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1
When
lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,
And the great
star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I
mourned, 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.
2
O powerful
western fallen star!
O shades of night -O moody,
tearful night!
O great star disappeared -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.
3
In the
dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the
white-washed 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-coloured
blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A
sprig with its flower I break.
4
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withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
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 wouldst
surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring,
the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old
woods, where lately the violets peeped from the
ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in
the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless
grass,
Passing the yellow-speared 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.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through
day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities
draped in black,
With the show of the States
themselves as of crape-veiled 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,
With
the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber
faces,
With dirges through the night, with the
thousand voices rising strong and
solemn,
With all
the mournful voices of the dirges poured 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.
7
(Nor 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.)
8
O western
orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have
meant as a month since I walked,
As I walked in
silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you
had something to tell as you bent to me night after
night,
As you drooped from the sky low down as if to
my side, (while the other stars
all looked on,)
As
we wandered together the solemn night, (for something 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
watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward
black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble
dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded,
dropped in the night, and was gone.
9
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 detained me,
The star my
departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O
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 Western sea, till there on the
priaries
meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my
chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
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, indolent, sinking sun,
burning, expanding
the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and
the pale green leaves of the
trees prolific,
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.
12
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 covered 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 fulfilled noon,
The coming
eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over
my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
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 reedy
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 odour holds me.
14
Now while I
sat in the day and looked 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
perturbed winds and the storms,)
Under the arching
heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices
of
children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides,
and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer
approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with
labour,
And the infinite separate houses, how they
all went on, each with its meals
and minutia of daily
usages,
And the streets how their throbbings
throbbed, and the cities pent -lo, then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me
with the rest,
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long
black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the
sacred knowledge 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 holding 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 received me,
The
gray-brown bird I know received 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.
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.
Praised 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,
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-veiled
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-packed cities all
and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol
with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
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.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced 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 splintered 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 suffered not,
The living
remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the
wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
16
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,
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 dooryard, 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
aroused in my soul,
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,
There in the fragrant
pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
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