Walt Whitman: "Dirge for Two Veterans"

Whitman's "Dirge for Two Veterans" has been set to music by (at least) Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and Kurt Weill. That in itself attests to the evocative power of its rhythm and its imagery. No end of analysis is available regarding it, but listening to the musical settings on YouTube might be all you need to do to "get it." I believe Whitman based it upon the actual experience of seeing father and son buried side by side; they seem to me to represent the one-generation-to-another nature of human war-making. Makes me wonder what might happen if successive generations we able to make peace. In any case, it's all here: the music, the march, the moon, the "mother's large transparent face" ever watching--all through the prism of Whitman's experience of our Civil War.

Dirge for Two Veterans

The last sunbeam

Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,

On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,

Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,

Up from the east the silvery round moon,

Beautiful over the housetops, ghastly, phantom moon,

Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,

And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles,

All the channels of the city streets they’re flooding,

As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,

And the small drums steady whirring,

And every blow of the great convulsive drums,

Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,

(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,

Two veterans son and father dropt together,

And the double grave awaits them.)

Now nearer blow the bugles,

And the drums strike more convulsive,

And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,

And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-bouying,

The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d,

(’Tis some mother’s large transparent face,

In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march you please me!

O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!

O my soldiers twain!  O my veterans passing to burial!

What I have, I also give you.

The moon gives you light,

And the bugles and drums give you music,

And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,

My heart gives you love.

Walt Whitman