Leaves of Grass (1867)


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RECONCILIATION.

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in
         time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly
         softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
…For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I
         draw near;
I bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face
         in the coffin.
 
 
 
 
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