When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
1
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.
2
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.
3
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.
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The hermit withdrawn to himself,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 would’st surely die.)
5
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
debris,
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.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes 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,
With the waiting depot, the arriving
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.
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 walk’d,
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 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 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.
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 detain’d 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 prairies 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
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.
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 odor
holds me.
14
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 passing, 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,
And the streets how their
throbbingsthrobb’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, itsthought, 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
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.
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,
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.
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 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’dsuffer’d.
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 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 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment