O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated
     adoration.

1860 1881

AS AT THY PORTALS ALSO DEATH

AS at thy portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin,
I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the
     cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;)
To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth,
     life, love, to me the best,
I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
And set a tombstone here.

1881 1881

MY LEGACY

THE business man the acquirer vast,
After assiduous years surveying results, preparing for
     departure,
Devises houses and lands to his children, bequeaths
     stocks, goods, funds for a school or hospital,
Leaves money to certain companions to buy tokens,
     souvenirs of gems and gold.

But I, my life surveying, closing,
With nothing to show to devise from its idle years,
Nor houses nor lands, nor tokens of gems or gold for
     my friends,
Yet certain remembrances of the war for you, and after
     you,
And little souvenirs of camps and soldiers, with my love,
I bind together and bequeath in this bundle of songs.

1872 1881

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-smoke
     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, centuries
     hence,
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.

1865 1881

CAMPS OF GREEN

NOT alone those camps of white, old comrades of the wars,
When as order'd forward, after a long march,
Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens we halt for the
     night,
Some of us so fatigued carrying the gun and knapsack, drop-
     ping asleep in our tracks,
Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to
     sparkle,
Outposts of pickets posted surrounding alert through the
     dark,
And a word provided for countersign, careful for safety,
Till to the call of the drummers at daybreak loudly beating
     the drums,
We rise up refresh'd, the night and sleep pass'd over, and
     resume our journey,
Or proceed to battle.

Lo, the camps of the tents of green,
Which the days of peace keep filling, and the days of war
     keep filling,
With a mystic army, (is it too order'd forward? is it too
     only halting awhile,
Till night and sleep pass over?)

Now in those camps of green, in their tents dotting the world,
In the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them, in the old
     and young,