1. BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
1.1. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
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When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
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And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
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I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
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Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
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Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
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And thought of him I love.
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O powerful western fallen star!
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O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
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O great star disappear'd—O the black murk that hides the star!
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O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
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O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
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In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings,
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Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
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With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
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With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
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With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
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A sprig with its flower I break.
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In the swamp in secluded recesses,
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A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
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The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
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Sings by himself a song.
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Song of the bleeding throat,
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Death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
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If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die.)
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Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
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Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd
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from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
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Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
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Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
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dark-brown fields uprisen,
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Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
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Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
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Night and day journeys a coffin.
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Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
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Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
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With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black,
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With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing,
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With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
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With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
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With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
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With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
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With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin,
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The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these
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With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang,
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Here, coffin that slowly passes,
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I give you my sprig of lilac.
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(Nor for you, for one alone,
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Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
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For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane
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All over bouquets of roses,
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O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
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But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
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Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
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With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
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For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
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O western orb sailing the heaven,
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Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,
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As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,
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As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
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As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the
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other stars all look'd on,)
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As we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something I know not
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what kept me from sleep,)
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As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you
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As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
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As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black
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As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
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Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
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Sing on there in the swamp,
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O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
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I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
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But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me,
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The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
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O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
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And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
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And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
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Sea-winds blown from east and west,
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Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
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there on the prairies meeting,
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These and with these and the breath of my chant,
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I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
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O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
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And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
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To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
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Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
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With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
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With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking
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sun, burning, expanding the air,
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With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
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In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
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wind-dapple here and there,
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With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
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And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
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And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
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Lo, body and soul—this land,
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My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
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The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
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Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
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And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.
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Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
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The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
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The gentle soft-born measureless light,
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The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,
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The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
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Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
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Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
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Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
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Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
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Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
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Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
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O liquid and free and tender!
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O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!
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You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
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Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
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Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,
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In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
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the farmers preparing their crops,
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In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
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In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb'd winds and the storms,)
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Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
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voices of children and women,
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The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,
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And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
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And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with
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its meals and minutia of daily usages,
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And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent—
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Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
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Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,
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And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
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Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
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And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
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And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of
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I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
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Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
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To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
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And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,
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The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three,
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And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
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From deep secluded recesses,
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From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
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Came the carol of the bird.
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And the charm of the carol rapt me,
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As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
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And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
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Come lovely and soothing death,
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Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
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In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
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Sooner or later delicate death.
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Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
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For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
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And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
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For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
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Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
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Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
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Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
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I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
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Approach strong deliveress,
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When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
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Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
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Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
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From me to thee glad serenades,
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Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
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And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread shy are fitting,
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And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
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The night in silence under many a star,
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The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
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And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,
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And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
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Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
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Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the
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Over the dense-pack'd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
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I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
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To the tally of my soul,
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Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
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With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
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Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
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Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
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And I with my comrades there in the night.
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While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
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As to long panoramas of visions.
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And I saw askant the armies,
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I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
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Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles I saw them,
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And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
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And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
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And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.
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I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
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And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
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I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
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But I saw they were not as was thought,
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They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,
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The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
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And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
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And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.
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Passing the visions, passing the night,
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Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
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Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
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Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
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As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling,
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Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
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Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
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As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
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Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
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I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
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I cease from my song for thee,
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From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
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O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
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Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
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The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
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And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,
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With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
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With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
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Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for
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the dead I loved so well,
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For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for
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Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
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There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
1.2. O Captain! My Captain!
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O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
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The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
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The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
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While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
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But O heart! heart! heart!
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O the bleeding drops of red,
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Where on the deck my Captain lies,
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O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
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Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
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For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
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For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
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Here Captain! dear father!
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This arm beneath your head!
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It is some dream that on the deck,
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You've fallen cold and dead.
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My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
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My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
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The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
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From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
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Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
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But I with mournful tread,
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Walk the deck my Captain lies,
1.3. Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865
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Hush'd be the camps to-day,
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And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
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And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
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Our dear commander's death.
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No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
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Nor victory, nor defeat—no more time's dark events,
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Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.
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But sing poet in our name,
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Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.
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As they invault the coffin there,
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Sing—as they close the doors of earth upon him—one verse,
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For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
1.4. This Dust Was Once the Man
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This dust was once the man,
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Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
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Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
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Was saved the Union of these States.
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