Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?),
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with
wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers
well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call,
And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main
words only,
Sentences broken, _gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken
to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better._

Ah now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.

_Grieve not so, dear mother_ (the just-grown daughter speaks through
her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd),
_See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better._

Alas poor boy, he will never be better (nor may be needs to be
better, that brave and simple soul),
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often
waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

A TWILIGHT SONG

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, So