Frail forms

On the 150^th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, I’m going to fudge the rules of National Poetry Month just a little. I’m giving you a song—which I propose is basically a poem with music. So you’re really getting a two-fer, you lucky dogs.

The song is by Stephen Foster. When I was in school, everyone knew Foster—come on: “Camptown Races”? “Oh, Susanna”? “My Old Kentucky Home”? “Old Folks at Home”? “Beautiful Dreamer”? (Seriously—did you not see Mighty Joe Young?) “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair”? (A local kiddie-TV host used to sing, “I dream of Brownie with the light blue jeans. She is as sweet as licorice jelly beans.” Well, that may be TMI.)

But I’m sharing something I did not learn in grade school. Even though it was written in 1854, I think it sums up the event that marked the end of the War Between the States. (Because although Lee only surrendered one army, as one of his generals predicted, every other Confederate command followed suit shortly.)

As a New Military historian, my focus is on the human side of warfare. I wrap my head around how wars affected people—those who caused them, those who fought them, those who were overrun by them. And the image that I have of those April days at Appomattox is of all those men, exhausted, hungry, ragged, covered in mud, sick in the soul, turning over their arms and colors to men perhaps not as gaunt or ill-clad, but every bit as weary and soul-shattered.

Blue or grey, they wanted nothing so much as to go home, rebuild their lives and put the hard times behind them. So I’m giving you Mavis Staples singing “Hard Times, Come Again No More.”

Here are the full lyrics.

“Hard Times, Come Again No More”

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears

While we all sup sorrow with the poor:

There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;

Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.

Chorus:

'Tis the song the sigh of the weary;

Hard Times, Hard Times, come again no more;

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door,

Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay

There are frail forms fainting at the door:

Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say

Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away

With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:

Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day

Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.

'Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,

'Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore,

'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave,

Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.

To which I say—amen.