midnight o'er
Some ruined pile a little while, and then no more.

"I saw her once, a little while and then no more:
The earth was Eden-land awhile, and then no more.
O, might I see but once again, as once before,
Through chance or wile, that shape awhile, and then no more!
Death soon would heal my grief: this heart, now sad and sore,
Would beat anew, a little while, and then no more!"

Here, nevertheless, something is sacrificed. The translation is by no means literal, and lacks the crispness and freshness of Oriental antithesis. Rueckert, I fear, will never be as fortunate as Hariri of Bosrah.

When, in 1856, I again visited Germany, I received a friendly message from the old poet, with a kind invitation to visit him. Late in November I found him, apparently unchanged in body and spirit,--simple, enthusiastic, and, in spite of his seclusion, awake to all the movements of the world. One of his married sons was then visiting him, so that the household was larger and livelier than usual; but, as he sat, during the evening, in his favorite arm-chair, with pipe and beer, he fell into the same brilliant, wise strain of talk, undisturbed by all the cheerful young voices around him.