Drum-Taps: The Complete 1865 Edition, Page 2

  Not so in Drum-Taps. Many of its poems are written in borrowed voices—soldier’s voices, the voice of a father and child, the voice of a veteran of the Revolution, the voice of personifications, even the voices of a banner and pennant. These poems are dramatic monologues or dramatic lyrics, and they are so prominent, especially preceding the Sequel, that even many of the direct first-person lyrics cannot unhesitatingly be assigned to the normative voice of Whitman “himself.” In some cases the lyric “I” is purely formal or impersonal; in some the “I” may equally well belong to Whitman or to a fictitious character or, more likely, to some blend of both. This dispersal and multiplication of voices makes those poems that do speak in Whitman’s familiar personal voice all the more telling—one end of a spectrum that spans the arc from intimate confession through the voices of public utterance to borrowed or imaginary utterance, some of it quasi-divine. The force of the Civil War as above all a collective experience expresses itself through the force of this vocal polyphony.

  That force may also explain the presence in Drum-Taps of several lyrics in regular stanzas, the most famous of which is “O Captain! My Captain!” The stanzaic lyric is a form in which Whitman otherwise almost never indulged. The exceptions in Drum-Taps add a note of ritual to the volume and at the same time speak in the voice of the Civil War era’s popular verse. The formalizing impulse even appears in the most freely personal poem in the whole collection, the “Lilacs” elegy, whose central “death carol” is arranged in quatrains—and which is presented not as spoken by the poet but as spoken through him.

  The carefully composed polyphony of the original collections is almost completely lost in the Leaves reduction. By transferring most of the personal lyrics out of Drum-Taps, Whitman artificially separates his war voices from his lyric voice. Scattered throughout Leaves, the displaced poems tend to assume a retrospective character strongly at odds with the immediacy they possessed in their original location. Meanwhile, the poems left in place suffer a contrary slippage. Whitman’s emphasis on the lyric “I” in Leaves strips away from many of the war poems the ambiguity of voice that adhered to them in their original context.

  Beyond voice, there is the question of slavery—though this is a question on which Whitman can be said to have spoken with two voices. He condemned slavery and opposed its expansion into the territories. But he was not an abolitionist; he was never able to reconcile his recognition that slavery was intolerable with his deference to its Constitutional sanction. His antebellum “solution”—obviously no solution at all—consisted in the expectation that slavery would wither away in its own time (never mind how long it took). A similar ambivalence beset his attitude toward African Americans. He could portray black people with acute sympathy in his poetry and also subject them to racist dismissal in letters and journalism.

  In part because of these conflicted attitudes, Whitman conceived of the Civil War primarily in terms of the ideal of union. As already noted, he wrote from the conviction that the establishment of democracy in the United States was the seed of democracy in the world. America was the first and only model of a democratic revolution still in uncertain progress during Whitman’s lifetime. This idea, widely shared in the North, had a complex relationship to the problem of slavery. Depending on one’s point of view, the democratic imperative could subsume, rival, overshadow, replace, ignore, or require the undoing of slavery, or, as when Lincoln spoke of “a new birth of freedom” at Gettysburg in 1863, take the end of slavery as both its aim and its symbol.

  Whitman never managed to sort these alternatives out. At various times he seems to have favored each of them, but the democratic imperative in its own right took precedence over all of them. It did so, moreover, not only as a political ideal but also as the principle that legitimated Whitman’s life’s work as a poet or, as he put it, as “the Answerer” in whom democracy would find its spiritual voice:

  One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he sees how they join.

  He says indifferently and alike How are you friend? to the President at his levee,

  And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,

  And both understand him and know that his speech is right.

  He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,

  He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another, Here is our equal appearing and new.

  (“Song of the Answerer” [orig. 1855], lines 33–38)

  For Whitman, accordingly, the war was above all a quest to reunite the states that had split into fratricidal factions. Its most important outcome was not abolition but the reconciliation of North and South.

  It is a tragic fact of American history that after the war the pursuit of that reconciliation led to a century of racial oppression and injustice. It is a tragic fact of American literature that Whitman—in many ways a different man after the war than he had been before—tended to acquiesce in this shameful tradeoff. To his credit, he retained, unretouched, most of the passages in which Leaves of Grass through 1860 exposed the raw wounds of slavery or identified with slaves or evoked the vivid presence of black people in the American panorama. But he also stopped writing such things. And there was one major exception to his general practice of keeping faith with the past.

  The exception was Drum-Taps. The Leaves version is notorious for containing only a single poem, “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors,” that acknowledges the racial dimension of the war, and at that with an uncharacteristic timidity that slips into passive racism. The poem, written later, does not appear in the original volume. At best the Leaves version of Drum-Taps subsumes the question of slavery under the abstract conception of liberty, or “Libertad,” as Whitman typically calls it. (The Spanish term probably derives from Whitman’s admiration for Texas, which from 1836 to 1845 was an independent republic that had broken away from Mexico.)

  The original Drum-Taps does better in this regard, though by modern standards it does not do nearly enough. Libertad is still present as an abstract ideal, but there are several poems, later removed, that specifically tie the establishment of democracy to the union of races. There is no denying that the conception remains abstract and that its action is indirect, displaced onto a global stage from the national one. Still, the conception is there. It even touches ground in an admiring passage on the abolitionist revolutionary John Brown—about as pointed a reference as one could imagine, especially in 1865. Brown’s hanging in 1859, fictionally witnessed with clenched teeth, appears as a portent of the war to come two years later.

