VIII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN BY WALT WHITMAN.

266

PENSIVE ON HER DEAD GAZING.

PENSIVE on her dead gazing I heard the Mother of
    All,
Desperate on the torn bodies, on the forms covering
           the battle-fields gazing,
(As the last gun ceased, but the scent of the powder-
           smke linger’d,)
As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while
           she stalk’d,
Absorb them well O my earth, she cried, I charge you
           lose not my sons, lose not an atom,
And you streams absorb them well, taking their dear
           blood,
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above
           lightly impalpable,
And all you essences of soil and growth, and you my
           rivers’ depths,
And you mountain sides, and the woods where my
           dear children’s blood trickling redden’d,
And you trees down in your roots to bequeath to all
           future trees,
My dead absorb or South or North — my young men’s
           bodies absorb, and their precious precious blood,
Which holding in trust for me faithfully back again
           give me many a year hence,
In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, cen-
           turies hence,
267 In blowing airs from the fields back again give me my
           darlings, give my immortal heroes,
Exhale me them centuries hence, breathe me their
           breath, let not an atom be lost,
O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an
           aroma sweet!
Exhale them perennial sweet death, years, centuries
           hence.