Drum-Taps Part 7

SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE.

(_Was.h.i.+ngton City, 1865._)

Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours!

Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing), Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene--electric spirit, That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a tireless phantom flitted, Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum, Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates round me, As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles, As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders, As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders, As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in the distance, approach and pa.s.s on, returning homeward, Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left, Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time; Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death next day, Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close, Leave me your pulses of rage-bequeath them to me-fill me with currents convulsive, Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone, Let them identify you to the future in these songs.

ADIEU TO A SOLDIER.

Adieu O soldier, You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,) The rapid march, the life of the camp, The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre, Bed battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong, terrific game, Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you and like of you all fill'd, With war and war's expression.

Adieu dear comrade, Your mission is fulfill'd--but I, more warlike, Myself and this contentious soul of mine, Still on our own campaigning bound, Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined, Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled, Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out--aye here, To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

TURN O LIBERTAD.

Turn O Libertad, for the war is over, From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world, Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past, From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past, From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste, Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv'd and to come--give up that backward world, Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past, But what remains remains for singers for you--wars to come are for you, (Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the wars of the present also inure;) Then turn, and be not alarm'd O Libertad--turn your undying face, To where the future, greater than all the past, Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.

TO THE LEAVEN'D SOIL THEY TROD.

To the leaven'd soil they trod calling I sing for the last, (Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes,) In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas again to peace restored, To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the South and the North, To the leaven'd soil of the general Western world to attest my songs, To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi, To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods, To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading wide, To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air; And responding they answer all, (but not in words,) The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely, The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son, The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end, But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.