The Poetry Corner

Reconciliation

By Walt Whitman

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; I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.