A Requiem
Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the fields in cloudy days,
This “requiem” poem by Melville, is written, as the title suggests, to honor the those who fell during the Battle Of Shiloh, during the Civil War. 
 The Battle of Shiloh (aka Battle of Pittsburgh Landing) was fought on April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee not far from Corinth, Mississippi. General Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of Confederate forces in the Western Theater, hoped to defeat Union major general Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee before it could be reinforced by Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio, which was marching from Nashville. 
 Grant’s April 7th counteroffensive overpowered the weakened Confederate forces and Beauregard’s army retired from the field. The two day battle at Shiloh produced more than 23,000 casualties and was the bloodiest battle in American history at its time. 

Shiloh