Drum-Taps

Walt Whitman

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781528787475
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

This book contains a collection of poetry by Walt Whitman first published in 1865. The poems here are a reflection and interpretation of Whitman's experiences and views on the American Civil War which began in April, 1861. He spent much of his time volunteering as a nurse in hospitals during the Civil War and a considerable proportion of the poems are from this perspective. We are republishing this works with a new biographical introduction of the author.

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 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! bookwords! 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 or 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...

Table of contents

• Walt Whitman
• Introduction
• First O Songs For A Prelude.
• Eighteen Sixty-One.
• Beat! Beat! Drums!
• From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like A Bird
• Song Of The Banner At Daybreak.
• Rise O Days From Your Fathomless Deeps.
• Virginia—The West.
• City Of Ships.
• The Centenarian's Story.
• Cavalry Crossing A Ford.
• Bivouac On A Mountain Side.
• An Army Corps On The March.
• By The Bivouac's Fitful Flame.
• Come Up From The Fields Father.
• Vigil Strange I Kept On The Field One Night.
• A March In The Ranks Hard-Prest, And The Road Unknown.
• A Sight In Camp In The Daybreak Gray And Dim.
• As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods.
• Not The Pilot.
• Year That Trembled And Reel'd Beneath Me.
• The Wound-Dresser.
• Long, Too Long America.
• Give Me The Splendid Silent Sun.
• Dirge For Two Veterans.
• Over The Carnage Rose Prophetic A Voice.
• I Saw Old General At Bay.
• The Artilleryman's Vision.
• Ethiopia Saluting The Colours.
• Not Youth Pertains To Me.
• Race Of Veterans.
• World Take Good Notice.
• O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy.
• Look Down Fair Moon.
• Reconciliation.
• How Solemn As One By One.
• As I Lay With My Head In Your Lap Camerado.
• Delicate Cluster.
• To A Certain Civilian.
• Lo, Victress On The Peaks.
• Spirit Whose Work Is Done.
• Adieu To A Soldier.
• Turn O Libertad.
• To The Leaven'd Soil They Trod.