Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill March and Dance (Two new songs to one old tune) AS I LISTENED BY THE LILACS THE PIED PIPER As I Listened by the Lilacs1 (The Unseen A. E. F. . . . as it might have been) As I listened by the lilacs to the thrush this spring, The good gray poet said another thing: The great bell peals, and the great ships wait, And my Captain and my comrades riling through the gate. The good gray poet, back from the sea With battle-rent banner, whispered me: Filing down the wharves with noiseless feet, Filing under moon from a long, long street (A long, long street with fork and bend, And mountain sunsets at the further end) : Shovel-hatted Puritans with funnel-mouth guns; Eagle-feather crested bowmen bronze; Buck-skin trappers, fringed to the thighs, With beaver-caps frayed over buffalo eyes; Oregon Trailers, sons and sires, With gun-stocks charred by the prairie fires; Grizzled Forty-niners, with picks and barrows; Log-cabin folk with home-made harrows; Lasso boys from the ranch-frontiers; And girl-cornhuskers of the pioneers . . . Filing under moon from a long, long street, Tramp, tramp, tramp — to the great sea-fleet. 1 Reminiscences of the three motifs of Walt Whitman's nocturne on the death of Lincoln — the twilight April star, the lilac bush, and the song of the thrush — are combined with a reminiscence of the same good gray poet's other tribute to Lincoln, " O Captain! My Captain! " As I listened in the twilight, after the rain, The good gray poet said again: Filing down the piers, over waters black, Filing through the gate from a long bivouac (A long bivouac by the stream and the hill, And the low white stars and the whip-poor-will): Minute-men with eyelids damp from sleep ; Valley Forge men who limp and creep; Yorktown men, a... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.