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The Bibelot
VOLUME X
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From The Bibelot, A Reprint of Poetry and Prose for Book Lovers, chosen in part from scarce editions and sources not generally known, Volume X, Testimonial Edition, Edited and Originally Published by Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine; Wm. Wise & Co.; New York; 1904; pp. 231-43.
MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
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.
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.
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
dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves
of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
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The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settle-
ments,
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).
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 débris,
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.
Coffin that passes through lands 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,
234
With the waiting depot, the striving 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.
(Not 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.)
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month
since I walk’d,
235
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 droop’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 some-
thing 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.
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 de-
tain’d me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains
me.
Oh 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 West-
ern 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.
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, indo-
lent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale
green leaves of the trees prolific,
237
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.
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.
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
238
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 ready 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 odor holds me.
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 pass-
ing, 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 labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on,
each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
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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 know-
ledge 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 hold-
ing 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.
240
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,
241
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.
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.
242
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 debris and debris 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.
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,
243
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 door-yard, 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 counte-
nance 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.