Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, strong deliveress! When it is so, when thou, hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death.
From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee, I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee; And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night—
The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death.
To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading, filling the night,
Loud in the pines and cedars dim. Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies, I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced 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.