The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd), 

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

Alas poor boy, he will never be better (nor may be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul),

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,

She with thin form presently drest in black,

By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,

O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

[Pg 12]

[Pg 12]

A TWILIGHT SONG

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,

Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes—of the countless buried unknown soldiers, 

Of the vacant names, as unindented air's and sea's—the unreturn'd,

The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill'd trenches

Of gather'd dead from all America, North, South, East, West, whence they came up,

From wooded Maine, New-England's farms, from fertile Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio,

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