Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (58 page)

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

 

 

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

 

 

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

 

 

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

 

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

 

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o‘er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

 

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin‘d,
(’Tis some mother’s large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

 

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvey face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten‘d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom
yet,
Those who love each other shall become invincible,
They shall yet make Columbia victorious.

 

Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious,
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the
earth.

 

 

No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,
If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.

 

One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian’s comrade,
From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese,
shall be friends triune,
More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.

 

To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come,
Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.

 

It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly
affection,
The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

 

These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron,
I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.
(Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)

I saw old General at bay,
(Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,)
His small force was now completely hemm’d in, in his works,
He call’d for volunteers to run the enemy’s lines, a desperate
emergency,
I saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or
three were selected,
I saw them receive their orders aside, they listen’d with care, the
adjutant was very grave,
I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.

While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over
long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant
midnight passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the
breath of my infant,
There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;
The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,
The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the
irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short
t-h-t! t-h-t!
of
the rifle balls,
I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the
great shells shrieking as they pass,
The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,
(tumultuous now the contest rages,)
All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,
The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their
pieces,
The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse
of the right time,
After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the
effect;
Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young
colonel leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)
I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no
delay,)
I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low
concealing all;
Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either
side,
Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and
orders of officers,
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my
ears a shout of applause, (some special success,)
And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in
dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the
depths of my soul,)
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,
cavalry, moving hither and thither,
(The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red
I heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)
Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a
full run,
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these
in my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.

Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,
With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet?
Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?
(‘Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sands and pines,
Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com’st to me,
As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)

 

 

No further does she say, but lingering all the day,
Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling
eye,
And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.

 

What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?
Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?
Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?

Not youth pertains to me,
Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,
Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,
In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still, for learning
inures not to me,
Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three
things inure to me,
I have nourish’d the wounded and sooth’d many a dying soldier,
And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,
Composed these songs.

Race of veterans—race of victors!
Race of the soil, ready for conflict—race of the conquering march!
(No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race,)
Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,
Race of passion and the storm.

World take good notice, silver stars fading,
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching,
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.

O tan-faced prairie-boy,
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,
Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among
the recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but look’d on each
other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,
Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple,
On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.

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.

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.

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 danger, full of death,
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.

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands—all my seashores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle
pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty—ah my wooly white and crimson!
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
My sacred one, my mother.

Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?
Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?
Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand
nor am I now;
(I have been born of the same as the war was born,
The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the
martial dirge,
With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s
funeral;)
What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my
works,
And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with
piano-tunes,
For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.

Lo, Victress on the peaks,
Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,
(The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,)
Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all,
Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,
Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness and bloom—lo,
in these hours supreme,
No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery’s rapturous
verse,
But a cluster containing night’s darkness and blood-dripping
wounds,
And psalms of the dead.

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.

Adieu O soldier,
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,
Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific
game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you
and like of you all fill‘d,
With war and war’s expression.