The grey-brown bird I know received us comrades three; And he sang what seemed 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. DEATH CAROL 16. Come, lovely and soothing Death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, Praised 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, 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 highspread 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-veiled 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-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death! To the tally of my soul, 17. Loud and strong kept up the grey-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. I saw askant the armies; 18. And I saw, as in noiseless dreams, hundreds of battleflags; Borne through the smoke of the battles, and pierced 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 splintered 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 dead soldiers of the war. But I saw they were not as was thought; They themselves were fully at rest-they suffered not; The living remained and suffered-the mother suffered, And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffered, And the armies that remained suffered. 19. 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, everaltering 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 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. 20. Yet each I keep, and all, retrievements out of the night; The song, the wondrous chant of the grey-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering odour; With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I 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. THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. [Born in 1819. Entered upon, but has not eventually pursued, the medical career. Passed some portion of his youth in Europe, more especially in Italy; and is best known by his translation of Dante's Inferno]. DIRGE FOR ONE WHO FELL IN BATTLE. ROOM for a Soldier! lay him in the clover; He loved the fields, and they shall be his cover; lover: Where the rain may rain upon it, Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches; perches: Make his mound with sunshine on it, Busy as the busy bee, his rest should be the clover; Gentle as the lamb was he, and the fern should be his cover; Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow over: Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full often "Captain or Colonel,"-whatever invocation nation! Long as the sun doth shine upon it |