Book + 

V + 

It was still hot in Washington, that September, + 

Hot in the city, hot in the White House rooms, + 

Desiccate heat, dry as a palmleaf fan, + 

That makes hot men tuck cotton handkerchiefs + 

Between their collars and their sweaty necks, + 

And Northern girls look limp at half-past-four, + 

Waiting the first cool breath that will not come + 

For hours yet. + 

The sentinel on post + 

Clicks back and forth, stuffed in his sweltering coat, + 

And dreams about brown bottles of cold beer + 

Deep in a cellar. + 

In the crowded Bureaus + 

The pens move slow, the damp clerks watch the clock. + 

Women in houses take their corsets off + 

And stifle in loose gowns. + 

They could lie down + 

But when they touch the bed, the bed feels hot, + 

And there are things to do. + 

The men will want + 

Hot food when they come back from work. + 

They sigh + 

And turn, with dragging feet, to the hot kitchens. + 

Sometimes they pause, and push a window up + 

To feel the blunt, dry buffet of the heat + 

Strike in the face and hear the locust-cry + 

Of shrilling newsboy-voices down the street, + 

“News from the army⁠—extra⁠—ter‑ble battle⁠— + 

Terr‑r‑ble vic’try⁠—ter‑r‑ble defeat⁠— + 

Lee’s army trapped invading Maryland⁠— + 

McClellan⁠—Sharpsburg⁠—fightin’⁠—news from the front⁠—” + 

The women at the windows sigh and wonder + 

“I ought to buy a paper⁠—No, I’ll wait + 

Till Tom gets home⁠—I wonder if it’s true⁠— + 

Terrible victory⁠—terrible defeat⁠— + 

They’re always saying that⁠—when Tom gets home + 

He’ll have some news⁠—I wonder if the army⁠— + 

No, it’s too hot to buy a paper now⁠—” + 

A hot, spare day of waiting languidly + 

For contradictory bits of dubious news. + 

It was a little cooler, three miles out, + 

Where the tall trees shaded the Soldiers’ Home. + 

The lank man, Abraham Lincoln, found it so, + 

Glad for it, doubtless, though his cavernous eyes + 

Had stared all day into a distant fog + 

Trying to pierce it. + 

“General McClellan + 

Is now in touch with Lee in front of Sharpsburg + 

And will attack as soon as the fog clears.” + 

It’s cleared by now. They must be fighting now. + 

We can’t expect much from the first reports. + 

Stanton and Halleck think they’re pretty good + 

But you can’t tell. Nobody here can tell. + 

We’re all too far away. + 

You get sometimes + 

Feeling as if you heard the guns yourself + 

Here in the room and felt them shake the house + 

When you keep waiting for the news all day. + 

I wish we’d get some news. + 

Bull Run was first. + 

We got the news of Bull Run soon enough. + 

First that we’d won, hands down, which was a lie, + 

And then the truth. + 

It may be that today. + 

I told McClellan not to let them go, + 

Destroy them if he could⁠—but you can’t tell. + 

He’s a good man in lots of different ways, + 

But he can’t seem to finish what he starts + 

And then, he’s jealous, like the rest of them, + 

Lets Pope get beaten, wanted him to fail, + 

Because he don’t like Pope. + 

I put him back + 

Into command. What else was there to do? + 

Nobody else could lick those troops in shape. + 

But, if he wins, and lets Lee get away, + 

I’m done with him. + 

Bull Run⁠—the Seven Days⁠— + 

Bull Run again⁠—and eighteen months of war⁠— + 

And still no end to it. + 

What is God’s will? + 

They come to me and talk about God’s will + 

In righteous deputations and platoons, + 

Day after day, laymen and ministers. + 

They write me Prayers From Twenty Million Souls + 

Defining me God’s will and Horace Greeley’s. + 

God’s will is General This and Senator That, + 

God’s will is those poor colored fellows’ will, + 

It is the will of the Chicago churches, + 

It is this man’s and his worst enemy’s. + 

But all of them are sure they know God’s will. + 

I am the only man who does not know it. + 

And, yet, if it is probable that God + 

Should, and so very clearly, state His will + 

To others, on a point of my own duty, + 

It might be thought He would reveal it me + 

Directly, more especially as I + 

So earnestly desire to know His will. + 

The will of God prevails. No doubt, no doubt⁠— + 

Yet, in great contests, each side claims to act + 

In strict accordance with the will of God. + 

Both may, one must be wrong. + 

God could have saved + 

This Union or destroyed it without war + 

If He so wished. And yet this war began, + 

And, once begun, goes on, though He could give + 

Victory, at any time, to either side. + 

It is unfathomable. Yet I know + 

This, and this only. While I live and breathe, + 

I mean to save the Union if I can, + 

And by whatever means my hands can find + 

Under the Constitution. + 

If God reads + 

The hearts of men as clearly as He must + 

To be Himself, then He can read in mine + 

And has, for twenty years, the old, scarred wish + 

That the last slave should be forever free + 

Here, in this country. + 

I do not go back + 

From that scarred wish and have not. + 

But I put + 

The Union, first and last, before the slave. + 

If freeing slaves will bring the Union back + 

Then I will free them; if by freeing some + 

And leaving some enslaved I help my cause, + 

I will do that⁠—but should such freedom mean + 

The wreckage of the Union that I serve + 

I would not free a slave. + 

O Will of God, + 

I am a patient man, and I can wait + 

Like an old gunflint buried in the ground + 

While the slow years pile up like moldering leaves + 

Above me, underneath the rake of Time, + 

And turn, in time, to the dark, fruitful mold + 

That smells of Sangamon apples, till at last + 

There’s no sleep left there, and the steel event + 

Descends to strike the live coal out of me + 

And light the powder that was always there. + 

That is my only virtue as I see it, + 

Ability to wait and hold my own + 

And keep my own resolves once they are made + 

In spite of what the smarter people say. + 

I can’t be smart the way that they are smart. + 

I’ve known that since I was an ugly child. + 

It teaches you⁠—to be an ugly child. + 

It teaches you⁠—to lose a thing you love. + 

