EIGHTEEN SIXTY-ONE.
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rm'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 cadenzaspiano,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 inthe belt at your side,As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across thecontinent,Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen, thedwellers in Manhattan,Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois andIndiana,Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending theAlleghanies,Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along theOhio river,Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or atChattanooga on the mountain top,Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearingweapons, 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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