Poem by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass. 21. Drum-Taps. 2. Eighteen Sixty-One

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.

1. Leaves of Grass. 32. From Noon to Starry Night. 9. Excelsior
2. Leaves of Grass. 34. Sands at Seventy. 11. The Wallabout Martyrs
3. Leaves of Grass. 5. Calamus. 38. That Shadow My Likeness
4. Leaves of Grass. 20. By the Roadside. 28. Offerings
5. Leaves of Grass. 21. Drum-Taps. 35. How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]

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