1861
Walt Whitman

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;

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.