1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the
night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning
spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you
bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the
west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night--O
moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd--O the
black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold
me powerless--O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding
cloud that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd
palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with
heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed
blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the
door-yard,
With delicate-colour'd blossoms and
heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its
flower I break.
4
In the swamp in
secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a
song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to
himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a
song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet
song of life (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast
not granted to sing thou would'st surely die).
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets
peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray d�bris,
Amid
the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every
grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the
orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the
grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through
day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped
in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of
crape-veil'd women standing,
With processions long and
winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the
countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving
coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the
night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the
coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering
organs--where amid these you journey,
With the tolling
tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly
passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches
green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning,
thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over
with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac
that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the
sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring
for you,
For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I
walk'd,
As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy
night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to
me night after night,
As you dropp'd from the sky low
down as if to my side (while the other stars all look'd on),
As we wander'd together the solemn night (for something I
know not what kept me from sleep),
As the night advanced,
and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool
transparent night,
As I watch'd where you pass'd and was
lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in
its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and
tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I
come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger,
for the lustrous star has detain'd me,
The star my
departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O
how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that
has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of
him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea,
till
there on the prairies meeting,
These and with
these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave
of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the
chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang
on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With
the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid
and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the
gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green
leaves of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing
glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and
there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line
against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with
dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the
scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward
returning.
12
Lo, body and soul--this land,
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying
tides, and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the
South and the North in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing
Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd
with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so
calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with
just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless
light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd
noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the
stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and
land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the
bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and
pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy
song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my
soul--O wondrous singer!
You only I hear--yet the star
holds me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with
mastering odour holds me.
14
Now while I sat
in the day and look'd forth,
In the close of the day with
its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers
preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery
of my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly
aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the storms),
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing,
and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving
sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,
And the
summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
with labour,
And the infinite separate houses, how they
all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily
usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd,
and the cities pent--lo, then and there,
Falling upon
them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of
death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking
one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking
the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with
companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I
fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in
the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly
pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest
receiv'd me,
The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us
comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a
verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the
carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands my comrades
in the night,
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song
of the bird.
"Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In
the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later
delicate death."
"Prais'd be the fathomless
universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge
curious,
And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise!
praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding
death."
"Dark mother always gliding near with soft
feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest
welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above
all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come,
come
unfalteringly."
"Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the
dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved
in the flood of thy bliss O death."
"From me to thee
glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee,
adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the
open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And
life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night."
"The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean
shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."
"Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising
and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies
wide,
Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming
wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy
to thee O death."
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure
deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in
the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist
and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in
the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes
unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I
saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams
hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the
battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them,
And carried
hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in
silence),
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white
skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the d�bris and
d�bris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw
they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully
at rest, they suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and
suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child
and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that
remain'd suffer'd.
16
Passing the visions,
passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my
comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and
the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death's
outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and
wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding
the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and
warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the
earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that
powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I
leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning with
spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my
gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with
thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the
night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown
bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my
soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the
countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand
nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the
midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved
so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands--and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and
bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the
fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim. |
