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;
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)
More Poetry from Walt Whitman:
Walt Whitman Poems based on Topics: Man, Cities, Sadness- A Proadway Pageant (Walt Whitman Poems)
- A Boston Ballad, 1854 (Walt Whitman Poems)
- A Woman Waits For Me (Walt Whitman Poems)
- A March In The Ranks, Hard-prest (Walt Whitman Poems)
- A Riddle Song (Walt Whitman Poems)
- A child said, What is the grass? (Walt Whitman Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Man Poems, Sadness Poems, Cities PoemsBased on Keywords: springy, cumberland, alleghanies, chattanooga, cadenzas, poetling, loud-your, round-lipp, well-gristled, hands-with