Skip to content
ReadingWillow structured literacy program for Australian students
Poetry Library

— Stephen Crane

I looked here;

I looked there;

Nowhere could I see my love.

And--this time--

…

Read full poem →

noun

(usually a mass noun) Lodging in a dwelling or similar living quarters afforded to travellers in hotels or on cruise ships, or prisoners, etc.

“Writers often choose accommodation when discussing complex ideas.”

Know more →

SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE.

26 lines
Walt Whitman·1819–1892
✦
_Washington City, 1865._) Spirit whose work is done--spirit of dreadful hours!Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfalteringpressing),Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene--electric spirit,That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a tirelessphantom flitted,Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat thedrum,Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,reverberates round me,As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles,As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in thedistance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and left,Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as deathnext day,Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,Leave me your pulses of rage-bequeath them to me-fill me withcurrents convulsive,Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are gone,Let them identify you to the future in these songs.
✦