Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass. 21. Drum-Taps. 34. Reconciliation

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be
      utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly
      wash again, and ever again, this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.