It sticks your roots down into Sangamon ground + 

And makes you grow when you don’t want to grow + 

And makes you tough enough to wait life out, + 

Wait like the fields, under the rain and snow. + 

I have not thought for years of that lost grave + 

That was my first hard lesson in the queer + 

Thing between men and women we call love. + 

But when I think of it, and when I hear + 

The rain and snow fall on it, as they must, + 

It fills me with unutterable grief. + 

We’ve come a good long way, my hat and I, + 

Since then, a pretty lengthy piece of road, + 

Uphill and down but mostly with a pack. + 

Years of law-business, years of cracking jokes, + 

And watching Billy Herndon do his best + 

To make me out, which seemed to be a job; + 

Years trying how to learn to handle men, + 

Which can be done, if you’ve got heart enough, + 

And how to deal with women or a woman + 

And that’s about the hardest task I know. + 

For, when you get a man, you’ve got the man + 

Like a good big axehandle in your fist, + 

But you can’t catch a woman like an axe. + 

She’ll run like mercury between your hands + 

And leave you wondering which road she went, + 

The minute when you thought you knew her ways. + 

I understand the uses of the earth, + 

And I have burned my hands at certain fires + 

Often enough to know a use for fire, + 

But when the genius of the water moves, + 

And that’s the woman’s genius, I’m at sea + 

In every sense and meaning of the word, + 

With nothing but old patience for my chart, + 

And patience doesn’t always please a woman. + 

Bright streams of water, watering the world, + 

Deep seas of water that all men must sail + 

Or rest half-men and fill the narrow graves, + 

When will I understand or comprehend + 

Your salt, sweet taste, so different from the taste + 

Of Sangamon russets, weighing down the bough? + 

You can live with the water twenty years + 

And never understand it like the earth + 

But that’s the lesson I can’t seem to learn. + 

“Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen, + 

He will be good, but God knows when.” + 

He will be wise, but God knows when. + 

It doesn’t matter. If I had some news⁠— + 

News from that fog⁠— + 

I’ll get the hypo, sure, + 

Unless I watch myself, waiting for news. + 

I can’t afford to get the hypo now, + 

I’ve got too much to do. + 

Political years, + 

Housekeeping years of marrying and begetting + 

And losing, too, the children and the town, + 

The wife, the house, the life, the joy and grief, + 

The profound wonder still behind it all. + 

I had a friend who married and was happy. + 

But something haunted him that haunted me + 

Before he did, till he could hardly tell + 

What his own mind was, for the brooding veil + 

And immaterial horror of the soul + 

Which colors the whole world for men like that. + 

I do not know from whence that horror comes + 

Or why it hangs between us and the sun + 

For some few men, at certain times and days, + 

But I have known it closer than my flesh, + 

Got up with it, lain down and walked with it, + 

Scotched it awhile, but never killed it quite, + 

And yet lived on. + 

I wrote him good advice, + 

The way you do, and told him this, for part, + 

“Again you fear that that Elysium + 

Of which you’ve dreamed so much is not to be. + 

Well, I dare swear it will not be the fault + 

Of that same black-eyed Fanny, now your wife. + 

And I have now no doubt that you and I, + 

To our particular misfortune, dream + 

Dreams of Elysium far exceeding all + 

That any earthly thing can realize.” + 

I wrote that more than twenty years ago, + 

At thirty-three, and now I’m fifty-three, + 

And the slow days have brought me up at last + 

Through water, earth and fire, to where I stand, + 

To where I stand⁠—and no Elysiums still. + 

No, no Elysiums⁠—for that personal dream + 

I dreamt of for myself and in my youth + 

Has been abolished by the falling sledge + 

Of chance and an ambition so fulfilled + 

That the fulfillment killed its personal part. + 

My old ambition was an iron ring + 

Loose-hooped around the live trunk of a tree. + 

If the tree grows till bark and iron touch + 

And then stops growing, ring and tree are matched + 

And the fulfillment fits. + 

But, if by some + 

Unlikely chance, the growing still keeps on, + 

The tree must burst the binding-ring or die. + 

I have not once controlled the circumstances. + 

They have controlled me. But with that control + 

They made me grow or die. And I have grown. + 

The iron ring is burst. + 

Three elements, + 

Earth, water and fire. I have passed through them all, + 

Still to find no Elysium for my hands, + 

Still to find no Elysium but growth, + 

And the slow will to grow to match my task. + 

Three elements. I have not sought the fourth + 

Deeply, till now⁠—the element of air, + 

The everlasting element of God, + 

Who must be there in spite of all we see, + 

Who must be there in spite of all we bear, + 

Who must exist where all Elysiums + 

Are less than shadows of a hunter’s fire + 

Lighted at night to scare a wolf away. + 

I know that wolf⁠—his scars are in my hide + 

And no Elysiums can rub them out. + 

Therefore at last, I lift my hands to You + 

Who Were and Are and Must Be, if our world + 

Is anything but a lost ironclad + 

Shipped with a crew of fools and mutineers + 

To drift between the cold forts of the stars. + 

I’ve never found a church that I could join + 

Although I’ve prayed in churches in my time + 

And listened to all sorts of ministers + 

Well, they were good men, most of them, and yet⁠— + 

The thing behind the words⁠—it’s hard to find. + 

I used to think it wasn’t there at all + 

Couldn’t be there. I cannot say that, now. + 

And now I pray to You and You alone. + 

Teach me to know Your will. Teach me to read + 

Your difficult purpose here, which must be plain + 

If I had eyes to see it. Make me just. + 

There was a man I knew near Pigeon Creek + 

Who kept a kennel full of hunting dogs, + 

Young dogs and old, smart hounds and silly hounds. + 

