‘I am dying, Egypt, dying,’ and its author. A touching incident of the war. [from the New Orleans States, November, 1895.]
Colonel Douglass West's recollection of the death of Lytle. The popular version.The States is in receipt of the following letter of inquiry from Mr. Joseph G. Fiveash, of the Norfolk (Va.) Public Ledger. The clipping referred to in the letter is from the Norfolk Virginian, and is as follows: Our neighbor, the Virginian, in its issue of this morning, speaking of the authorship of the poem ‘Antony and Cleopatra,’ says: Quite an animated discussion is going on among certain newspapers concerning the time when this poem was written, but it is generally believed that the Maysville (O.) Republic's statement is correct. That paper says that General William H. Lytle had the manuscript on his person when the Confederates came across his body on the field of Chickamauga. The belief has obtained that General Lytle wrote the poem at Cincinnati before the war, but its condition when found on his person at Chickamauga showed that he composed it at odd hours in the camp. [83] General Lytle may have written the verses with which he is generally credited, but if so, he must have completed them fully three years before the battle of Chickamauga was fought, as the poem was published in a weekly paper in one of the Louisiana parishes in 1860, so we have been informed by a gentleman who resided in that section of the country at that time. We rather incline to the opinion that ex-Governor Allen, of Louisiana, who died an exile in Mexico shortly after the close of the war, was their author. He was one of the most talented men in the Pelican State, but died several years before any controversy arose as to the authorship of the poem.
[84] Since writing the above Mr. Robert W. Tunstall, principal of the Norfolk Academy, has called our attention to the fact that the poem was published as early as 1860, in ‘The Poets and Poetry of the West,’ edited by William T. Coggeshall. See Library of American Literature, volume 8, page 312. In compliance with the request contained in the foregoing letter we have made such an investigation as was in our power, and we are quite well satisfied that General Lytle was in truth the author of the poem in question. ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ was certainly never written by General Allen, for it is the work of a true poet, and though Allen was a gallant soldier, a splendid and noble gentleman, and a popular orator, there was nothing of the poet about him. The Sugar Bowl was printed in New Iberia, but long after the poem was given to the public. It might have been printed in the Planters' Banner, published in St. Mary, long before and long after the war, by the late Daniel Dennett. But while we believe that there is not a particle of doubt that the poem was written by the gallant Ohio soldier, the facts are fatal to the little romance that has been woven around it, and which states that it was written by the General by a camp-fire the night preceding the bloody battle of Chickamauga, in which battle he was killed. As a matter of fact, the poem, as stated by our Norfolk friend, was printed in 1860, fully three years before the battle referred to, and is extant in the Library of American Literature, volume 8, page 312, credited to ‘The Poets and Poetry of the West,’ printed in 1860, and the authorship credited to Lytle. General Lytle was a gallant Federal soldier, respected and honored by the Confederates. Our honored friend and fellow-citizen, Major Douglass West, who was himself a brave and loyal soldier of the Confederacy, first discovered the body of Lytle on the field in his dying moments, and had him removed to the Confederate hospital. Major West furnishes the States with the following interesting and very touching interview on the subject:
Colonel Wests account.
There is no one more familiar with the death and attendant circumstances of the author of ‘I am Dying, Egypt, Dying,’ than Colonel Douglass West, of this city, who performed such kindly services towards a fallen foe after General Lytle had received his death wounds. Colonel West was called on at his residence and [85] asked to narrate some of these incidents, but the old soldier felt constrained, fearing that what he might say would be considered prompted by egotism. When the reporter succeeded in removing these scruples, Colonel West spoke interestingly as follows: General W. H. Lytle, commanding a brigade of Sheridan's division, McCook's corps, was killed about noon, September 20, 1863, by the troops of the Twenty-second Alabama Regiment of Deas' Brigade in Hindman's Division, commanded in that action by General Patton Anderson.1 This command captured between 600 and 700 officers and men of Lytle's Brigade. After the charge, which resulted in the rout of this division of Sheridan, General Anderson ordered me, as Inspector-General of his command, to take charge of those Federal prisoners, then under fire from their own friends, and put them in a place of safety and turn them over to the provost guard, and rejoin my command. Whilst engaged in this duty of collecting the men under an amphitheatre in their rear, an officer of the Federal army, wounded, Achilles-like, in his heel, limped up to me and asked me to save his General, who had fallen, and was then lying near the Federal breastworks, which, together with the dead leaves in the forest, were burning from the artillery fire on both sides. I asked him: ‘Who is your general?’ He replied: ‘General Lytle.’ I asked him whether he was the officer riding a small, dark horse, who was so active in rallying his men. He replied that doubtless he was. I then said: ‘Get four or five of your most stalwart men, not wounded, and take them with you to the spot, and I will follow you.’ The distance was short from where we were holding this conversation, and just across their breastworks, hastily constructed of felled and rotten timber, we found the body lying in the leaves. His face was upwards. He was bleeding from three wounds—one of which, I know, was in the neck; one in the leg, and I have forgotten where the other was. He was dressed in full regulation uniform, but was minus his sword, his scabbard and belt being still on his person. My first exclamation on looking down upon his graceful and manly form, so perfectly dressed and accoutred, was: ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying!’ [86] I then had his body carried across the breastworks to a secure place, left it in charge of this Federal officer, who begged me to have it buried, if possible, and place a Confederate guard with it. At this period the Federal officer who brought me to General Lytle's body said to me: ‘General Lytle's family will never forget you for this act of kindness; will you kindly give me your name and rank?’ I hesitated and said: ‘The Inspector-General of General Anderson's Division.’ This did not satisfy him. He pulled a memorandum-book from his pocket and said: ‘I want your full address.’ I gave it to him—‘Major Douglass West, Inspector-General, Deas' Brigade.’ He startled me by replying: ‘Why, that's my name! Probably we are some kin?’ I replied: ‘Where are you from?’ and he answered: ‘I am Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore I. West, of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment.’ I said: ‘We can hardly be kin, my family have been in Virginia over two centuries, and never immigrated.’Exchanged sabres.
I exchanged sabres with him, he having a very light service sabre, and mine being a very clumsy Confederate-made Claymore. He stated that his sabre was private property, presented to him by the citizens of his county, and bore his name on the blade, which I found by examining it to be true. I had sent a courier in search of an ambulance during this conversation. In the meantime the courier had returned, and said he could find no ambulance, but listening, I heard through the woods the distant sound of a vehicle. Immediately I galloped towards the sound and met Lieutenant-General Longstreet and staff, and reported to him the killing of General Lytle, and that I was then in search of an ambulance to carry his body off the field and have it buried. I overtook the ambulance about a mile distant, and riding along side of it discovered that it contained Captain Deas Nott, of the Twenty-second Alabama, mortally wounded in the charge that killed General Lytle. I asked Captain Nott if he was severely wounded, and he replied: ‘I think I am mortally wounded.’ I told him I had General Lytle's body, and that, as the dead officer had been a war Democrat and friendly towards a proper conduct of [87] the war, I asked him would he allow the body to be thrown over the seat of the ambulance to be taken to the hospital, and he said: ‘Certainly.’ I wrote a note hastily, directed to the surgeon of our division, Dr. Turner, and others, asking them, if possible, to have General Lytle's body buried. I conducted the ambulance back to where I had left General Lytle's body, and requested Colonel West to give me all the effects on his person, which consisted of his belt and scabbard, a most superb pistol, his private pocket-book, and pocket-book containing his military orders, and a small wicker flask. These I retained, and when I reached General Anderson that night, in bivouac near Snodgrass Hill, I detailed all these events to him. We sat by the uncertain light of the camp-fire that night and read quite a number of letters, most of which appear to have been written by his sister, and were signed ‘Jodie.’ These letters contained numerous scraps of poetry written by General Lytle, and clipped by her from Cincinnati papers. All this was very interesting reading to us, but it was painful for us to think that we had assisted in putting out so brilliant a light. We talked of the poem which gave him his great celebrity, and I was enabled to recite it to General Anderson that night from memory, and I told him I had read it fully two years before the war. General Anderson said to me: ‘Major, what are you going to do with those effects of General Lytle.’ I said I had promised an officer of his command to take the earliest opportunity to send them to his family.Kindness to his mother.
