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Drum Taps by Walt Whitman
page 15 of 72 (20%)
the same blessed hope to this man, who poured out his life in a turgid
fount of ecstatic joy in living:

... 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 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 suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And the wives and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd....

_Come lovely and soothing death,_
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the night, in the day, 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._

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