He’d sell the young ones every now and then, + 

Smart as they were and slick as they could run. + 

But the one dog he’d never sell or lend + 

Was an old half-deaf foolish-looking hound + 

You wouldn’t think had sense to scratch a flea + 

Unless the flea were old and sickly too. + 

Most days he used to lie beside the stove + 

Or sleeping in a piece of sun outside. + 

Folks used to plague the man about that dog + 

And he’d agree to everything they said, + 

“No⁠—he ain’t much on looks⁠—or much on speed⁠— + 

A young dog can outrun him any time, + 

Outlook him and outeat him and outleap him, + 

But, Mister, that dog’s hell on a cold scent + 

And, once he gets his teeth in what he’s after, + 

He don’t let go until he knows he’s dead.” + 

I am that old, deaf hunting-dog, O Lord, + 

And the world’s kennel holds ten thousand hounds + 

Smarter and faster and with finer coats + 

To hunt your hidden purpose up the wind + 

And bell upon the trace you leave behind. + 

But, when even they fail and lose the scent, + 

I will keep on because I must keep on + 

Until You utterly reveal Yourself + 

And sink my teeth in justice soon or late. + 

There is no more to ask of earth or fire + 

And water only runs between my hands, + 

But in the air, I’ll look, in the blue air, + 

The old dog, muzzle down to the cold scent, + 

Day after day, until the tired years + 

Crackle beneath his feet like broken sticks + 

And the last barren bush consumes with peace. + 

I should have tried the course with younger legs, + 

This hunting-ground is stiff enough to pull + 

The metal heart out of a dog of steel; + 

I should have started back at Pigeon Creek + 

From scratch, not forty years behind the mark. + 

But you can’t change yourself, and, if you could, + 

You might fetch the wrong jack-knife in the swap. + 

It’s up to you to whittle what you can + 

With what you’ve got⁠—and what I am, I am + 

For what it’s worth, hypo and legs and all. + 

I can’t complain. I’m ready to admit + 

You could have made a better-looking dog + 

From the same raw material, no doubt, + 

But, since You didn’t, this’ll have to do. + 

Therefore I utterly lift up my hands + 

To You, and here and now beseech Your aid. + 

I have held back when others tugged me on, + 

I have gone on when others pulled me back + 

Striving to read Your will, striving to find + 

The justice and expedience of this case, + 

Hunting an arrow down the chilly airs + 

Until my eyes are blind with the great wind + 

And my heart sick with running after peace. + 

And now, I stand and tremble on the last + 

Edge of the last blue cliff, a hound beat out, + 

Tail down and belly flattened to the ground, + 

My lungs are breathless and my legs are whipped, + 

Everything in me’s whipped except my will. + 

I can’t go on. And yet, I must go on. + 

I will say this. Two months ago I read + 

My proclamation setting these men free + 

To Seward and the rest. I told them then + 

I was not calling on them for advice + 

But to hear something that I meant to do. + 

We talked about it. Most of them approved + 

The thing, if not the time. Then Seward said + 

Something I hadn’t thought of, “I approve + 

The proclamation⁠—but, if issued now + 

With our defeats in everybody’s mouth + 

It may be viewed as a last shriek for help + 

From an exhausted, beaten government. + 

Put it aside until a victory comes, + 

Then issue it with victory.” + 

He was right, + 

I put the thing aside⁠—and ever since + 

There has been nothing for us but defeat, + 

Up to this battle now⁠—and still no news. + 

If I had eyes to look to Maryland! + 

If I could move that battle with my hands! + 

No, it don’t work. I’m not a general. + 

All I can do is trust the men who are. + 

I’m not a general, but I promise this, + 

Here at the end of every ounce of strength + 

That I can muster, here in the dark pit + 

Of ignorance that is not quite despair + 

And doubt that does but must not break the mind! + 

The pit I have inhabited so long + 

At various times and seasons, that my soul + 

Has taken color in its very grains + 

From the blind darkness, from the lonely cave + 

That never hears a footstep but my own + 

Nor ever will, while I’m a man alive + 

To keep my prison locked from visitors. + 

What if I heard another footstep there, + 

What if, some day⁠—there is no one but God, + 

No one but God who could descend that stair + 

And ring his heavy footfalls on the stone. + 

And if He came, what would we say to Him? + 

That prison is ourselves that we have built, + 

And, being so, its loneliness is just, + 

And, being so, its loneliness endures. + 

But, if another came, + 

What would we say? + 

What can the blind say, given back their eyes? + 

No, it must be as it has always been. + 

We are all prisoners in that degree + 

And will remain so, but I think I know + 

This⁠—God is not a jailor.⁠ ⁠… + 

And I make + 

A promise now to You and to myself. + 

If this last battle is a victory + 

And they can drive the Rebel army back + 

From Maryland, back over the Potomac, + 

My proclamation shall go out at last + 

To set those other prisoners and slaves + 

From this next year, then and forever free. + 

So much for my will. Show me what is Yours! + 

That must be news, those footsteps in the hall, + 

Good news, or else they wouldn’t come so fast. + 

What is it, now? Yes, yes, I’m glad of that. + 

I’m very glad. There’s no mistake this time? + 

We have the best of them? They’re in retreat? + 

This is a great day, Stanton⁠ ⁠… + 

… If McClellan + 

Can only follow up the victory now! + 

Lord, I will keep my promise and go on, + 

Your will, in much, still being dark to me, + 

But, in this one thing, as I see it, plain. + 

And yet⁠—if Lee slips from our hands again + 

As he well may from all those last reports + 

And the war still goes on⁠—and still no end⁠— + 

Even after this Antietam⁠—not for years⁠— + 

I cannot read it but I will go on, + 

Old dog, old dog, but settled to the scent + 

