The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman

AmericaCentre of equal daughters, equal sons,All, all alike, endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,Chair'd in the adamant of Time.

I

POEMS OF WAR

THICK-SPRINKLED BUNTING

Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars!Long yet your road, fateful flag—long yet your road, and lined with bloody death,For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,All its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy banner;Dream'd again the flags of kings, highest borne, to flaunt unrival'd?O hasten flag of man—O with sure and steady step, passing highest flags of kings,Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol—run up above them all,Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!

BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,Into the school where the scholar is studying;Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,Not the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,No bargainers' bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—would theycontinue?Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties,Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

CITY OF SHIPS

City of ships!(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!O the beautiful sharp-bow'd steam-ships and sail-ships!)City of the world! (for all races are here,All the lands of the earth make contributions here);City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out with eddies and foam!City of wharves and stores—city of tall façades of marble and iron!Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!Spring up O city—not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!Fear not—submit to no models but your own, O city!Behold me—incarnate me as I have incarnated you!I have rejected nothing you offer'd me—whom you adopted I have adopted,Good or bad I never question you—I love all—I do not condemn anything,I chant and celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no more,In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine,War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!

A MARCH IN THE RANKS HARD-PREST, AND THE ROAD UNKNOWN

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,Our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,'Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital,Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death (he is shot in the abdomen),I stanch the blood temporarily (the youngster's face is white as a lily),Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene fain to absorb it all,Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odour of blood,The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill'd,Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,An occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls,The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odour,Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,The unknown road still marching.

COME UP FROM THE FIELDS FATHER

Come up from the fields father, here's a letter from our Pete,And come to the front door mother, here's a letter from thy dear son.Lo, 'tis autumn,Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd vines(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?),Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.Down in the fields all prospers well,But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter's call,And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.Open the envelope quickly,O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother's soul!All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only,Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,At present low, but will soon be better.Ah now the single figure to me,Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,By the jamb of a door leans.Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd),See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.Alas poor boy, he will never be better (nor may be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul),While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,The only son is dead.But the mother needs to be better,She with thin form presently drest in black,By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

A TWILIGHT SONG

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes—of the countless buried unknown soldiers,Of the vacant names, as unindented air's and sea's—the unreturn'd,The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill'd trenchesOf gather'd dead from all America, North, South, East, West, whence they came up,From wooded Maine, New-England's farms, from fertile Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio,From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames,Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising—I hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies);You million unwrit names all, all—you dark bequest from all the war,A special verse for you—a flash of duty long neglected—your mystic roll strangely gather'd here,Each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and death's ashes,Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many a future year,Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,Embalm'd with love in this twilight song.

A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GRAY AND DIM

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.Curious I halt and silent stand,Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket;Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?Who are you my dear comrade?Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and darling?Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself,Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

YEAR THAT TREMBLED AND REEL'D BENEATH ME

Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me!Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me,Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled,And sullen hymns of defeat?

FIRST O SONGS FOR A PRELUDE

First O songs for a prelude,Lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum pride and joy in my city,How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless.O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)How you sprang—how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand,How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard intheir stead,How you led to the war (that shall serve for our prelude, songs ofsoldiers),How Manhattan drum-taps led.Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and turbulent city,Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,With her million children around her, suddenly,At dead of night, at news from the south,Incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement.A shock electric, the night sustain'd it,Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its myriads.From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.To the drum-taps prompt,The young men falling in and arming,The mechanics arming (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith's hammer, tost aside with precipitation),The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses' backs,The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,The white tents cluster in camps, the arm'd sentries around, the sunrise cannon and again at sunset,Arm'd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves(How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders!How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and their clothes and knapsacks cover'd with dust!)The blood of the city up—arm'd! arm'd! the cry everywhere,The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the public buildings and stores,The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him),The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favourites,The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,Soon unlimber'd to begin the red business);All the mutter of preparation, all the determin'd arming,The hospital service, the lint, bandages, and medicines,The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no mere parade now;War! an arm'd race is advancing, the welcome for battle, no turning away;War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm'd race is advancing to welcome it.Mannahatta a-march—and it's O to sing it well!It's O for a manly life in the camp.And the sturdy artilleryThe guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns,Unlimber them! (No more as the past forty years for salutes for courtesies merely,Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown'd amid all your children,But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.

SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK

Poet

O a new song, a free song,Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,By the wind's voice and that of the drum,By the banner's voice and the child's voice and sea's voice and father's voice,Low on the ground and high in the air,On the ground where father and child stand,In the upward air where their eyes turn,Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.Words! book-words! what are you?Words no more, for hearken and see,My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,With the banner and pennant a-flapping.I'll weave the chord and twine in,Man's desire and babe's desire, I'll twine them in, I'll put in life,I'll put the bayonet's flashing point, I'll let bullets and slugs whizz(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)I'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy,Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

Pennant

Come up here, bard, bard,Come up here, soul, soul,Come up here, dear little child,To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.

Child

Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?And what does it say to me all the while?

Father

Nothing my babe you see in the sky,And nothing at all to you it says—but look you my babe,Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening,And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;These, ah these, how valued and toil'd for these!How envied by all the earth!

Poet

Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,The great steady wind from west to west-by-south.Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.But I am not the sea nor the red sun,I am not the wind with girlish laughter,Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,Aloft there flapping and flapping.

Child

O father it is alive—it is full of people—it has children,O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,I hear it—it talks to me—O it is wonderful!O it stretches—it spreads and runs so fast—O my father,It is so broad it covers the whole sky.

Father

Cease, cease, my foolish babe,What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me;Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall'd houses.

Banner and Pennant

Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we know not why,For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,Only flapping in the wind?

Poet

I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height,I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities with wealth incalculable,I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or barns,I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finish'd,I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by the locomotives,I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering,I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern plantation, and again to California;Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earn'd wages,See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States (and many more to come),See forts on the shores of harbours, see ships sailing in and out;Then over all (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen'd pennant shaped like a sword,Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance—and now the halyards have rais'd it,Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,Discarding peace over all the sea and land.

Banner and Pennant

Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone,We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States (nor any five, nor ten),Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours,And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small,And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours,Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours—while we over all,Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles, the capitals,The forty millions of people—O bard! in life and death supreme,We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you,This song to the soul of one poor little child.

Child

O my father I like not the houses,They will never to me be anything, nor do I like money,But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like,That pennant I would be and must be.

Father

Child of mine you fill me with anguish,To be that pennant would be too fearful,Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever,It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything,Forward to stand in front of wars—and O, such wars!—what have you to do with them?With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?

Banner

Demons and death then I sing,Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea,And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop'd in smoke,And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines,And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south,And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore, and my Western shore the same,And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi with bends and chutes,And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri,The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom,Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all,Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,But out of the night emerging for food, our voice persuasive no more,Croaking like crows here in the wind.

Poet

My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute,I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen'd and blinded,My hearing and tongue are come to me (a little child taught me),I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,Insensate! insensate (yet I at any rate chant you), O banner!Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them.You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money,May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all stand fast);O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment,Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships,Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes,Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues—but you as henceforth I see you,Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars (ever-enlarging stars),Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch'd by the sun, measuring the sky,(Passionately seen and yearn'd for by one poor little child,While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift);O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing so curious,Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me,So loved—O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night!Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—(absolute owner of all)—O banner and pennant!I too leave the rest!—great as it is, it is nothing—houses, machines are nothing—I see them not.I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only,Flapping up there in the wind.

THE DYING VETERAN

(A Long Island incident—early part of the nineteenth century.)

Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,I cast a reminiscence—(likely 't will offend you,I heard it in my boyhood)—More than a generation since,A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself(Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather spiritualistic,Had fought in the ranks—fought well—had been all through the Revolutionary war),Lay dying—sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half-caught words:"Let me return again to my war-days,To the sights and scenes—to forming the line of battle,To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,To the cannons, the grim artillery,To the galloping aids, carrying orders,To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;Away with your life of peace!—your joys of peace!Give me my old wild battle-life again!"

THE WOUND-DRESSER

1

An old man bending I come among new faces,Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war,But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I resign'd myself,To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead);Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,Of unsurpass'd heroes (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave);Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth,Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us?What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?