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Walt Whitman: Poems

Drum Taps: War Dreams


1.

In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle,

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.


2.

Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains,

Of the skies so beauteous after the 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.


3.

Long have they passed, long lapsed--faces, and trenches, and fields:

Long through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the

fallen

Onward I sped at the time. But now of their faces and forms, at night,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

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