And with fresh breath now from this breathing space, + 

Almighty God. + 

At best we never seem + 

To know You wholly, but there’s something left, + 

A strange, last courage. + 

We can fail and fail, + 

But, deep against the failure, something wars, + 

Something goes forward, something lights a match, + 

Something gets up from Sangamon County ground + 

Armed with a bitten and a blunted axe + 

And after twenty thousand wasted strokes + 

Brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground. + 

Spade saw the yellow river rolling ahead + 

His sore, cracked lips curled back in a death’s head grin + 

And his empty belly ceased to stick to his sides. + 

He sat on the bank a minute to rest his legs + 

And catch his breath. He had lived for the last three days + 

On a yam, two ears of horse-corn and the lame rabbit + 

That couldn’t run away when he threw the stick. + 

He was still a big man but the ribs stuck into his skin + 

And the hard, dry muscles were wasted to leather thongs. + 

“Boy, I wisht we had a good meal,” he thought with a dull + 

Fatigue. “Dat’s Freedom’s lan’ ovah dere fer sho’, + 

But how we gwine to swim it without a good meal? + 

I wisht we had even a spoonful of good hot pot-licker + 

Or a smidgin’ of barbecued shote. + 

Dat river’s cold. + 

Colder’n Jordan. I wisht we had a good meal.” + 

He went down to the river and tested it with his hand. + 

The cold jumped up his arm and into his heart, + 

Sharp as the toothache. His mouth wried up in a queer + 

Grimace. He felt like crying. “I’se tired,” he said. + 

“Flow easy, river,” he said. + 

Then he tumbled in. + 

The hard shock of the plunge took his breath away. + 

So stinging at first that his arms and legs moved fast, + 

But then the cold crept into his creaking bones + 

And he rolled wild eyes. + 

“Oh, God,” he thought as he struggled, + 

“I’se weak as a cat. I ust to be a strong man.” + 

The yellow flood sucked round him, pulling him down, + 

The yellow foam had a taste like death in his mouth, + 

“We ought to of had a good meal,” he thought with a weak + 

Wonder, as he fought weakly. “A good hot meal. + 

Dis current, she’s too strong for a hungry mouth. + 

We’se done our best, but she fights like a angel would + 

Like wrestlin’ with a death-angel.” + 

He choked and sank + 

To come up gasping and staring with bloodshot eyes. + 

His brain had a last, clear flash. “You’re drowned,” said the brain. + 

Then it stopped working. + 

But the black, thrashing hands + 

Caught hold of something solid and hard and rough + 

And hung to it with a last exhausted grip. + 

—He had been fighting an angel for seven nights + 

And now he hung by his hands to the angel’s neck, + 

Lost in an iron darkness of beating wings, + 

If he once let go, the angel would push him off + 

And touch him across the loins with a stony hand + 

In the last death-trick of the wrestle. + 

He moaned a little. + 

The blackness began to lighten. He saw the river + 

Rolling and rolling. He was clutched to a log + 

Like a treetoad set afloat on a chip of wood, + 

And the log and he were rushing downstream together, + 

But the current pulled them both toward the freedom side. + 

He hunched up a little higher. An eddy took + 

The log and him and spun them both like a top + 

While he prayed and sickened. + 

Then they were out of the eddy + 

And drifting along more slowly, straight for the shore. + 

He hauled himself up the bank with enormous care, + 

Vomited and lay down. + 

When he could arise + 

He looked at his hands. They were still hooked into a curve. + 

It took quite a time to straighten them back again. + 

He said a prayer as he tried to dry his clothes, + 

Then he looked for a stone and threw it into the river. + 

“You’se a mean and hungry river,” he said. “You is. + 

Heah’s a present for you. I hope it busts up your teef. + 

Heah’s a present fum Mistah Spade.” + 

He felt better then, + 

But his belly started to ache. “Act patient,” he said, + 

Rubbing it gently, “We’se loose in Freedom’s land, + 

Crossed old Jordan⁠—bound to get vittles now.” + 

He started out for the town. The town wasn’t far + 

But he had to go slow. Sometimes he fell on the way. + 

The last time he fell was in front of a little yard + 

With a white, well-painted fence. A woman came out. + 

“Get along,” she said. “You can’t get sick around here. + 

I’m tired of you nigger tramps. You’re all of you thieves.” + 

Spade rose and said something vague about swimming rivers + 

And vittles. She stamped her foot. “Get along!” she said, + 

“Get along or I’ll call the dog and⁠—” + 

Spade got along. + 

The next house, the dog was barking out in the yard, + 

He went by as fast as he could, but when he looked back + 

A man had come out with a hostile stick in his hand. + 

Spade shook his head. “Freedom’s land,” he thought to himself, + 

“They’s some mighty quick-actin’ people in Freedom’s land, + 

Some mighty rash-tempered dogs.” + 

He swayed as he walked. + 

Here was another house. He looked for the dog + 

With fright in his eyes. Then a swimming qualm came over him, + 

A deathly faintness. His hands went out to the fence. + 

He gripped two palings, hung, and stared at his shoes. + 

Somebody was talking to him. He tried to move on + 

But his legs wouldn’t walk. The voice was a woman’s voice. + 

She’d be calling the dog in a minute. He shivered hard. + 

“Excuse me ma’am, but I’se feelin’ poorly,” he said. + 

“I just crossed over⁠—I’ll go as soon as I kin.” + 

A man’s voice now. They were taking him under the arms. + 

He didn’t care what they did. He let himself walk. + 

Then he was sitting up in a bentwood chair + 

In a tidy kitchen that smelt of frying and ham; + 

The thick, good smell made him strangely sick at first + 

But it soon passed off. They fed him little by little + 

Till at last he could tell his tale and ask about them. + 

They were churchgoing people and kind to runaway slaves. + 

She wore a blue dress. They had two sons in the war. + 

That was all that he knew and all that he ever knew. + 

