The Muster

by Herman Melville

Suggested by the Two Days' Review at Washington

(May, 1865.)

The Abrahamic river-- Patriarch of floods, Calls the roll of all his streams And watery mutitudes: Torrent cries to torrent, The rapids hail the fall; With shouts the inland freshets Gather to the call.

The quotas of the Nation, Like the water-shed of waves, Muster into union-- Eastern warriors, Western braves.

Martial strains are mingling, Though distant far the bands, And the wheeling of the squadrons Is like surf upon the sands.

The bladed guns are gleaming-- Drift in lengthened trim, Files on files for hazy miles-- Nebulously dim.

O Milky Way of armies-- Star rising after star, New banners of the Commonwealths, And eagles of the War.

The Abrahamic river To sea-wide fullness fed, Pouring from the thaw-lands By the God of floods is led: His deep enforcing current The streams of ocean own, And Europe's marge is evened By rills from Kansas lone.

According to a report of the Secretary of War, there were on the first day of March, 1865, 965,000 men on the army pay-rolls. Of these, some 200,000--artillery, cavalry, and infantry--made up from the larger portion of the veterans of Grant and Sherman, marched by the President. The total number of Union troops enlisted during the war was 2,668,000.