When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd / And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, / I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

I dote on myself. There is a lot of me and all so luscious.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I can bear it.

I sing the body that is electric! I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!

Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.