Poem: “The Mother Of All” by Walt Whitman

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Walt Whitman – Poems by Walt Whitman – Drum Taps
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The Mother Of All

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.”

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Walt Whitman – Poems by Walt Whitman – Drum Taps

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The Mother Of All

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