The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: Ashes of Roses
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Between 1868 and 1871
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00050
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from The Walt Whitman Archive I: Whitman Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Garland, 1993), 1:153. The transcription was then checked against digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This manuscript was likely composed around 1870–1871, when Whitman was revising and expanding the poem "Hymn of Dead Soldiers," originally published in Drum-Taps (1865), for republication as "Ashes of Soldiers."
Contributors to digital file: Nicole Gray, Andrew Jewell, Kenneth Price, Brett Barney, Nick Krauter, Lisa Renfro, Zach Bajaber, and Alice Rutkowski
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Decoration Day
May 30.
———
Ashes of Roses
———
———
The dust & debris below,
in all the cemeteries
not only in Virginia &
Tennessee but all through
the land
———
- The names of the flowers.
lilacs
roses
early lilies
- the colors,
purple & white
& red & yellow
& red—
—the graves—
Ashes of Armies
The Unknown ☜
? Army‑Ashes
The dust of each mingling
fused
all with
in the
dust
of each—(i.e. the rebel & the Union)
Are we to have a National Hy[mn by Cen]tennial time?
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? Ashes of Roses
Dust of the dead—
ashes of blue & gray,
—ashes of battle-pits,
———
solemn & strange cement—
———
not a field crop grows hence in
the field, of north or south
—Not Nor moisture of the river,
nor
falling rain
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