A Twilight Song by Walt Whitman — Past Poetry archive

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame, Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes⁠—of the countless buried unknown soldiers, Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s⁠—the unreturn’d, The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill’d trenches Of gather’d dead from all America, North, South, East, West, whence they came up, From wooded Maine, New-England’s farms, from fertile Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas, (Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames, Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising⁠—I hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies;) You million unwrit names all, all⁠—you dark bequest from all the war, A special verse for you⁠—a flash of duty long neglected⁠—your mystic roll strangely gather’d here, Each name recall’d by me from out the darkness and death’s ashes, Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many a future year, Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South, Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.