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."
