WEAVE IN, MY HARDY LIFE

    Weave in, weave in, my hardy life,
    Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come,
    Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes, the senses, sight
          weave in,
    Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the weft, the warp, incessant
          weave, tire not
    (We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end, nor really
          aught we know,
    But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the
          death-envelop’d march of peace as well as war goes on),
    For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave,
    We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.

HOW SOLEMN AS ONE BY ONE

(Washington City, 1865)

    How solemn as one by one,
    As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where I
          stand,
    As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the
          masks
    (As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,
          whoever you are),
    How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the ranks,
          and to you! 
    I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,
    O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
    Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
    The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,
    Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,
    Nor the bayonet stab O friend.

SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE

(Washington City, 1865)

    Spirit whose work is done ­spirit of dreadful hours! 
    Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
    Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts (yet onward ever unfaltering
          pressing),
    Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene ­electric spirit,
    That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a tireless
          phantom flitted,
    Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the
          drum,
    Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,
          reverberates round me,
    As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles,
    As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,
    As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,
    As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the
          distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,
    Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left,
    Evenly, lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;
    Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death
          next day,
    Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,
    Leave me your pulses of rage ­bequeath them to me ­fill me with
          currents convulsive,
    Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone,
    Let them identify you to the future in these songs.

THE RETURN OF THE HEROES

    1

    For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself,
    Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields,
    Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
    Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
    Tuning a verse for thee.

    O earth that hast no voice, confide to me a voice,
    O harvest of my lands ­O boundless summer growths,
    O lavish brown parturient earth ­O infinite teeming womb,
    A song to narrate thee.

    2

    Ever upon this stage,
    Is acted God’s calm annual drama,
    Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
    Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
    The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
    The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
    The liliput countless armies of the grass,
    The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
    The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra,
    The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the
          silvery fringes,
    The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,
    The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
    The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.

    3

    Fecund America ­to-day,
    Thou art all over set in births and joys! 
    Thou groan’st with riches, thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing
          garment,
    Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions,
    A myriad-twining life like interlacing vines binds all thy vast
          demesne,
    As some huge ship freighted to water’s edge thou ridest into port,
    As rain falls from the heaven and vapours rise from the earth, so
          have the precious values fallen upon thee and risen out of
          thee;
    Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle! 
    Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,
    Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,
    Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon thy
          world, and lookest East and lookest West,
    Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million
          farms, and missest nothing,
    Thou all-acceptress ­thou hospitable (thou only art hospitable as
          God is hospitable).

    4

    When late I sang sad was my voice,
    Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and
          smoke of war;
    In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,
    Or pass’d with slow step through the wounded and dying.

    But now I sing not war,
    Nor the measur’d march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
    Nor the regiments hastily coming up deploying in line of battle;
    No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.

    Ask’d room those flush’d immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping
          armies? 
    Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow’d.

    (Pass, pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs,
    With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your
          muskets;
    How elate I stood and watch’d you, where starting off you march’d.

    Pass ­then rattle drums again,
    For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,
    Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,
    O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your
          fever,
    O my land’s maim’d darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the
        crutch,
    Lo, your pallid army follows.)

    5

    But on these days of brightness,
    On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the
          high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
    Should the dead intrude?

    Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,
    They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,
    And along the edge of the sky in the horizon’s far margin.

    Nor do I forget you Departed,
    Nor in winter or summer my lost ones,
    But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace, like
          pleasing phantoms,
    Your memories rising glide silently by me.

    6

    I saw the day the return of the heroes,
    (Yet the heroes never surpass’d shall never return,
    Them that day I saw not).

    I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies,
    I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions,
    Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of
          mighty camps.

    No holiday soldiers ­youthful, yet veterans,
    Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
    Harden’d of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
    Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field.

    A pause ­the armies wait,
    A million flush’d embattled conquerors wait,
    The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn,
    They melt, they disappear.

    Exult O lands! victorious lands! 
    Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields,
    But here and hence your victory.

