The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, 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, 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 odor 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 labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went 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 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, From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, Prais'd be the fathomless universe, 1 For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, 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 wdve whose voice I know And the soul turning to the vast and well-veil'd death/ 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 Ödeath, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, And I saw askant the armies, I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, 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 But I saw they were not as was thought, war, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade 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, 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, 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 sand Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, 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; For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths a-crowding, for you the shores 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, 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, 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. THIS dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, |