Summary: U.S. Memorial Day Special:<br> Whitman’s love is unbearable.<br> ⁓The Voice before the Void<br> “Ashes of Soldiers”<br> Walt Whitman<br> Ashes of soldiers South or North,<br> As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,<br> The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,<br> And again the advance of the armies.<br> Noiseless as mists and vapors,<br> From their graves in the trenches ascending,<br> From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,<br> From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,<br> In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or<br> single ones they come,<br> And silently gather round me.<br> Now sound no note O trumpeters,<br> Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,<br> With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah<br> my brave horsemen!<br> My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,<br> With all the perils were yours.)<br> Nor you drummers, neither at reveille at dawn,<br> Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for burial,<br> Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.<br> But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade,<br> Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless,<br> The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive,<br> I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.<br> Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,<br> Draw close, but speak not.<br> Phantoms of countless lost,<br> Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,<br> Follow me ever–desert me not while I live.<br> Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living–sweet are the musical<br> voices sounding,<br> But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.<br> Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,<br> But love is not over–and what love, O comrades!<br> Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the foetor arising.<br> Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,<br> Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,<br> Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.<br> Perfume all–make all wholesome,<br> Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,<br> O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.<br> Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,<br> That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,<br> For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.<br>