    Melt, melt away ye armies ­disperse ye blue-clad soldiers,
    Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms,
    Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North,
    With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.

    7

    Loud O my throat, and clear O soul! 
    The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding,
    The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.

    All till’d and untill’d fields expand before me,
    I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last,
    Man’s innocent and strong arenas.

    I see the heroes at other toils,
    I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.

    I see where the Mother of All,
    With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long,
    And counts the varied gathering of the products.

    Busy the far, the sunlit panorama,
    Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
    Cotton and rice of the South and Louisianian cane,
    Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
    Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
    And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook,
    And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,
    And the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring
          grass.

    Toil on heroes! harvest the products! 
    Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All,
    With dilated form and lambent eyes watch’d you.

    Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well! 
    The Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you.

    Well-pleased America thou beholdest,
    Over the fields of the West those crawling monsters,
    The human-divine inventions, the labour-saving implements;
    Beholdest moving in every direction imbued as with life the revolving
          hay-rakes,
    The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines,
    The engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, well
          separating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork,
    Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the
          rice-cleanser.

    Beneath thy look O Maternal,
    With these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest.

    All gather and all harvest,
    Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in
          security,
    Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.

    Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy great
          face only,
    Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed spear
          under thee,
    Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in its
          light-green sheath,
    Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns,
    Oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to
          theirs;
    Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the
          golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
    Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
    Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp or tobacco in the Borders,
    Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or bunches of
          grapes from the vines,
    Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,
    Under the beaming sun and under thee.

MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM’D

    1

    When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
    And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
    I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

    Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
    Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
    And thought of him I love.

    2

    O powerful western fallen star! 
    O shades of night ­O moody, tearful night! 
    O great star disappear’d ­O the black murk that hides the star! 
    O cruel hands that hold me powerless ­O helpless soul of me! 
    O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

    3

    In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d
          palings,
    Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich
          green,
    With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I
          love,
    With every leaf a miracle ­and from this bush in the door-yard,
    With delicate-colour’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
    A sprig with its flower I break.

    4

    In the swamp in secluded recesses,
    A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

    Solitary the thrush,
    The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
    Sings by himself a song.

    Song of the bleeding throat,
    Death’s outlet song of life (for well dear brother I know,
    If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die).

    5

    Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
    Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d
          from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
    Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
          endless grass,
    Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
          dark-brown fields uprisen,
    Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
    Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
    Night and day journeys a coffin.

    6

    Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
    Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
    With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
    With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women
          standing,
    With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
    With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
          unbared heads,
    With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
    With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising
          strong and solemn,
    With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
    The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs ­where amid these you
          journey,
    With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
    Here, coffin that slowly passes,
    I give you my sprig of lilac.

    7

    (Nor for you, for one alone,
    Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
    For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and
          sacred death.

    All over bouquets of roses,
    O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
    But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
    Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
    With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
    For you and the coffins all of you O death.)

    8

    O western orb sailing the heaven,
    Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,
    As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
    As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
    As you dropp’d from the sky low down as if to my side (while the other
          stars all look’d on),
    As we wander’d together the solemn night (for something I know not what
          kept me from sleep),
    As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you
          were of woe,
    As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent
          night,
    As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black
          of the night,
    As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
    Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.

    9

    Sing on there in the swamp,
    O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
    I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
    But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,
    The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.

    10

    O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? 
    And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? 
    And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?

    Sea-winds blown from east and west,
    Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
          there on the prairies meeting,
    These and with these and the breath of my chant,
    I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.

    11

    O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? 
    And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
    To adorn the burial-house of him I love?

    Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
    With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and
          bright,
    With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,
          burning, expanding the air,
    With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
          of the trees prolific,
    In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
          wind-dapple here and there,
    With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and
          shadows,
    And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
    And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward
          returning.

    12

    Lo, body and soul ­this land,
    My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
          and the ships,
    The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s
          shores and flashing Missouri,
    And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.

    Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
    The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
    The gentle soft-born measureless light,
    The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
    The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
    Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

    13

    Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
    Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
    Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.

    Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
    Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.

