From
Leaves of Grass by
Walt Whitman.
Arm'd year-year of the
struggle,
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,
Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping
cadenzas
piano,
But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
carrying
rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife in
the belt at your side,
As I heard you shouting loud, your
sonorous voice ringing across the
continent,
Your
masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, the
dwellers in
Manhattan,
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of
Illinois and
Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the
Allghanies,
Or down from the great lakes or in
Pennsylvania, or on deck along
the
Ohio river,
Or southward along the
Tennessee or
Cumberland rivers, or at
Chattanooga on the mountain top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing
weapons, robust year,
Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again,
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.