The Mother Of All

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Title:     The Mother Of All
Author: Walt Whitman [More Titles by Whitman]

Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all,

Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields, gazing;

As she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked.

"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,

And all you essences of soil and growth--and you, O my rivers' depths;

And you mountain-sides--and the woods where my dear children's blood, trickling, reddened;

And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees,

My dead absorb--my young men's beautiful bodies absorb--and their precious, precious, precious blood;

Which, holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year hence,

In unseen essence and odour 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."

[The end]
Walt Whitman's poem: Mother Of All

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