But they let him sleep in the garret and gave him some shoes + 

And fifty cents when he left. + 

He wanted to stay + 

But times were bad and they couldn’t afford to keep him. + 

The town was tired of runaway negroes now. + 

All the same, when he left, he walked with a different step. + 

He went down town. He was free. He was Mister Spade. + 

The President had written a letter about it + 

And the mule and the coal-black gal might come any day. + 

He hummed a tuneless whistle between his teeth + 

And fished a piece of paper out of his pants, + 

They’d written him down a boss’s name and address + 

But he’d have to get somebody to read it again. + 

He approached a group of three white men on a corner + 

Holding the paper. + 

“ ’Scuse me, boss, can you tell me⁠—” + 

The white men looked at him with hard, vacant eyes. + 

At last one of them took the paper. “Oh, Hell,” he said, + 

Spitting, and gave Spade a stare. Then he seemed to think + 

Of something funny. He nudged the other two men. + 

“Listen, nigger,” he said. “You want Mr. Braid. + 

You’ll find him two blocks down at the Marshal’s office, + 

Tell him Mr. Clarke sent you there⁠—Mr. William Clarke⁠— + 

He’ll fix you up all right.” + 

The other men grinned, + 

Adding directions. Spade thanked them and went away. + 

He heard them laugh as he went. + 

Another man took him + 

To a red-faced person who sat in a tilted chair, + 

Reading a paper, his feet cocked up on his desk. + 

He looked at Spade and his feet came down with a slam. + 

“Take that God damn smile off,” he said. “Who let you come in? + 

You contraband niggers think that you own this town + 

And that all you’ve got to do is cross over here + 

For people to feed you free the rest of your lives. + 

Well it don’t go down with me⁠—just understand that.” + 

Spade brought out his paper, dumbly. The man looked at it. + 

“Hell, this ain’t for me,” he said. + 

Spade started to go. + 

“Come back here, nigger,” ordered the red-faced man. + 

“Hey, Mike!” he yelled “Here’s another of Lincoln’s pets. + 

Send him out with the rest of the gang.” + 

“But, boss⁠—” said Spade. + 

“Don’t get lippy with me,” said the man, “Mike, take him along.” + 

The pimply boy named Mike jerked a sallow thumb. + 

“Come on, black beauty,” he said. “We got you a job.” + 

Spade followed him, dazed. + 

When they were out in the street + 

The boy turned to him. “Now, nigger, watch out,” he said, + 

Patting a heavy pistol swung at his belt, + 

With puppy-fierceness, “You don’t get away from me. + 

I’m a special deputy, see?” + 

“All right, boss,” said Spade. + 

“I ain’t aimin’ to get away from nobody now, + 

I just aims to work till I gets myself a good mule.” + 

The boy laughed briefly. The conversation dropped. + 

They walked out of the town till they came to a torn-up road + 

Where a gang of negroes was working. + 

“Say, boss⁠—” said Spade. + 

The boy cut him off. “Hey, Jerry,” he called to the foreman, + 

“Here’s another one.” + 

The foreman looked up and spat. + 

“Judas!” he said, “Can’t they keep the bastards at home? + 

I’d put a gun on that river if I was Braid. + 

Well, come along, nig, get a move on and find a shovel. + 

Don’t stand lookin’ at me all day.” + 

The boy went away. + 

Spade found a shovel and started work on the road. + 

The foreman watched him awhile with sarcastic eyes, + 

Spade saw that he, too, wore a pistol. + 

“Christ,” said the foreman, + 

Disgustedly, “Try and put some guts in it there. + 

You’re big enough. That shovel’ll cost five dollars. + 

Remember that⁠—it comes out of your first week’s pay. + 

You’re a free nigger now.” + 

He chuckled. Spade didn’t answer + 

And, after a while, the foreman moved away. + 

Spade turned to the gingerskinned negro who worked beside him. + 

“You fum de Souf?” he mouthed at him. + 

Ginger nodded. + 

“I been here a month now. They fotched me here the first day. + 

Got any money?” + 

“Nuthin’ but fifty cents.” + 

“You better give it to him,” said Ginger, stealing + 

A glance at the foreman. “He’ll treat you bad if you don’t. + 

“He’s a cranky man.” + 

Spade’s heart sank into his boots. + 

“Don’t we uns get paid? We ain’t none of us slaves no more, + 

The President said so. Why we wuhkin’ like dis?” + 

Ginger snickered. “Sho’ we uns gets paid,” he said, + 

“But we got to buy our stuff at de company sto’ + 

And he sells his old shovels a dozen times what dey’s wuth. + 

I only been here a month but I owes twelve dollars. + 

Dey ain’t no way to pay it except by wuhk, + 

And de more you wuhk de more you owe at the sto’. + 

I kain’t figure it out exactly but it’s dat way.” + 

Spade worked for a while, revolving these things in his mind. + 

“I reckoned I sho’ was gwine to be sassy and free + 

When I swum dat river,” he said. + 

Ginger grinned like a monkey, + 

“Swing your shubbel, boy, and forget what you ain’t. + 

You mought be out on de chain-gang, bustin’ up rocks, + 

Or agin, you mought be enlisted.” + 

“Huh?” said Spade. + 

“Sho’, dey’s gwine to enlist us all when we finish dis road. + 

All excep’ me. I got bad sight in my eyes + 

And dey knows about it.” + 

“Dey kain’t enlist me,” said Spade. + 

“I ain’t honin’ to go an’ fight in no white-folks war, + 

I ain’t bust loose into Freedom’s land fer dat, + 

All I want is a chance to git me a gal and a mule. + 

If I’se free, how kin dey enlist me, lessen I want?” + 

“You watch ’em,” said Ginger. They worked on for a time. + 

The foreman stood on the bank and watched them work, + 

Now and then he drank from a bottle. + 

Spade felt hungry. + 

Autumn is filling his harvest-bins + 

With red and yellow grain, + 

Fire begins and frost begins + 

And the floors are cold again. + 

Summer went when the crop was sold, + 

Summer is piled away, + 

Dry as a faded marigold + 

In the dry, long-gathered hay. + 

It is time to walk to the cider-mill + 

Through air like apple wine + 

And watch the moon rise over the hill, + 

Stinging and hard and fine. + 

It is time to cover your seed-pods deep + 

