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 henceforth for ever;
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 ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,
Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land, and the liquid wash of the sea;
And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines;
And the whirr of drums, and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun
shining south;
And the beach-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;
The CONTINENT--devoting the whole identity, without reserving an atom,
Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of
all.
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