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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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EIGHTEEN SIXTY-ONE.
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,
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But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
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With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife
in the belt at your side,
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As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across
the continent,
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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,
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Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and
Indiana,
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Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the
Alleghanies,
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Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck
along the Ohio river,
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Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
Chattanooga on the mountain top,
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Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue,
bearing weapons, robust year,
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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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