And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,.Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,.With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,.Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,.Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,.Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,.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 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,.For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.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,.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,.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.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,.Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,.Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,.Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.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,.And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,.And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,.Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,.Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,.The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,.Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,.With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,.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,.
Edward R. Forte
Author
