Poem: “1861” by Walt Whitman

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Walt Whitman – Poems by Walt Whitman – Drum Taps
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1861

Armed 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 a
        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
        Alleghanies;
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 determined voice, launched forth again and again;
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.

< < < Manhattan Arming
The Uprising > > >

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Walt Whitman – Poems by Walt Whitman – Drum Taps

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Drum Taps

1861

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