he wrote then, to lie prone upon “this glorious earth” in an opening
among the trees, while “looking on water, sun, and hill, / As on their
maker’s face,” and, at sunset, he hoped to “step / Down to the Unknown
World alone.”^90 Despite the intervals of painful doubt that Whitman en-
dured throughout his life, this image was never far from his thoughts. As
an ailing old man nearing the end of his days, he recreated in “Death’s
Valley” a scene that had ¤red his youthful imaginings. And he offered this
welcoming prayer to Death as the ultimate liberator:
Of the broad blessed light and perfect air, with meadows,
rippling tides, and trees and ®owers and grass,
And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God’s
beautiful eternal right hand,
Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at
last of all,
Rich, ®orid, loosener of the stricture-knot call’d life,
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.^91Whitman wrote a number of minor poems after completing “Death’s
Valley”; but Harper’s had shrewdly sensed that this poem would make a
¤tting tribute to the dead poet. Throughout Whitman’s career, death
had formed an essential core of his poetry, and he had long sought (and
has probably attained) the high ground as America’s premier poet of
death. As the twilight darkened around him and the vitality ebbed from
his pain-wracked body, his spirit was still singing the praises of “sweet,
peaceful, welcome Death.”
“Sweet, Peaceful, Welcome Death” / 243