Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

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.

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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 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 foetor 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.

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1

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.)

How the great cities appear — how the Democratic masses, turbulent,

willful, as I love them,

How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the

sounding and resounding, keep on and on,

How society waits unform’d, and is for a while between things ended

and things begun,

How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of

freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and

of all that is begun,

And how the States are complete in themselves — and how all triumphs

and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward,

And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn be

convuls’d, and serve other parturitions and transitions,

And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic masses too,

serve — and how every fact, and war itself, with all its horrors,

serves,

And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite transition of death.

2

Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,

Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to

impregnable and swarming places,

Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be,

Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado, Nevada,

and the rest,

(Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Aliaska,)

Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for — and of what

all sights, North, South, East and West, are,

Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of the

unnamed lost ever present in my mind;

Of the temporary use of materials for identity’s sake,

Of the present, passing, departing — of the growth of completer men

than any yet,

Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the mother, the

Mississippi flows,

Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey’d and unsuspected,

Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of

inalienable homesteads,

Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean and

sweet blood,

Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there,

Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each side of the

Anahuacs,

Of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,)

Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there,

(O it lurks in me night and day — what is gain after all to savageness

and freedom?)

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Splendor of ended day floating and filling me,

Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past,

Inflating my throat, you divine average,

You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.

Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,

Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,

Natural life of me faithfully praising things,

Corroborating forever the triumph of things.

Illustrious every one!

Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber’d spirits,

Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest insect,

Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body,

Illustrious the passing light — illustrious the pale reflection on

the new moon in the western sky,

Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.

Good in all,

In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,

In the annual return of the seasons,

In the hilarity of youth,

In the strength and flush of manhood,

In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,

In the superb vistas of death.

Wonderful to depart!

Wonderful to be here!

The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!

To breathe the air, how delicious!

To speak — to walk — to seize something by the hand!

To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color’d flesh!