And let them wait and be warm, + 

It is time to sleep the heavy sleep + 

That does not wake for the storm. + 

Winter walks from the green, streaked West + 

With a bag of Northern Spies, + 

The skins are red as a robin’s breast, + 

The honey chill as the skies. + 

Melora Vilas walked in the woods that autumn + 

And heard the dry leaves crackle under her feet, + 

Feeling, below the leaves, the blunt heavy earth. + 

“It’s getting-in time,” she thought. “It’s getting-in time, + 

Time to put things in barns and sit by the stove, + 

Time to watch the long snow and remember your lover. + 

“He isn’t dead. I know that he isn’t dead. + 

Maybe they’ve changed his body into a tree, + 

Maybe they’ve changed his body into a cloud + 

Or something that sleeps through the Winter. + 

But I’ll remember. + 

I’ll sleep through the Winter, too. We all sleep then + 

And when the Spring freshet drums in the narrow brooks + 

And fills them with a fresh water, they’ll let him come + 

Out of the cloud and the tree and the Winter-sleep. + 

The Winter falls and we lie like beleaguered stones + 

In the black, cramped ground. + 

And then you wake in the morning + 

And the air’s got soft and you plant the narrow-edged seeds, + 

They grow all Summer and now we’ve put them in barns + 

To sleep again for a while. + 

I am the seed and the husk. I have sown and reaped. + 

My heart is a barn full of grain that my work has harvested. + 

My body holds the ripe grain. I can wait my time.” + 

She walked on farther and came to the lip of the spring, + 

The brown leaves drifted the water. She watched them drift. + 

“I am satisfied,” she thought, “I am satisfied. + 

I can wait my time in spite of Mom being sad + 

And Pop looking fierce and sad when he sees me walk + 

So heavy and knows I’ll have to walk heavier still + 

Before my time comes. I’m sorry to make them sad, + 

I’m sorry I did a bad thing if it was a bad thing; + 

But I’m satisfied. + 

We cut the heart on the tree. + 

I’ve got my half of the dime and he’s got his, + 

He’ll come back when Winter’s over or else I’ll find him, + 

When you can push up the windows, when the new colts + 

Come out in the Spring, when the snake sheds his winter coat, + 

When the old, shed coat of Winter lies on the ground + 

Grey as wasp-paper under the green, slow rain, + 

When the big barn door rolls open. + 

I was worried to death at first and I couldn’t tell. + 

But as soon as I knew what it was⁠—it was different then⁠— + 

It made things all right. + 

I can’t tell why it did that.” + 

She awkwardly stooped and put her hand on the ground, + 

Under the brittle leaves the soil was alive, + 

Torn with its harvest, turned on its side toward sleep, + 

But stripped for battle, too, for the unending + 

Battle with Winters till the Spring is born + 

Like a tight green leaf uncurling, so slightly, so gently, + 

Out of the husk of ice and the blank, white snows. + 

The wind moved over it, blowing the leaves away, + 

Leaving the bare, indomitable breast. + 

She felt a wind move over her heavy body, + 

Stripping it clean for war. + 

She felt the blind-featured + 

Mystery move, the harmonics of the quick grain, + 

The battle and the awakening for battle, + 

And the salt taste of peace. + 

A flight of geese passed by in a narrow V, + 

Honking their cry. + 

That cry was stuck in her heart + 

Like a bright knife. + 

She could have laughed or wept + 

Because of that cry flung down from a moving wing, + 

But she stood silent. + 

She had touched the life in the ground. + 

Love came by from the riversmoke, + 

When the leaves were fresh on the tree, + 

But I cut my heart on the blackjack oak + 

Before they fell on me. + 

The leaves are green in the early Spring, + 

They are brown as linsey now, + 

I did not ask for a wedding-ring + 

From the wind in the bending bough. + 

Fall lightly, lightly, leaves of the wild, + 

Fall lightly on my care, + 

I am not the first to go with child + 

Because of the blowing air. + 

I am not the first nor yet the last + 

To watch a goosefeather sky, + 

And wonder what will come of the blast + 

And the name to call it by. + 

Snow down, snow down, you whitefeather bird, + 

Snow down, you winter storm, + 

Where the good girls sleep with a gospel word + 

To keep their honor warm. + 

The good girls sleep in their modesty, + 

The bad girls sleep in their shame, + 

But I must sleep in the hollow tree + 

Till my child can have a name. + 

I will not ask for the wheel and thread + 

To spin the labor plain, + 

Or the scissors hidden under the bed + 

To cut the bearing-pain. + 

I will not ask for the prayer in church + 

Or the preacher saying the prayer, + 

But I will ask the shivering birch + 

To hold its arms in the air. + 

Cold and cold and cold again, + 

Cold in the blackjack limb + 

The winds of the sky for his sponsor-men + 

And a bird to christen him. + 

Now listen to me, you Tennessee corn, + 

And listen to my word, + 

This is the first child ever born + 

That was christened by a bird. + 

He’s going to act like a hound let loose + 

When he comes from the blackjack tree, + 

And he’s going to walk in proud shoes + 

All over Tennessee. + 

I’ll feed him milk out of my own breast + 

And call him Whistling Jack. + 

And his dad’ll bring him a partridge nest, + 

As soon as his dad comes back. + 

John Brown’s raid has gone forward, the definite thing is done, + 

Not as we see it done when we read the books, + 

A clear light burning suddenly in the sky, + 

But dimly, obscurely, a flame half-strangled by smoke, + 

A thing come to pass from a victory not a victory, + 

A dubious doctrine dubiously received. + 

The papers praise, but the recruiting is slow, + 

The bonds sell badly, the grind of the war goes on⁠— + 

There is no sudden casting off of a chain, + 

Only a slow thought working its way through the ground, + 

A slow root growing, touching a hundred soils, + 

A thousand minds⁠—no blossom or flower yet. + 

It takes a long time to bring a thought into act + 

