by Whitman · Cluster: War and its Cost · American Civil War · Battlefield
Abstract
A defiant address rejecting the civilian’s wish for soft rhymes, affirming the poet’s martial, war-born art and his role as singer of the funeral dirge.
Connections
Motifs: Music and Song, Death Themes & Concepts: War and its Cost, Artist and Society Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
Cluster: DRUM-TAPS
Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?
Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?
Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand—nor
am I now;
(I have been born of the same as the war was born,
The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the
martial dirge,
With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s funeral;)
What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,
And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,
For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.