Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, who that was, or something of the kind. I spoke up, mentioning the name Walt Whitman, and said he was the author of Leaves of Grass. Mr. Lincoln did not say anything, but took a good look, till Whitman was quite gone by. Then he said (I cannot give you his way of saying it, but it was quite emphatic and odd), "Well, he looks like a MAN." He said it pretty loud, but in a sort of absent way, and with the emphasis on the words I have underscored.' This was probably in the winter of 1864-1865. 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 si lent 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 sol II 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 ? 80 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. 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 labor, 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. 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, 150 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. And I saw askant the armies, 170 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 débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, 180 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, 190 As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heartshaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door-yard, 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 graybrown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul, 200 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. 1865. 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, Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains, Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright, Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps, I dream, I dream, I dream. Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields, Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen, Onward I sped at the time- but now of their forms at night, I dream, I dream, I dream. 1865. 1 In the original version, 1865, these two lines read:Sing, to the lower'd coffin there; Sing, with the shovel'd clods that fill the grave a verse,... The change was made in the edition of 1881. In the original version, 1865, the first line of the poem read: In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face of anguish, and the first half of this line was used as title for the poem. RECONCILIATION WORD over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin-I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin. 1865. AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD IN YOUR LAP CAMERADO As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume, I know I am restless and make others so, I know my words are weapons full of danfull of death,3 ger, For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them, I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me, I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule, And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me, And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me; Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination, Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated. 1865. ABOARD AT A SHIP'S HELM ABOARD at a ship's helm, A young steersman steering with care. 3 In the original edition there followed here tvo lines since omitted: (Indeed I am myself the real soldier: It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman); |