Sherry Chandler » When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
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I saw askant the armies;
And 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 splinter’d 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 dead 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 wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
— from Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
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2 Comments
1. Tommy replies at 18th September 2006, 9:42 am :
I read this poem while Mussorgsky’s “Promenade” from Pictures at an Exhibition played on my computer. Talk about cognitive dissonance. “Promenade” has something of glory about it, but Whitman’s poem sure takes all the glory out of battle.
2. sherry replies at 18th September 2006, 11:21 am :
I think Whitman, who acted as a nurse, saw some of the worst battlefields ever to be seen. I think maybe seeing real battlefields would tend to take the glory out of battle.
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