no more for him life’s
stormy conflicts charging like
clouds across the sky
HUSH’D be the camps to-day;
And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons;
And each, with musing soul retire, to celebrate,
Our dear commander’s death.
No more for him life’s stormy conflicts;
Nor victory, nor defeat—No more time’s dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.
But sing, poet, in our name;
Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in
camps, know it truly.
Sing, to the lower’d coffin there;
Sing, with the shovel’d clods that fill the grave—a
verse,
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day by Walt Whitman as published in The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman (Garden City: Doubleday, 1918),
Wikipedia says: “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day” is a poem by Walt Whitman dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. The poem was written on April 19, 1865, shortly after Lincoln’s assassination.
Whitman greatly admired Lincoln and went on to write additional poetry about him: “O Captain! My Captain!”, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, and “This Dust Was Once the Man.”
“Hush’d” is not particularly well known, and is generally considered to have been hastily written.
Some critics highlight the poem as Whitman’s first attempt to respond to Lincoln’s death and emphasize that it would have drawn comparatively little attention if Whitman had not written his other poems on Lincoln.
Although they never met, Whitman saw Abraham Lincoln several times between 1861 and 1865, sometimes in close quarters.
The first time was when Lincoln stopped in New York City in 1861 on his way to Washington. Whitman noticed the President-elect’s “striking appearance” and “unpretentious dignity”, and trusted Lincoln’s “supernatural tact” and “idiomatic Western genius”.
He admired the President, writing in October 1863, “I love the President personally.”
Whitman considered himself and Lincoln to be “afloat in the same stream” and “rooted in the same ground”.
Whitman and Lincoln shared similar views on slavery and the Union, and similarities have been noted in their literary styles and inspirations.
Whitman later declared that “Lincoln gets almost nearer me than anybody else.”
As for the New York Times article, I am always re-amazed at the amount of correct detail the reporting had when you consider this was 1865 and the paper went to press within 24 hours of the assassaitnation.
Maybe more than his Birthday being a holiday, April 15th should be a national Day of Mourning when you look at how much this Country gained when he was born and how much this Country lost when he was killed.
Then of course, my relationship to the history has changed so much in the last decade as I review all the actions and the struggles of the past, I find it difficult to reconcile that all that history led to where we are today.
What a mockery on so many levels.
What Mr. Lincoln said on the field at Gettysburg has just as much application TODAY as it did in 1863.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us —
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion —
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain —
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom —
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
