1861

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

21:35