{
 "id": "walt-whitman/ashes-of-soldiers",
 "title": "Ashes of Soldiers",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 279,
 "container": "Songs of Parting",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1865,
  "venue": "Drum-Taps (New York, 1865)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/waltwhitmansdrum00whit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "songs-of-parting.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 41,
  "n_stanzas": 12,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 89,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Ashes of soldiers South or North,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And again the advance of the armies.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Noiseless as mists and vapors,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From their graves in the trenches ascending,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From every point of the compass out of the countless graves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or single ones they come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And silently gather round me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now sound no note O trumpeters,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not at the head of my cavalry parading on spirited horses,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah my brave horsemen!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My handsome tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With all the perils were yours.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nor you drummers, neither at reveillé at dawn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor the long roll alarming the camp, nor even the muffled beat for a burial,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nothing from you this time O drummers bearing my warlike drums.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But aside from these and the marts of wealth and the crowded promenade,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Admitting around me comrades close unseen by the rest and voiceless,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The slain elate and alive again, the dust and debris alive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I chant this chant of my silent soul in the name of all dead soldiers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Draw close, but speak not.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Phantoms of countless lost,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Invisible to the rest henceforth become my companions,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Follow me ever⁠—desert me not while I live.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living⁠—sweet are the musical voices sounding,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead with their silent eyes.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But love is not over⁠—and what love, O comrades!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perfume from battle-fields rising, up from the foetor arising.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Perfume therefore my chant, O love, immortal love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Perfume all⁠—make all wholesome,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O love, solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Give me exhaustless, make me a fountain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I exhale love from me wherever I go like a moist perennial dew,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For the ashes of all dead soldiers South or North.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}