And when it blossoms at last, the gardeners wonder⁠— + 

There have been so many to labor this patch of ground, + 

Garrison, Beecher, a dozen New England names, + 

Courageous, insulting Sumner, narrow and strong, + 

With his tongue of silver and venom and his wrecked body, + 

Wendell Phillips, Antinous of Harvard⁠— + 

But now that the thought has arisen, they are not sure + 

It was their thought after all⁠—it is good enough⁠— + 

The best one could expect from a man like Lincoln, + 

But this and that are wrong, are unshrewdly planned, + 

We could have ordered it better, we knew the ground, + 

It should have been done before, in a different way, + 

And our praise is grudging. + 

Pity the gardeners, + 

Pity Boston, pity the pure in heart, + 

Pity the men whom Time goes past in the night, + 

Without their knowledge. They worked through the heat of the day. + 

Let us even pity + 

Wendell Phillips, Antinous of Harvard, + 

For he was a model man and such men deserve + 

A definite pity at times. + 

He too did his best. + 

Secure in his own impenetrable self-knowledge, + 

He seldom agreed with Lincoln or thought him wise; + 

He sometimes thought that a stunning defeat would give + 

A needed lesson to the soul of the nation, + 

And, before, would have broken the Union as blithely as Yancey + 

For his own side of abolition, speaking about it + 

In many public meetings where he was heckled + 

But usually silenced the hecklers sooner or later + 

With his mellifluous, masculine, well-trained accents. + 

War could hardly come too soon for a man like that + 

And when it came, he was busy. He did his part, + 

Being strong and active, blessed with a ready mind, + 

And the cause being one to which he professed devotion, + 

He spoke. He spoke well, with conviction, and frequently. + 

So much for the banner-bearers of abolition, + 

The men who carried the lonely flag for years + 

And could bear defeat with the strength of the pure in heart + 

But could not understand the face of success. + 

The other dissenters are simpler to understand. + 

They are ready to fight for the Union but not for niggers, + 

They don’t give a damn for niggers and say so now + 

With a grievous cry. + 

And yet the slow root-thought works + 

Gradually through men’s minds. + 

The Lancashire spinners, + 

Thrown out of work because no cotton can come + 

To feed their mills through the choking Union blockade, + 

Yet hold starvation meetings and praise the Union. + 

The tide has begun to turn in some English minds, + 

The watchers overseas feel their hands grow numb, + 

Slidell and Mason and Huse still burrow and argue, + 

But a cold breath blows through the rooms with the chandeliers, + 

A door is beginning to close. + 

Few men perceive + 

The turn of the tide, the closing of the door. + 

Lincoln does not perceive it. He sees alone + 

The grind of the war, the lagging of the recruits, + 

Election after election going against him, + 

And Lee back safe in Virginia after Antietam + 

While McClellan sticks for five weeks and will not move. + 

He loses patience at last and removes McClellan. + 

Burnside succeeds him⁠— + 

and the grimly bewildered + 

Army of the Potomac has a new rider, + 

Affable, portly, whiskered and self-distrusting, + 

Who did not wish the command and tried to decline it, + 

Took it at last and almost wept when he did. + 

A worried man who passes like a sad ghost + 

Across November, looking for confidence, + 

And beats his army at last against stone walls + 

At Fredericksburg in the expected defeat + 

With frightful slaughter. + 

The news of the thing comes back. + 

There are tears in his eyes. He never wanted command. + 

“Those men over there,” he groans, “Those men over there” + 

—They are piled like cordwood in front of the stone wall⁠— + 

He wants to lead a last desperate charge himself, + 

But he is restrained. + 

The sullen army draws back, + 

Licking its wounds. The night falls. The newspapers rave. + 

There are sixty-three hundred dead in that doomed attack + 

That never should have been made. + 

His shoulders are bowed. + 

He tries a vain march in the mud and resigns at last + 

The weapon he could not wield. + 

Joe Hooker succeeds him. + 

The winter clamps down, cold winter of doubt and grief. + 

The sun shines, the wind goes by, + 

The prisoners and captives lie + 

In a cell without an eye. + 

Winter will not touch them more + 

Than the cold upon a sore + 

That was frozen long before. + 

Summer will not make them sweet + 

Nor the rainy Springs refresh + 

That extremity of heat + 

In the self-corrupting flesh. + 

The band blares, the bugles snort, + 

They lose the fort or take the fort, + 

Someone writes a wise report. + 

Someone’s name is Victory. + 

The prisoners and captives lie + 

Too long dead before they die. + 

For all prisoners and captives now, + 

For the dark legion, + 

The Andersonvillers, the Castle Thunder men, + 

The men who froze at Camp Morton and came from the dungeons + 

With blood burst out on their faces. + 

The men who died at Salisbury and Belle Isle, + 

Elmira, St. Louis, Camp Douglas⁠—the Libby tunnellers⁠— + 

The men in the fetid air. + 

There are charges back and forth upon either side, + 

Some true, some false. + 

You can read the official reports, + 

The dozen thick black-bound volumes of oaths and statements, + 

A desert of type, a dozen black mummy-cases + 

Embalming the long-forgotten, building again + 

The cumbrous machine of guards and reports and orders, + 

“Respectfully submitted”⁠ ⁠… “I beg to state”⁠ ⁠… + 

“State of kitchen⁠—good.”⁠ ⁠… “Food, quality of⁠—quite good.”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Police of hospital⁠—good except Ward 7”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Remarks⁠—we have ninety-five cases of smallpox now.”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Remarks⁠—as to general health of prisoners, fair.”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Remarks”⁠ ⁠… “Remarks”⁠ ⁠… “Respectfully submitted”⁠ ⁠… + 

