Hush'd

Hush’d be the camps to-day,
And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
Our dear commander’s death.


No more for him life’s stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat – no more time’s dark evenets,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.


But sing poet in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him – because you – dweller in camps, know it truly.


As they invault the coffin there,
Sing – as they close the doors of earth upon him – one verse,
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

- Walt Whitman, 1865

***


Finished Keegan’s military analysis of the Civil War today. That, plus the books by O’Reilly and Swanson, the fiction of Crane, and Burns’s documentary … read this and it brought a lump to my throat.