Best Gettysburg Poems

Gettysburg Hauntings

When General Meade met General Lee
At Gettysburg in 1863

Sons of the South battled Northern brothers
And neither side has ever recovered

Fifty-one thousand lives lost in three days
Of a summertime swelter, July haze

Souls rose not to heaven from bodies piled
On blood-soaked battlefields spanning 40 miles

An on-scene...

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This sacred soil that once resounded with the musket's rattle,
Imbued with mingled blood of Blue and Gray spilt in brutal battle,
Now stands serene with only whisperings of the restless ghosts,
Of gallant men who sacrificed their all among the frenzied hosts.

Are those the sighs of vagabond...

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Unyielding stone, the furniture
au naturel, no dress lace tablecloth
concealing ants scavenging our picnic lunch. Loathe
are we to flick them while they steal our cheese and crackers.

Siblings ensconced, diffused canopy of oak
umbrellas, searing sun bewitches charming shadows;
clover, petals three and sometimes four, meadows
pleasant carpets cradling this...

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Walk does he not the specter of death, 
His saith raised high, even he himself has had
Enough killing, on the battlefield of Gettysburg,
Satan screams, stop sons of men, truly war
Is hell on earth.
Time's spiritual voices cry out, as the wind
Blows through the tall over grow...

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My old friend Gettysburg came to visit me tonight.                                    ...

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**

 Several years ago, we bought an old farm house.
 It was 3 miles down a dirt road beside an old millhouse.
 It seems this area was involved in a major war fight.
 Sometimes it would last all the way into the night.

 The Gettysburg...

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[Note: this poem was inspired by a strange and terrible experience I had at 17  when I first set foot on the battlefield in 1965 after an interview at the college there: physiologically, it was like being mortally wounded. I was an agnostic then...

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Lincoln and Gettysburg Haiku

Lincoln Memorial
Now in Washington D C
For us all to see

Gettysburg Address
That was told at Gettysburg
By our President

Four score and seven
Years ago our President
Brought to new nation

You complete the rest
As you thing that it should be
Many years ago

James Thomas Horn
Retired Veteran and Poet...

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Battle of Gettysburg day two. 

My hands are numb and my shoulders shake with the cold.
I sit on my **** in the cold damp grass,
the campfire does nothing to warm this situation.
It just cracks and spits at the damp wood.

Hardly a word is said and...

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I have stood upon, The hallowed ground
Where so many souls had perished,
That ugly war between the states
Their memories, I will cherish,

I have seen the cannons, on the hill
Of Seminary Ridge,
Those balls of fire, that rained the sky
So they could cross the bridge,

I've been the place...

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In Gettysburg, the soldiers fell
In shock, in pain, in death,
As thousands from the North and South
Cried out with their last breath.

Their bodies lay in bloody fields,
A vista grim and stark;
Today, those hills have been restored
Into a hallowed park.

With monuments and obelisks 
Commemorating all
Who fought and...

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Cannister shots explodes overhead,
stripping the leaves from the trees,
a rain of jagged steel above…
it takes courage not to flee.
The generals say we strike the center
and the Yankees will run hard,
if we break them here the war is won,
so we’ve got to make this charge.

We all...

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Virga
Your impression beckons me
as you slumber coyly
through the day.

I, too, can play
chords up in the jetstream
during your unfathomed dream
I can find a secret and
lock it in my pulse
until the storm.

And when the gale, vespertine,
roars and carries mountains
forth
Humbly, I deliver you
my caring vision
from the shore....

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In the original Italian form

Broad field of battle waged where soldiers died and
the Southern flame of independence flared bright.
Two kinds of rule then vied to govern torn land.
The ancient practice keeping slaves was seen right.
Opposed was Declaration's say: all equal!
And nation strove to settle issue...

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“Up men to your posts! Don’t forget today that you are from old Virginia.” 
– General George Pickett

Beneath Gettysburg's sun a merciless blaze
Stood Pickett with his face etched with war's haunting gaze.
A mind torn asunder and a battlefield worn
Ghosts of decisions a burden he'd borne.

"Forward,...

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