Youth and Mortality in Herman Melville's "On the Slain Collegians" Clara Edwards College

The winds of war strike all, and just as spring blossoms are blown from the trees falling white to the ground, young men are killed in their prime by war before they are able to bear the fruit of knowledge. Herman Melville observed the pre-war attitudes of the young men and their relations, and crafted a poem, "On the Slain Collegians", on the futility of intentions in wake of a greater force. Herman Melville uses allusions, word choice and structure to convey the power of nature, the importance of knowledge, and how the folly of youth and culture does not stand immortal in the test of war.

The poem's title is indicative of the subject of the poem, which is the death of many young men in the war who would have been in college. There is a footnote reference after the poem title that includes a note written by Melville about the poem:

The records of Northern colleges attest what numbers of our noblest youth went from them to the battlefield. Southern members of the same classes arrayed themselves on the side of Secession, while Southern seminaries controlled large quotas. Of all these, what numbers marched who never returned except on the shield.

Melville's comparison of college enrollment numbers to war deaths inspires the...