Complete Works - Walt Whitman

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saw old General at bay,

       (Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,)

       His small force was now completely hemm’d in, in his works,

       He call’d for volunteers to run the enemy’s lines, a desperate emergency,

       I saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or three

       were selected,

       I saw them receive their orders aside, they listen’d with care, the

       adjutant was very grave,

       I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.

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      While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,

       And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,

       And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the

       breath of my infant,

       There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;

       The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,

       The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the

       irregular snap! snap!

       I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! t-h-t!

       of the rifle-balls,

       I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the

       great shells shrieking as they pass,

       The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,

       (tumultuous now the contest rages,)

       All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,

       The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces,

       The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of

       the right time,

       After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the effect;

       Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel

       leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)

       I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no delay,)

       I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low

       concealing all;

       Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side,

       Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and

       orders of officers,

       While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears

       a shout of applause, (some special success,)

       And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in

       dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the

       depths of my soul,)

       And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,

       cavalry, moving hither and thither,

       (The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red

       heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)

       Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a full run,

       With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles,

       (these in my vision I hear or see,)

       And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.

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      Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,

       With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet?

       Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?

      (’Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sands and pines,

       Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com’st to me,

       As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)

      Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder’d,

       A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,

       Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.

      No further does she say, but lingering all the day,

       Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,

       And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.

      What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?

       Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?

       Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?

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      Not youth pertains to me,

       Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,

       Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,

       In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still, for learning

       inures not to me,

       Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me — yet there are two or three things

       inure to me,

       I have nourish’d the wounded and sooth’d many a dying soldier,

       And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,

       Composed these songs.

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      Race of veterans — race of victors!

       Race of the soil, ready for conflict — race of the conquering march!

       (No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race,)

       Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,

       Race of passion and the storm.

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      World take good notice, silver stars fading,

       Milky hue ript, wet of white detaching,

       Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,

       Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,

       Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.

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      O tan-faced prairie-boy,

       Before you

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