|
1
[Beat! beat! drums!]
| Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow! |
| Through the windows—through every door—burst in like a |
| force of armed men [deletion, illegible]
|
| In to the solemn church, and
scatter the congregation, |
| In to the school where the
scholar is studying; |
| Leave not the bridegroom
any
in quiet—no
happiness ^
must he have
now with his bride; |
|
Leave not
Nor
the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field, |
| or gathering his
crops,
grain,
|
| So
strong you beat
fierce you whirr and
pound
, you drums—So long and
shrill you |
| bugles blow. |
[Thou West that gave'st him to us]
| Thou West that gave'st him to us |
|
Thou gavest him to us, Land.
|
|
Thou
That
^
for our sake,
rear'dst him
in
on
thy fresh & ample
prairies, |
| and on the breasts of thy great,
fresh, |
| musical flowing rivers; |
| This day we return to thee
his
with
bearing
his body. |
|
-
Date
- This leaf has manuscript material that was
written at two distinct times during the Civil War. The lines on the recto were
likely written in the summer of 1861 during
the early days of the conflict, before the publication of "Beat! Beat! Drums!"
in September of that year. The lines on the verso were probably written in the
spring of 1865, shortly after the death
of Abraham Lincoln.
-
Editorial note
- The manuscript on the recto is a draft of "Beat! Beat! Drums!" which was first
published simultaneously in Harper's Weekly and the New York
Leader on September 28,
1861. The lines on the verso, beginning "Thou West that gave'st him to us," constituted the
draft lines of a poem never published in Whitman's lifetime. An elegy for Abraham
Lincoln, the poem does not share lines or specific imagery with Whitman's most
famous elegy, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," or the other poems in the
cluster "Memories of President Lincoln."
-
Location
- Beat! beat! drums! 26 | The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of
Walt Whitman, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
-
Whitman Archive ID
- loc.00051
|