General Anderson said: ‘Major, you will do me a great favor if you will allow me to do this, as General Lytle has placed me under peculiar obligations by having sent my old mother through the Federal lines in his own ambulance.’ I then gave him all the effects except a small wicker flask, which I retained as a souvenir. General Anderson sent these articles through Bragg's headquarters to Rosecrans' command under a flag of truce. During the action, after the killing of General Lytle, I received a wound which gave me some concern, and I asked General Anderson's permission to ride back to the hospital, and that I would report at dawn in the morning. I rode through the woods without guides, except the stars and the sounds, and it was after midnight when I reached the field hospital of our division on the Chickamauga river, [88] at Alexander's bridge. After some difficulty I found Surgeons Little and Turner on the furrowed ground, operating without any light except that of burning fence rails. I immediately asked if they had received my note. They answered: ‘Yes; Captain Nott died in the ambulance before reaching the hospital, and his and General Lytle's body are lying in the straw near by, as it was impossible to obtain sepulture for any of the dead of either side.’ I found Captain Nott's body guarded by his two colored servants, Nat and John. I said to them: “Boys, we must find some means to bury your master,” but we could find no implements, except an axe and a broken spade. With those we pried off some of the weatherboarding of the Alexander house, dug a shallow grave at the foot of a large Catalpa tree, lined it with the planks, and laid those two soldiers side by side-the Blue and the Gray. Two other officers, Major Huger, of Maginalt's staff, and Colonel Marast, of the regiment which killed General Lytle, were buried near by. These bodies were subsequently all removed—General Lytle's three or four days after he was killed, a casket having been sent through by a flag of truce. ‘And this is the true account of the death and burial of Brigadier-General W. H. Lytle, the author of “I am dying, Egypt, dying.” ’ At the reunion of the Blue and the Gray at Chickamauga battlefield last summer Colonel West met several members of General Lytle's command, many of whom are leading men in the city of Cincinnati. He was made the recipient of many courtesies by them, and specially invited to participate in the exercises incident to the dedication of a handsome monument to General Lytle's, which had been erected on that historic field. General Lew Wallace was to have delivered an address on the occasion. Colonel West would have accepted the invitation, but owing to General Wallace's failure to be present, some of the arrangements fell through, and Colonel West did not attend. Captain John C. Parker, an ex-Federal naval officer, formerly a resident of Cincinnati, but now of New Orleans, was well acquainted with General Lytle. He agreed with Colonel West that the poem ‘I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying,’ was written a few years before the war. Mr. Parker said he remembered reading it in a Cincinnati paper about the year 1858. General Lytle, he said, sprang from a military family. He was a man of great refinement and culture, and a very gallant soldier, and [89] he possessed a strong personality and magnetism. His death was greatly mourned in Ohio, and he lies buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, under a handsome monument erected by his family.The popular version.
We herewith append the popular version of the romantic story of the authorship of the poem, the poem itself, and a brief sketch of Lytle, but we are unable to discover the name or the date of the paper from which the clipping is taken. The tale about the lines being written on the eve of Chickamauga is fully well exploded, but ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ is a noble production, and will live as long as American literature. We have never seen anything else from the pen of the gallant and unflinching soldier, but if he never wrote another verse or line, this production marks him as a poet in the true sense of the word. One of the finest poems in the finest literature of song is that one known everywhere by its first pathetic line—‘I am dying, Egypt, dying,’and which was written by General William H. Lytle on the eve of the battle of Chickamauga. The Detroit Free Press says it is indebted to the late Colonel Realf, poet, author and soldier, who shared the fortunes of war with his friend, General Lytle, for an account of the peculiar circumstances under which the poem was written. Colonel Realf shared the tent of General Lytle on the night preceding the battle. The two friends were both given to writing poems at such times, and each had an unfinished poem on hand. They read and criticised each other's efforts humorously for some time, when General Lytle said, with a grave smile: ‘Realf, I shall never live to finish that poem.’ “Nonsense,” said his friend, ‘you will live to write volumes of such stuff.’ “No,” said the General solemnly, ‘s I was speaking to you a feeling came over me suddenly, which is more startling than prophecy, that I shall be killed in to-morrow's fight.’ Colonel Realf asked him to define this feeling, and he said: ‘As I was talking to you I saw the green hills of Ohio as they looked when I stood among them. They began to recede from me in a weird way, and as they disappeared the conviction flashed through me like the lightning's shock that I should never see them again.’ [90] General Lytle was a native of Ohio, and dearly loved his birth State. Colonel Realf laughed at his friend, and rallied him upon his superstition, but acknowledged afterward that he became so thrilled himself with an unnatural fear that he begged the General to finish his poem before he slept, that such fine work might not be lost to the world. In the small hours General Lytle awakened his friend from the slumber into which he had fallen to read to him that beautiful poem, which must live as long as our literature survives. Imagine the scene. The two men, united by the bonds of friendship, of congenial tastes, both ready and willing to face death on the morning in its direct form, scanning by the light of their tent lantern each other's features, when the finished poem had been read aloud. Colonel Realf said that his own eyes filled with tears, but the General said not a word as he placed the manuscript in his pocket, and lay down on his last night's rest upon earth. Before dawn came the call of arms. When Realf next saw his friend he lay cold in death among the heaps of slain. Then he thought of the poem, and searching the pocket where he had seen him place it, he drew it forth, and forwarded it to General Lytle's friends with his other effects. We give the poem in its entirety, feeling sure all will renew their admiration of it when they read under what tragic circumstances it was written.