Under this type are men who used to have hands + 

But the croaking wheels have respectfully submitted them + 

Into a void, embalmed them in mummy-cases, + 

With their chills and fever, their looks and plans of escape. + 

They called one “Shorty,” they called another “The Judge,” + 

One man wore the Virgin’s medal around his neck, + 

One had a broken nose and one was a liar, + 

“Respectfully submitted⁠—” + 

But, now and then, + 

A man or a scene escapes from the mummy-cases, + 

Like smoke escaping, blue smoke coiling into pictures, + 

Stare at those coils⁠— + 

and see in the hardened smoke, + 

The triple stockade of Andersonville the damned, + 

Where men corrupted like flies in their own dung + 

And the gangrened sick were black with smoke and their filth. + 

There were thirty thousand Federal soldiers there + 

Before the end of the war. + 

A man called Wirtz, + 

A Swiss, half brute, half fool, and wholly a clod, + 

Commanded that camp of spectres. + 

One reads what he did + 

And longs to hang him higher than Haman hung, + 

And then one reads what he said when he was tried + 

After the war⁠—and sees the long, heavy face, + 

The dull fly buzzing stupidly in the trap, + 

The ignorant lead of the voice, saying and saying, + 

“Why, I did what I could, I was ordered to keep the jail. + 

Yes, I set up deadlines, sometimes chased men with dogs, + 

Put men in torturing stocks, killed this one and that, + 

Let the camp corrupt till it tainted the very guards + 

Who came there with mortal sickness. + 

But they were prisoners, they were dangerous men, + 

If a hundred died a day⁠—how was it my fault? + 

I did my duty. I always reported the deaths. + 

I don’t see what I did different from other people. + 

I fought well at Seven Pines and was badly wounded. + 

I have witnesses here to tell you I’m a good man + 

And that I was really kind. I don’t understand. + 

I’m old. I’m sick. You’re going to hang me. Why?” + 

Crush out the fly with your thumb and wipe your hand, + 

You cannot crush the leaden, creaking machine, + 

The first endorsement, the paper on the desk + 

Referred by Adjutant Feeble to Captain Dull + 

For further information and his report. + 

Some men wish evil and accomplish it + 

But most men, when they work in that machine, + 

Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels. + 

The fault is no decisive, villainous knife + 

But the dull saw that is the routine mind. + 

Why, if a man lay dying on their desk + 

They’d do their best to help him, friend or foe, + 

But this is merely a respectfully + 

Submitted paper, properly endorsed + 

To be sent on and on, and gather blood. + 

Stare at the smoke again for a moment’s space + 

And see another live man in another prison. + 

A colored trooper named Woodson was on guard + 

In the prison at Newport News, one night around nine. + 

There was a gallery there, where the privy was, + 

But prisoners weren’t allowed in it after dark. + 

The colored soldier talked with the prisoners + 

At first, in a casual, more or less friendly way; + 

They tried to sell him breastpins and rings they had + 

And bothered him by wanting to go to the privy. + 

At last, he fired on a man + 

Who went in the gallery, but happened to miss him. + 

A lieutenant came down to ask the cause of the shot. + 

Woodson told him. + 

A second prisoner went + 

On the same errand, a shadow slipping through shadows. + 

Woodson halted him twice but he kept on moving. + 

“There’s a man in the gallery now,” said the young lieutenant. + 

“Well, I reckon it’s one of the men makin’ water again,” + 

Said Woodson, uneasily. The lieutenant stiffened. + 

He was officer of the guard and orders were orders. + 

“Why don’t you use the bayonet on him?” he said. + 

Woodson jumped forward. The bayonet hunched and struck. + 

The man ran into the privy and fell like a log.⁠ ⁠… + 

A prisoner said “You’ve killed him dead,” in a voice. + 

“Yes, by God!” said Woodson, cleaning his bayonet, + 

“They buried us alive at Fort Pillow.” + 

The court + 

Found the sentry a trifle hasty, but on the whole + 

Within his instructions, the officer’s orders lawful; + 

One cannot dispute the court. + 

And yet the man + 

Who went to the privy is inconveniently dead. + 

It seems an excessive judgment for going there. + 

The little pictures wreathe into smoke again. + 

The mummy-cases close upon the dark legion. + 

The papers are filed away. + 

If they once were sent + 

To another court for some last word of review, + 

They are back again. It seems strange that such tidy files + 

Of correspondence respectfully submitted + 

Should be returned from God with no final endorsement. + 

The slow carts hitched along toward the place of exchange + 

Through a bleak wind. + 

It was not a long wagon train, + 

Wagons and horses were too important to waste + 

On prisoners for exchange, if the men could march. + 

Many did march and some few died on the way + 

But more died up in the wagons, which was not odd. + 

If a man was too sick to walk, he was pretty sick. + 

They had been two days on the road. + 

Jack Ellyat lay + 

Between a perishing giant from Illinois + 

Who raved that he was bailing a leaky boat + 

Out on the Lakes, and a slight, tubercular Jew + 

Who muttered like a sick duck when the wagon jounced. + 

Bailey marched. He still was able to march + 

But his skin hung on him. He hummed to the Weaver’s tune. + 

They got to the river at last. + 

Jack Ellyat saw + 

A yellow stream and slow boats crossing the stream. + 

Bailey had helped him out. He was walking now + 

With his arm around Bailey’s neck. Their course was a crab’s. + 

The Jew was up and staring with shoe-button eyes + 

While his cough took him. The giant lay on a plank, + 

Some men were trying to lift him. + 

The wind blew + 

Over a knife of frost and shook their rags. + 

The air was a thawing ice of most pure, clear gold. + 

They stared across the river and saw the flag + 

And the tall, blue soldiers walking in thick, warm coats + 

Like strong, big men who fed well. And then they cheered, + 

A dry thin cheer, pumped up from exhausted lungs + 

And yet with a metal vibrance. + 

The bright flag flapped. + 

“I can smell ’em frying meat,” said the coughing Jew. + 

He sniffed, “Oh God, I hope it ain’t ham,” he said + 

With his mouth puckered. A number of scarecrows laughed. + 

And then they heard the echo of their own cheer + 

Flung back at them, it seemed, in a high, shrill wail + 

With that tongue of metal pulsing its feebleness. + 

But it did not end like an echo, it gathered and rose, + 

It was the Confederate sick on the other side, + 

Cheering their own. + 

The two weak crowd-voices met + 

In one piping, gull-like cry. + 

Then the boats began + 

To take the weak men on board. + 

Jack Ellyat walked + 

To his boat on stuffless legs. “Keep quiet,” he thought, + 

“You’re not through yet⁠—you won’t be through till you land. + 

They can jerk you back, even now, if you look too pleased. + 

Look like a soldier, damn you, and show them how.” + 

The thought was childish but it stiffened his back + 

And got him into the boat. + 

In the midst of the stream + 

They passed a boat with Confederate prisoners + 

So near they could yell at each other. + 

“Hello there, Yank.” + 

“Hello Reb”⁠ ⁠… “You look pretty sick⁠—don’t we feed you good?”⁠ ⁠… + 

“You don’t look so damn pretty, yourself”⁠ ⁠… “My, ain’t that a shame!”⁠ ⁠… + 

“You’ll look a lot sicker when Hooker gets after you.”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Hell, old Jack’ll take Hooker apart like a coffee-pot”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, goodbye, Yank”⁠ ⁠… “Goodbye, Reb”⁠ ⁠… “Get fat if you kin.” + 

So might meet and pass, perhaps, on a weedier stream + 

Other boats, no more heavily charged, to a wet, black oar. + 

Bailey watched the boat move away with its sick grey men + 

Still yelling stingless insults through tired lips. + 

He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Oh⁠—” he roared, + 

Then he sank back, coughing. + 

“They look pretty bad,” he said, + 

“They look glad to get back. They ain’t such bad Rebs at that.” + 

The boat’s nose touched the wharf. It swung and was held. + 

They got out. They didn’t move toward the camp at first. + 

They looked back at the river first and the other side, + 

Without saying words. They stood there thus for a space + 

Like a row of tattered cranes at the edge of a stream, + 

Blinking at something. + 

“All right, you men,” said an officer. “Come along.” + 

Jack Ellyat’s heart made a sudden lump in his chest. + 

It was a blue officer. They were back in their lines, + 

Back out of prison. + 

Bailey whirled out his arm + 

In a great wheel gesture. “Hell,” he said in a low, + 

Moved voice, thumbed his nose across at the Stars and Bars + 

And burst into horrible tears. Jack Ellyat held him. + 

“Captain, when do we eat?” said the Jew in a wail. + 