    O liquid and free and tender! 
    O wild and loose to my soul ­O wondrous singer! 
    You only I hear ­yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),
    Yet the lilac with mastering odour holds me.

    14

    Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,
    In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
          the farmers preparing their crops,
    In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
    In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb’d winds and the
          storms),
    Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
          voices of children and women,
    The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
    And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with
          labour,
    And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with
          its meals and minutia of daily usages,
    And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent ­lo,
          then and there,
    Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
    Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
    And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.

    Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
    And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
    And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of
          companions,
    I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
    Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
    To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.

    And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me,
    The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,
    And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.

    From deep secluded recesses,
    From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
    Came the carol of the bird.

    And the charm of the carol rapt me,
    As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
    And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.

Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love ­but praise! praise! praise!  For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? 
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come

          unfalteringly.

Approach strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.

From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings
for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are
fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.

The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

    Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
    Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the
          prairies wide,
    Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
    I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.

    15

    To the tally of my soul,
    Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
    With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.

    Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
    Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
    And I with my comrades there in the night.

    While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
    As to long panoramas of visions.

    And I saw askant the armies,
    I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
    Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw
          them,
    And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
    And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
    And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.

    I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
    And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
    I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
    But I saw they were not as was thought,
    They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
    The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
    And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
    And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

    16

    Passing the visions, passing the night,
    Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
    Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
    Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
    As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling,
          flooding the night,
    Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
          bursting with joy,
    Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
    As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
    Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
    I leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning with spring.

    I cease from my song for thee,
    From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with
          thee,
    O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.

    Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
    The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
    And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
    With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
    With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
    Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for
          the dead I loved so well,
    For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands ­and this for
          his dear sake,
    Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
    There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

O CAPTAIN!  MY CAPTAIN!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up ­for you the flag is flung ­for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths ­for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father! 
This arm beneath your head! 
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

HUSH’D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY

(May 4, 1865)

    Hush’d be the camps to-day,
    And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
    And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
    Our dear commander’s death.

    No more for him life’s stormy conflicts,
    Nor victory, nor defeat ­no more time’s dark events,
    Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

    But sing poet in our name,
    Sing of the love we bore him ­because you, dweller in camps, know it
          truly.

    As they invault the coffin there,
    Sing ­as they close the doors of earth upon him ­one verse,
    For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

ASHES OF SOLDIERS

    Ashes of soldiers South or North,
    As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,
    The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,
    And again the advance of the armies.

    Noiseless as mists and vapours,
    From their graves in the trenches ascending,
    From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
    From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,
    In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or
          single ones they come,
    And silently gather round me.

Now sound no note O trumpeters,
Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs (ah
my brave horsemen! 
My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
With all the perils were yours).

Nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn,
Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for a
burial,
Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.

But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade,
Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless,
The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive,
I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.

Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,
Draw close, but speak not.

    Phantoms of countless lost,
    Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,
    Follow me ever ­desert me not while I live.

    Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living ­sweet are the musical
          voices sounding,
    But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.

    Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,
    But love is not over ­and what love, O comrades! 
    Perfume from battlefields rising, up from the foetor arising.

    Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,
    Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
    Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.

    Perfume all ­make all wholesome,
    Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,
    O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.

    Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,
    That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,
    For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.

PENSIVE ON HER DEAD GAZING

    Pensive on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of All,
    Desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields
          gazing
    (As the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d),
    As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk’d,
    Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you lose not my
          sons, lose not an atom,
    And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear blood,
    And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly impalpable,
    And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my rivers’ depths,
    And you mountain sides, and the woods where my dear children’s blood
          trickling redden’d,
    And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all future trees,
    My dead absorb or South or North ­my young men’s bodies absorb, and
          their precious, precious blood,
    Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again give me many a year
          hence,
    In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries hence,
    In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my darlings, give my
          immortal heroes,
    Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their breath, let not an
          atom be lost,
    O years and graves!  O air and soil!  O my dead, an aroma sweet! 
    Exhale them perennial sweet death, years centuries hence.