Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (74 page)

 

Nor think we forget thee maternal;
Lag‘d’st thou so long? shall the clouds close again upon thee?
Ah, but thou hast thyself now appear’d to us—we know thee,
Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of thyself,
Thou waitest there as everywhere thy time.

By broad Potomac’s shore, again old tongue,
(Still uttering, still ejaculating, canst never cease this babble?)
Again old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush
spring returning,
Again the freshness and the odors, again Virginia’s summer sky,
pellucid blue and silver,
Again the forenoon purple of the hills,
Again the deathless grass, so noiseless soft and green,
Again the blood-red roses blooming.

Perfume this book of mine O blood-red roses!
Lave subtly with your waters every line Potomac!
Give me of you O spring, before I close, to put between its
pages!
O forenoon purple of the hills, before I close, of you!
O deathless grass, of you!

From far Dakota’s canons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch,
the silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.

 

The battle-bulletin,
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism,
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter’d horses for
breastworks,
The fall of Custer and all his officers and men.

 

Continues yet the old, old legend of our race,
The loftiest of life upheld by death,
The ancient banner perfectly maintain‘d,
O lesson opportune, O how I welcome thee!

 

As sitting in dark days,
Lone, sulky, through the time’s thick murk looking in vain for
light, for hope,
From unsuspected parts a fierce and momentary proof,
(The sun there at the centre though conceal‘d,
Electric life forever at the centre,)
Breaks forth a lightning flash.

 

Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,
I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a
bright sword in thy hand,
Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds,
(I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,)
Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most
glorious,
After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a
color,
Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,
Thou yieldest up thyself.

In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable
look,)
Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.

 

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.

Thick sprinkled bunting! flag of stars!
Long yet your road, fateful flag—long yet your road, and lined
with bloody death,
For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,
All its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy
banner;
Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest borne, to flaunt
unrival’d?
O hasten flag of man—O with sure and steady step, passing
highest flags of kings,
Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol—run up above
them all,
Flag of stars! thick sprinkled bunting!

What best I see in thee,
Is not that where thou mov‘st down history’s great highways,
Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,
Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in
peace,
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia
swarm’d upon,
Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s
promenade;
But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,
Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,
Ohio‘s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the
front,
Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round
world’s promenade,
Were all so justified.

Spirit that form’d this scene,
These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,
These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,
These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,
These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,
I know thee, savage spirit—we have communed together,
Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;
Was’t charged against my chants they had forgotten art?
To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?
The lyrist’s measur’d beat, the wrought-out temple’s grace—
column and polish’d arch forgot?
But thou that revelest here—spirit that form’d this scene,
They have remembered thee.

As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish‘d, wherein, O terrific
Ideal,
Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things, science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

 

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

 

But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.

 

Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the
face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminè of seers, the spiritual world, these
centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid
announcements of any.

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud,
A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.

 

I shall go forth,
I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how
long,
Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will
suddenly cease.

 

O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?—and yet it is
enough, O soul;
O soul, we have positively appear‘d—that is enough.

Years of the modern! years of the unperform‘d!
Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas,
I see not America only, not only Liberty’s nation but other nations
preparing,
I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the
solidarity of races,
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage,
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts
suitable to them closed?)
I see Freedom, completely arm’d and victorious and very haughty,
with Law on one side and Peace on the other,
A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste;
What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions,
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken,
I see the landmarks of European kings removed,
I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others
give way;)
Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day,
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a
God,
Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest!
His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the
Pacific, the archipelagoes,
With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the
wholesale engines of war,
With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all
geography, all lands;
What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing
under the seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to
the globe?
Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns
grow dim,
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine
war,
No one knows what will happen next, such portents fill the days
and nights;
Years prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to
pierce it, is full of phantoms,
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me,
This incredible rush and heat, this strange ecstatic fever of dreams
O years!
Your dreams O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know
not whether I sleep or wake;)
The perform’d America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow
behind me,
The unperform’d, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance,
upon me.

Ashes of soldiers South or North,
As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,
The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of the armies.

 

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending,
From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,
In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or
single ones they come,
And silently gather round me.

 

Now sound no note O trumpeters,
Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs,
(ah my brave horsemen!
My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
With all the perils were yours.)

 

Nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn,
Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat
for a burial,
Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike
drums.

 

But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded
promenade,
Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and
voiceless,
The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive,
I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead
soldiers.

 

Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,
Draw close, but speak not.

Phantoms of countless lost,
Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,
Follow me ever—desert me not while I live.

 

Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living—sweet are the
musical voices sounding,
But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.

 

Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,
But love is not over—and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the fœtor arising.

 

Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender
pride.

 

Perfume all—make all wholesome,
Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,
O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.
Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial
dew,
For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.

Of these years I sing,
How they pass and have pass’d through convuls’d pains, as
through parturitions,
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the
sure fulfilment the absolute success, despite of people—
illustrates evil as well as good,
The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one‘s-self;
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste,
myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity,
How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western States,
or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any faith in results,
(But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war glorious
and inevitable and they again leading to other results.)