Leaves of Grass (1882)/Drum-Taps/Reconciliation

by Walt Whitman

For works with similar titles, see Reconciliation.

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,
Bend down and touch lighdy with my lips the white face in the coffin.