_The Mother Of All._

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."