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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.
Walt Whitman
Read poems about / on: river, sad, city, rose
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Click here to write your comments about this poem (1861 by Walt Whitman)
Robert Quilter (10/1/2008 10:07:00 AM)
I like the idea of a year that doesn't deserve a poem, or it's too important to be 'belittled' by a poet trying to rhyme his work. Love the last line '..you hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year...' 1989 was a little like that for me. |
Sean Andrews (4/22/2008 11:09:00 PM)
A synopsis of the year 1861, first and foremost a year of war. The Civil War, 'blue clothes' Whitman is a Northerner from New York. The war reaches into the lives of workmen, and the lives of presidents Lincoln (from Illinois) elected in 1861, heard across the continent, this year of war...across mountains (Alleghanies) , lakes, rivers and south the war spreads in 1861. A year of war, rifles and cannon... |
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Walt Whitman
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