1861

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 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;                                                 10
   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.

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