Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/95

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In | ii sessed a strong personality and magnetism. His death greatly mourned in Ohio, and he lies buried in Spring Grove Ceme- v, Cincinnati, under a handsome monument erected by his family.

NIK POPULAR VKKSION.

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 \ve 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, Kgypt, 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 pre- ceding 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, "as I was speaking to you a feeling came over me suddenly, which is more startling than pro- phecy, 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."