Drum Taps | Page 8

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.
_Father._ Cease, cease, my foolish babe, What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it
displeases me; Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,
But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall'd houses.
_Banner and Pennant._ Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan, To our children all,
or north or south of Manhattan, 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?
_Poet._ I hear and see not strips of cloth alone, I hear 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 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, 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 finished, 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, earn'd 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, Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance--and
now the halyards have rais'd it, Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry
banner, Discarding peace over all the sea and land.
_Banner and Pennant._ Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! No
longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone, 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 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, and the crops
and the fruits are ours, Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours--while we
over all, 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, This song to the soul of one poor little child.
_Child._ O my father I like not the houses, They will never to me be any thing, nor do I
like money, But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like, That

pennant I would be and must be.
_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 every thing, 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?
_Banner._ Demons and death then I sing, Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant
for war, And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children, Blent
with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea,