1861 by Walt Whitman

Armed 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, advancing, carrying a / rifle on your shoulder, / With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands -- with a knife in the / 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 descending 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, / Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing / weapons, robust year; / Heard your determined voice, launched forth again and again; / Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon, / I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.