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 lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
- Whitman, Walt. "Reconciliation." In Leaves of Grass, 258. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1983. Bantam Classic Edition.
- Photos from the Library of Congress: LC-DIG-cwpb-01847