Come Up From the Fields, Father by Walt Whitman (1867)

On this, Veteran's Day, I am thinking of the Civil War.  The war that in some ways isn't really entirely over.  The cultural differences and the social values of the North remain different from those of the South.  You have only to look at an electoral vote from the most recent election.  The war was fought, but it didn't really bring us closer together.

What did we lose and what did we win?  We lost one in five Americans, and we eliminated slavery.  Humans could no longer own humans in the United States after the Civil War.  It was complicated then and it is complicated now.

This is Walt Whitman's poem, written during and about the war:

Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, mother, here's
     a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves
     fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and
     grapes on the trellis'd vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent
     after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful,
     and the farm prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come, father, come
     at the daughter's call,
And come to the entry, mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous,
     her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor
     adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
0 this is not our son's writing, yet his name
     is sign'd,
0 a strange hand writes for our dear son,
     0 stricken mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black,
     she catches the main words only,
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast,
     cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah, now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all
     its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head,
     very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown
     daughter speaks through her sobs,
The little sisters huddle around speechless and
     dismay'd),
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will
     soon be better.
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor maybe
     needs to be better, that brave and simple soul),
While they stand at home at the door he is
     dead already,
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently drest in black,
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night
     fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with
     one deep longing,
0 that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent
     from life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead
     son.