Response to Song 18 of Song of Myslef, by Walt Whitman (all Whitman excepts are enclosed by double asterisks, and “sonnet” font is enclosed by a single asterisk at each end)

**I play not a march for victors only…. I play great marches for conquered and slain persons.**

*O you whose faith is tried by grievous wound;

O you who my parade most sorely need;

O you! –I send you crying to your tombs!

O you –Who cry and die, my concert heed!*

**Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?

I also say it is good to fall….battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.**

*I sing because I can, for spirits’ rest.

I sing for those when none will see – the lost!

I sing, for then at not so great a cost;

I sing them who keep hope in dying breast.*

**I sound triumphal marches for the dead….I fling through my embouchures the loudest and gayest music to them, Vivas to those who have failed, and** long life to you happy dying men! And long may your spirit of dying nobility endure! Praised be that men can still care enough to participate at all! The victory – to those with the weapons, the numbers, the tactics? But the lost!—oh, the defeat is grand indeed! To see one’s generals fall and keep up the battle, the ultimate test! You have not failed it, my fallen comrades. Vivas to you dying!, for your life was truly well-lived, and whole-heartedly given up. My life is not to be bought; a life should not merely burn away, useless.

A life is to be given willingly. A soul offered up in sacrifice is the highest power, sprung from the highest love, on the earth. A body empty of its own volition is the remains of something truly great. An ending, the supreme decision, requires complete faith. Faith! Hope in the hopeless, O divinely human failure, how I adore you!

          Most worth remembering are those left by the wayside, the suffering masses,**those whose war-vessels sank in the sea, and those themselves who sank in the sea,** Men like so many small vessels! Men dying like captains, men live like the tormented. Men live the guilty, but O!– men die the free! Men linger for decades in slow-burning torture, yet perish at the last free of regret. Are they to join brothers and sister, parents and children? Faith is enough. Faith propels men to the highest heavens from the lowest dungeons.

**And to all generals who lost engagements, and all overcome heroes,** Victory is never absolute. One can keep winning forever. The only way to tell is through failure; to be bested is to be sure.

To be bested is to be sure.

**And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known.**

*You would have been enough, my bleeding friend.

As you lay waiting on your back, all eyes.

Your greatness was no match for fortune’s hand.

You could have lay waste kingdoms; here you lie.

The victory was glorious!, I cried.

As I held your frigid body, cold inside.*