To a Historian
You who celebrate bygones, / Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life
Old War-Dreams
❦
In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)
Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,
Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so
unearthly bright,
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and
gather the heaps,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches and fields,
Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away
from the fallen,
Onward I sped at the time--but now of their forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I dream.
More poems by Walt Whitman
I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, / But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
Thought
Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and / rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, / Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,