Poems By Walt Whitman Part 17

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 mystic midnight pa.s.ses, 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 my busy brain unreal; The skirmishers begin--they crawl cautiously ahead--I hear the irregular snap! snap!

I hear the sound of the different missiles--the short _t-h-t! t-h-t!_ of the rifle-b.a.l.l.s; I see the sh.e.l.ls exploding, leaving small white clouds--I hear the great sh.e.l.ls shrieking as they pa.s.s; The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!) All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again; The cras.h.i.+ng 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 brandished sword; I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, quickly filled up--no delay; I breathe the suffocating smoke--then the flat clouds hover low, concealing all; Now a strange lull comes 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 s.h.i.+fting 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--aides-de-camp 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-coloured rockets.

_O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY._

O tan-faced prairie boy!

Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift; Praises and presents came, and nouris.h.i.+ng food--till at last, among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but looked on each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

_MANHATTAN FACES._

1.

Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; Give me a field where the unmowed gra.s.s grows; Give me an arbour, give me the trellised grape; Give me fresh corn and wheat--give me serene-moving animals, teaching content; Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars; Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturbed; Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom I should never tire; Give me a perfect child--give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural domestic life; Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved, recluse by myself, for my own ears only; Give me solitude--give me Nature--give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities!

--These, demanding to have them, tired with ceaseless excitement, and racked by the war-strife, These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city; Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets, Where you hold me enchained a certain time, refusing to give me up, Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul--you give me for ever faces; O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries; I see my own soul trampling down what it asked for.

2.

Keep your splendid silent sun; Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods; Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your cornfields and orchards; Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the ninth-month bees hum.

Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the _trottoirs_!

Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!

Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day!

Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!

Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of the trumpets and drums!

The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flushed and reckless; Some, their time up, returning, with thinned ranks--young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing; --Give me the sh.o.r.es and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black s.h.i.+ps!

O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!

The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!

The saloon of the steamer, the crowded excursion, for me! the torchlight procession!

The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high-piled military waggons following; People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, pa.s.sions, pageants; Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, even the sight of the wounded; Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus--with varied chorus and light of the sparkling eyes; Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me!

_OVER THE CARNAGE._

1.

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,-- Be not disheartened--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 baulk Columbia's lovers; If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.

One from Ma.s.sachusetts 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.

2.

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?

Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?

--Nay--nor the world nor any living thing will so cohere.

_THE MOTHER OF ALL._

Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all, Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields, gazing; As she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked.

"Absorb them well, O my earth!" she cried--"I charge you, lose not my sons!

lose not an atom; And you, streams, absorb them well, taking their dear blood; And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly, And all you essences of soil and growth--and you, O my rivers' depths; And you mountain-sides--and the woods where my dear children's blood, trickling, reddened; And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees, My dead absorb--my young men's beautiful bodies absorb--and their precious, precious, precious blood; Which, holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year hence, In unseen essence and odour of surface and gra.s.s, centuries hence; In blowing airs from the fields, back again give me my darlings--give my immortal heroes; Exhale me them centuries hence--breathe me their breath--let not an atom be lost.

O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!

Exhale them, perennial, sweet death, years, centuries hence."

_CAMPS OF GREEN._

1.

Not alone our camps of white, O soldiers, When, as ordered forward, after a long march, Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens, we halt for the night; Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in our tracks; Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle; Outposts of pickets posted, surrounding, alert through the dark, And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety; Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums, We rise up refreshed, the night and sleep pa.s.sed over, and resume our journey, Or proceed to battle.

2.

Lo! the camps of the tents of green, Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war keep filling, With a mystic army, (is it too ordered forward? is it too only halting a while, Till night and sleep pa.s.s over?)

Now in those camps of green--in their tents dotting the world; In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them--in the old and young, Sleeping under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content and silent there at last; Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of us and ours and all, Of our corps and generals all, and the President over the corps and generals all, And of each of us, O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fight, There without hatred we shall all meet.

For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps of green; But we need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign, Nor drummer to beat the morning drum.

_DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS._