Military Poetry

Old Soldiers Drums ^

[mairdie]

Thank you, Intolerant. It's perfect! The poetry I read from the newspapers of 1775-1830 frequently include songs, so I think you're right there in the middle of military topic poetry.

It's very much like this piece of Henry Livingston's, like yours a parody, published 15 Aug 1787 and also shown in his music manuscript book, about the death of General Richard Montgomery, the husband of his cousin and the man under whom he went to war.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Interesting find - we uppity Americans have been mouthing off in all sorts of ways from the very beginning it would seem.....

[mairdie]

Henry Livingston was big into mouthing off. He has a 1787 prose pieces discussing what an astronomer saw on the nearby planets when looking through a telescope lens carved from the ice of the river Volga. On Mars, they made love through military movements. He was a judge and published a piece on the requirements for rewarding a successful horse thief. And his poetry on women was wonderful.

With the ladies’ permission, most humbly I’d mention
How much we’re oblidged by all their attention;
We sink with the weight of the huge obligation
Too long & too broad to admit compensation.

For us (and I blush while I speak I declare)
The charming Enchanters be-torture their hair,
Till gently it rises and swells like a knoll
Thirty inches at least from the dear little poll;
From the tip-top of which all peer out together
The ribband, the gause, & the ostrich’s feather;
Composing a sight for an Arab to swear at
Or huge Patagonian a fortnight to stare at.

Then hoops at right angles that hang from ye knees
And hoops at the hips in connection with these
Set the Fellows presumptuous who court an alliance
And ev’ry pretender, at awful defiance.

And I have been told (though I must disbelieve
For the tidings as fact, I would never receive)
That billets of cork have supplied the place
Of something the Fair-ones imagine a grace;
But whether ‘tis placed behind or before;
The shoulders to swell, or the bosom to shoar
To raise a false wen or expand a false bump
Project a false hip or protrude a false rump,
Was never ascertain’d; and fegs I declare
To make more enquiry I never will dare.