These! ah, these! how valued and toil'd for, these! How envied by all the earth! РОЕТ Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high; On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels; On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land; Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters. But I am not the sea, nor the red sun; I am not the wind, with girlish laughter; Not the immense wind which strengthens-not the wind which lashes; Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death; But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings, Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land, Which the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings, And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, Aloft there flapping and flapping. CHILD O father, it is alive-it is full of people-it has children! O now it seems to me it is talking to its children! I hear it-it talks to me-O it is wonderful! O it stretches-it spreads and runs so fast! O my father, It is so broad, it covers the whole sky! Cease, cease, my foolish babe, FATHER What you are saying is sorrowfui to me-much it displeases me; BANNER AND PENNANT Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan ; (The war is over-yet never over . . . out of it, we are born to real life and identity;) Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan, Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground, Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-ploughs are ploughing; 60 Speak, O bard! point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all-and yet we know not why; For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting nothing, Only flapping in the wind? РОЕТ I hear and see not strips of cloth alone; I hear again the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry; I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men-I hear LIBERTY! I hear the drums beat, and the trumpets yet blowing; I myself move abroad, swift-rising, flying then; I use the wings of the land-bird, and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height; I do not deny the precious results of peace-I see populous cities, with wealth incalculable; 70 I see numberless farms-I see the farmers working in their fields or barns; I see mechanics working-I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finish'd; I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks, drawn by the locomotives; I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans; I see far in the West the immense area of grain-I dwell awhile, hovering; I pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern plantation, and again to California; Sweeping the whole, I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earned wages; See the identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States (and many more to come;) See forts on the shores of harbors-see ships sailing in and out; Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen'd pennant, shaped like a sword, 80 BANNER AND PENNANT Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! We may be terror and carnage, and are so now; Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor ten ;) Nor market nor depot are we, nor money-bank in the city; But these, and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours; And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers, great and small; And the fields they moisten are ours, and the crops and the fruits are ours; Bays and channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours-and we over all, 90 Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles-the capitals, The forty millions of people-O bard! in life and death supreme, We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above, Not for the present alone, for a thousand years, chanting through you, O my father, I like not the houses; CHILD They will never to me be anything-nor do I like money; But to mount up there I would like, O father dear-that banner I like; 100 FATHER Child of mine, you fill me with anguish; To be that pennant would be too fearful; Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever; It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything; Forward to stand in front of wars-and O, such wars!-what have you to do with them? With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death? POET Demons and death then I sing; Put in all, aye all, will I-sword-shaped pennant for war, and banner so broad and blue, And a pleasure new and extatic, and the prattled yearning of children, And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines; 110 And the whirr of drums, and the sounds of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south; And the beech-waves combing over the beach on my eastern shore, and my western shore the same; And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi, with bends and chutes; And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri; Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of all. Aye all! for ever, for all! From sea to sea, north and south, east and west, (The war is completed, the price is paid, the title is settled beyond recall;) Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole; No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound, But, out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more, 120 POET. My limbs, my veins dilate; The blood of the world has fill'd me full-my theme is clear at last : My sight, my hearing and tongue, are come to me, (a little child taught me;) I hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call and demand; 130 Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them; You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money; May they stand fast, then? Not an hour, except you, above them and all, stand fast;) -O banner! not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment, Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships; 140 Not the superb ships, with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes, While others remain busy, or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;) So loved! O you banner leading the day, with stars brought from the night! I too leave the rest-great as it is, it is nothing-houses, machines are nothing—I see them not; I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only, 150 Flapping up there in the wind. First published in "Drum-Taps," 1865. 1 PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! - Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? 2 For we cannot tarry here, We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, Pioneers! O pioneers! 3 O you youths, western youths, So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas? Pioneers! O pioneers! All the past we leave behind; We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world, Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, We detachments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, We primeval forests felling, We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within; Pioneers! O pioneers! Colorado men are we, From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus, Pioneers! O pioneers! From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd; All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! 20 30 10 O resistless, restless race! O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! Pioneers! O pioneers! 11 Raise the mighty mother mistress, 40 Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,) Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress, By those swarms upon With accessions ever Pioneers! O pioneers! 12 See, my children, resolute children, 13 On and on, the compact ranks, waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd, Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers! 14 O to die advancing on! Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come? 15 All the pulses of the world, Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat; 16 Life's involv'd and varied pageants, All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work, All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, 17 All the hapless silent lovers, All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked, Pioneers! O pioneers! I too with my soul and body, We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O pioneers! 50 8 70 |