Part 4 (2/2)

Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies?

Ask room alas the ghastly ranks, the armies dread that follow'd.

(Pa.s.s, pa.s.s, ye proud brigades, with your tramping sinewy legs, With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets; How elate I stood and watch'd you, where starting off you march'd.

Pa.s.s--then rattle drums again, For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army, Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army, O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea, with your fever, O my land's maim'd darlings, with the plenteous b.l.o.o.d.y bandage and the crutch, Lo, your pallid army follows.)

5

But on these days of brightness, On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns, Should the dead intrude?

Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature, They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and gra.s.s, And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin.

Nor do I forget you Departed, Nor in winter or summer my lost ones, But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace, like pleasing phantoms, Your memories rising glide silently by me.

6

I saw the day the return of the heroes, (Yet the heroes never surpa.s.s'd shall never return, Them that day I saw not).

I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies, I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions, Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in cl.u.s.ters of mighty camps.

No holiday soldiers--youthful, yet veterans, Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop, Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march, Inured on many a hard-fought b.l.o.o.d.y field.

A pause--the armies wait, A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait, The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn, They melt, they disappear.

Exult O lands! victorious lands!

Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields, But here and hence your victory.

Melt, melt away ye armies--disperse ye blue-clad soldiers, Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms, Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North, With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.

7

Loud O my throat, and clear O soul!

The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding, The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.

All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me, I see the true arenas of my race, or first or last, Man's innocent and strong arenas.

I see the heroes at other toils, I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.

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