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, ad- vancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder,With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands —with a knife in a 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 de- scending 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,
[ begin page 265 ]ppp.00270.267.jpgSaw 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.