#battle of the wilderness

None can narrate that strife in the pines,
A seal is on it – Sabaean lore!
Obscure as the wood, the entangled rhyme
But hints at the maze of war –
Vivid glimpses or livid through peopled gloom,
And fires which creep and char –
A riddle of death, of which the slain
Sole solvers are.

–Herman Melville, “The Armies of the Wilderness" 

Image: Skulls remaining on the field and trees destroyed at the Battle of the Wilderness, 1864, Virginia. Source: Wikipedia.