—W. H. Lytle.I am dying, Egypt, dying.
I am dying, Egypt, dying!
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
And the dark Plutonian shadows,
Gather on the evening blast.
Let thine arm, O Queen, support me;
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear,
Hearken to the great heart secrets
Thou, and thou alone, must hear.
Though my scarred and veteran legions
Bear their eagles high no more,
And my wrecked and scattered galleys
Strew dark Actium's fatal shore:
Though no glittering guards surround me,
Prompt to do their master's will,
I must perish like a Roman—
Die, the great Triumvir still!
[91] Let not Caesar's servile minions
Mock the lion thus laid low;
'Twas no foeman's arm that felled him;
'Twas his own that dealt the blow—
His, who, pillowed on thy bosom
Turned aside from glory's ray—
His, who, drunk with thy caresses,
Madly threw a world away.
Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my fame in Rome,
Where my noble spouse, Octavia,
Weeps within her widowed home.
Seek her! Say the gods have told me—
Altars, augurs, circling wings—
That her blood, with mine commingled,
Yet shall mount the throne of kings.
As for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!
Glorious sorceress of the Nile!
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendor of thy smile.
Give to Caesar crown and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine;
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying!
Hark! the insulting foeman's cry;
They are coming! Quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah! no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell;
Isis and Orsiris guard thee—
Cleopatra—Rome—farewell.
General W. H. Lytle.
William H. Lytle was born in Cincinnati, O., November 2, 1826. His great-grandfather, William, fought in the French war. His grandfather, of the same name, was an early pioneer in Ohio, and active in Indian warfare. His father, Robert T. Lytle, was a member of Congress, 1833-35, and afterwards surveyor of public lands. The subject of this sketch graduated at Cincinnati College, studied law, began the practice, but at the beginning of our war with Mexico he volunteered, and served as captain in the Second Ohio Regiment. [92] At the close of the war he resumed the practice of law, was elected to the Legislature of Ohio, and in 1857 was an unsuccessful candidate for Lieutenant-Governor on the Democratic ticket. Soon afterwards he became major-general of the Ohio militia, and at the beginning of the civil war was commissioned colonel of the Tenth Ohio Regiment, which he led in West Virginia in 1861. At Carnifax Ferry, on September 10, 1861, he commanded a brigade, and was severely wounded. He was again wounded and taken prisoner at Perryville, Ky., October 8, 1862, and, when exchanged, was promoted to brigadier-general, November 29th. Thereafter he served actively under Rosecrans till he was killed while leading a charge of his brigade at the battle of Chickamauga. General Lytle had much literary taste and genuine poetic talent, and was the author of many poems of merit. His best-known poem is the one we copy above, written in 1857. No book collection of his verses has ever been made. On the death of this brilliant poet-soldier, General W. S. Rosecrans issued the following:[A paragraph in the preceding very interesting account, to which attention is called, is corrected in the issue of the New Orleans Picayune of December i, 1895, as follows.—Ed.] [93] The publication of the picture and story of Barney McDermott, the stalwart veteran in the employ of the charity hospital, had an interesting sequel. Daniel O'C. Murphy is another Mississippi veteran, who has been living in New Orleans for many years. During the war he and McDermott were camp cronies, but they had not seen each other for thirty years and did not know that they were so near each other until Mr. Murphy read the interview in the Picayune. He lost no time in calling at the hospital and renewing old friendships. Mr. Murphy's memory agreed with Mr. McDermott's with reference to the killing of General Lytle, but, knowing memory to be sometimes unreliable, he decided to write to Judge S. S. Calhoon, of Jackson, Miss., in whom Mr. Murphy has the greatest confidence. Yesterday he received a reply, and, although it is a private letter, Mr. Murphy is willing to have it published:
