by Whitman · Cluster: War and its Cost · American Civil War · Battlefield
Abstract
Address to victorious Liberty after the war, offering not a proud poem but a cluster of night’s darkness, blood-dripping wounds, and psalms of the dead.
Connections
Motifs: Blood, Death Themes & Concepts: Liberty Political Freedom, War and its Cost, Grief and Loss Historical References: American Civil War
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: DRUM-TAPS
Lo, Victress on the peaks, Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world, (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,) Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all, Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee, Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness and bloom—lo, in these hours supreme, No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery’s rapturous verse, But a cluster containing night’s darkness and blood-dripping wounds, And psalms of the dead.