Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (56 page)

The noble sire fallen on evil days,
I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,
(Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)
The insane knife toward the Mother of All.

 

 

The noble son on sinewy feet advancing,
I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio’s waters and of
Indiana,
To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring,
Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.

 

Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking,
As to you Rebellious, (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive
against me, and why seek my life?
When you yourself forever provide to defend me?
For you provided me Washington—and now these also.

City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are here,
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in
and out with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores—city of tall façades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
Spring up O city—not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself,
warlike!
Fear not—submit to no models but your own O city!
Behold me—incarnate me as I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you offer’d me—whom you adopted
I have adopted,
Good or bad I never question you—I love all—I do not condemn
any thing,
I chant and celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no more,
In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine,
War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!

Give me your hand old Revolutionary,
The hill-top is nigh, but a few steps, (make room gentlemen,)
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and
extra years,
You can walk old man, though your eyes are almost done,
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.

 

Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means,
On the plain below recruits are drilling and exercising,
There is the camp, one regiment departs to-morrow,
Do you hear the officers giving their orders?
Do you hear the clank of the muskets?

 

Why what comes over you now old man?
Why do you tremble and clutch my hand so convulsively?
The troops are but drilling, they are yet surrounded with smiles,
Around them at hand the well-drest friends and the women,
While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down,
Green the midsummer verdure and fresh blows the dallying breeze,
O‘er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between.

 

But drill and parade are over, they march back to quarters,
Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping!

 

As wending the crowds now part and disperse—but we old man,
Not for nothing have I brought you hither—we must remain,
You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell.

When I clutch’d your hand it was not with terror,
But suddenly pouring about me here on every side,
And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes
they ran,
And where tents are pitch‘d, and wherever you see south and
south-east and south-west,
Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods,
And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over) came again and
suddenly raged,
As eighty-five years a-gone no mere parade receiv’d with applause
of friends,
But a battle which I took part in myself—aye, long ago as it is, I
took part in it,
Walking then this hilltop, this same ground.

 

Aye, this is the ground,
My blind eyes even as I speak behold it re-peopled
from graves,
The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear,
Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted,
I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay,
I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes;
Here we lay encamp‘d, it was this time in summer also.

 

As I talk I remember all, I remember the Declaration,
It was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us
here,
By his staff surrounded the General stood in the middle, he held
up his unsheath’d sword,
It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army.

 

‘Twas a bold act then—the English war-ships had just arrived,
We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,
And the transports swarming with soldiers.

 

A few days more and they landed, and then the battle.
Twenty thousand were brought against us,
A veteran force furnish’d with good artillery.

 

I tell not now the whole of the battle,
But one brigade early in the forenoon order’d forward to engage
the red-coats,
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march‘d,
And how long and well it stood confronting death.

 

Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting
death?
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known
personally to the General.

 

Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters,
Till of a sudden unlook’d for by defiles through the woods, gain’d
at night,
The British advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely playing
their guns,
That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy’s mercy.

 

The General watch’d them from this hill,
They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment,
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the
middle,
But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning
them!

 

 

It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General.
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish.

 

Meanwhile the British manœuvr’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle,
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle.

 

We fought the fight in detachments,
Sallying forth we fought at several points, but in each the luck
was against us,
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back
to the works on this hill,
Till we turn’d menacing here, and then he left us.

 

That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two
thousand strong,
Few return‘d, nearly all remain in Brooklyn.

 

That and here my General’s first battle,
No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not
conclude with applause,
Nobody clapp’d hands here then.

 

But in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain,
Wearied that night we lay foil’d and sullen,
While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord off against us
encamp‘d,
Quite within hearing, feasting, clinking wineglasses together over
their victory.

 

So dull and damp and another day,
But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing,
Silent as a ghost while they thought they were sure of him, my
General retreated.

 

 

I saw him at the river-side,
Down by the ferry lit by torches, hastening the embarcation;
My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass’d
over,
And then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for
the last time.

 

 

Every one else seem’d fill’d with gloom,
Many no doubt thought of capitulation.

 

But when my General pass’d me,
As he stood in his boat and look’d toward the coming sun,
I saw something different from capitulation.

Enough, the Centenarian’s story ends,
The two, the past and present, have interchanged,
I myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now
speaking.

 

And is this the ground Washington trod?
And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he
cross‘d,
As resolute in defeat as other generals in their proudest triumphs?

 

I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward,
I must preserve that look as it beam’d on you rivers of Brooklyn.

 

See—as the annual round returns the phantoms return,
It is the 27th of August and the British have landed,
The battle begins and goes against us, behold through the smoke
Washington’s face,
The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march’d forth to
intercept the enemy,
They are cut off, murderous artillery from the hills plays upon
them,
Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag,
Baptized that day in many a young man’s bloody wounds,
In death, defeat, and sisters‘, mothers’ tears.

 

Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more valuable
than your owners supposed;
In the midst of you stands an encampment very old,
Stands forever the camp of that dead brigade.

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,
They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark
to the musical clank,
Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to
drink,
Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture,
the negligent rest on the saddles,
Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the
ford—while,
Scarlet and blue and snowy white,
The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.

I see before me now a traveling army halting,
Below a fertile valley spread, with barns and the orchards of
summer,
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising
high,
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily
seen,
The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on
the mountain,
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized,
flickering,
And over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded,
breaking out, the eternal stars.

With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and
now an irregular volley,
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades
press on,
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun—the dust-cover’d men,
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
With artillery interspers‘d—the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,
As the army corps advances.

By the bivouac’s fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow—
but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim
outline,
The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily
watching me,)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous
thoughts,
Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those
that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the bivouac’s fitful flame.

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear
son.

 

 

Lo, ‘tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d
vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and
with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers
well.

 

 

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call,
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right
away.

 

 

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps
trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

 

Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign‘d,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s
soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the
main words only,
Sentences broken,
gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,
taken to hospital.
At present low, but will soon be better.

 

Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

 

Grieve not so, dear mother,
(the just-grown daughter speaks
through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay‘d,)
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

 

Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be
better, that brave and simple soul,)
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch‘d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often
waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep
longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.