  Could Whitman have done better? No doubt he could have. His faltering over this issue, however, is indicative not only of his personal difficulty but also of the complex blend of confusion, denial, refusal, and genuine perplexity about the causes of the Civil War that vexed the conflict throughout the four years it consumed and has vexed its history ever since.

  In part for that very reason, it seems only fitting and proper to issue this edition of the original Drum-Taps on the 150th anniversary of its first publication and of the final days of a war whose issues, which many of us once thought settled, have lately come back to haunt the still-unfinished experiment of American democracy.

  —Lawrence Kramer

  A Note on the Text

  THE TEXTS OF of the poems in this edition were transcribed from photographs of the pages in Whitman’s 1865 publications, which may be viewed online, one page at a time, at the Walt Whitman Archive (http://www.whitmanarchive.org). Peculiarities of spelling, punctuation, and grammar have been preserved intact.

  This project began in a graduate seminar at Fordham University in which my students did supervised research toward annotations of the original Drum-Taps. All made contributions for which I am grateful: Patrick Bannon, Adrianna Berg, Malkah Bressler, Clarissa Chenovick, Heather DeVries, Elizabeth Geist, Caroline Hagood, Sharon Haris, Jongmin Kang, Camin Melton, Peter Murray, Brittany Owens, Elizabeth Porter, and Rohit Sharma.

  —L
.K.

  Drum-Taps

  (New York, 1865)

  Drum-Taps

  First, O songs, for a prelude,

  Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum, pride and joy in my city,*

  How she led the rest to arms—how she gave the cue,

  How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she sprang;

  (O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!*

  O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)

  How you sprang! how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand;

  How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead;*

  How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude songs of soldiers,)

  How Manhattan drum-taps led.

  Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading;*

  Forty years as a pageant—till unawares, the Lady of this teeming and turbulent city,*

  Sleepless, amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,

  With her million children around her—suddenly,

  At dead of night, at news from the south,*

  Incens’d, struck with clench’d hand the pavement.*

  A shock electric—the night sustain’d it;

  Till with ominous hum, our hive at day-break, pour’d out its myriads.*

  From the houses then, and the workshops, and through all the doorways,

  Leapt they tumultuous—and lo! Manhattan arming.*

  To the drum-taps prompt,

  The young men falling in and arming;

  The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s hammer, tost aside with precipitation;)

  The lawyer leaving his office, and arming—the judge leaving the court;

  The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs;

  The salesman leaving the store—the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;

  Squads gathering everywhere by common consent, and arming;

  The new recruits, even boys—the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements—they buckle the straps carefully;

  Outdoors arming—indoors arming—the flash of the musket-barrels;

  The white tents cluster in camps—the arm’d sentries around—the sunrise cannon, and again at sunset;

  Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves;

  (How good they look, as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders!

  How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces, and their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!)

  The blood of the city up—arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere;

  The flags flung out from the steeples of churches, and from all the public buildings and stores;

  The tearful parting—the mother kisses her son—the son kisses his mother;

  (Loth is the mother to part—yet not a word does she speak to detain him;)

  The tumultuous escort—the ranks of policemen preceeding, clearing the way;

  The unpent enthusiasm—the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites;*

  The artillery—the silent cannons, bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones;

  (Silent cannons—soon to cease your silence!

  Soon, unlimber’d, to begin the red business;)

  All the mutter of preparation—all the determin’d arming;

  The hospital service—the lint, bandages, and medicines;

  The women volunteering for nurses—the work begun for, in earnest—no mere parade now;*

  War! an arm’d race is advancing!—the welcome for battle—no turning away;

  War! be it weeks, months, or years—an arm’d race is advancing to welcome it.

  Mannahatta a-march!—and it’s O to sing it well!*

  It’s O for a manly life in the camp!

  And the sturdy artillery!

  The guns, bright as gold—the work for giants—to serve well the guns:

  Unlimber them! no more, as the past forty years, for salutes for courtesies merely;

  Put in something else now besides powder and wadding.

  And you, Lady of Ships! you Mannahatta!

  Old matron of the city! this proud, friendly, turbulent city!

  Often in peace and wealth you were pensive, or covertly frown’d amid all your children;*

  But now you smile with joy, exulting old Mannahatta!

  Shut not your doors to me proud Libraries

  Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,

  For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring;

  A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,

  And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;

  The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;

  A book separate, not link’d with the rest, nor felt by the intellect;

  But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm’d Libertad!*

  It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,

  With joy with you, O soul of man.

  Cavalry crossing a ford

  A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;

  They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun—Hark to the musical clank;*

  Behold the silvery river—in it the splashing horses, loitering, stop to drink;

  Behold the brown-faced men—each group, each person, a picture—the negligent rest on the saddles;

  Some emerge on the opposite bank—others are just entering the ford;

  The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind.*

  Song of the Banner at Day-Break

  POET

  O a new song, a free song,

  Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,

  By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,

  By the banner’s voice, and child’s voice, and sea’s voice, and father’s voice,

  Low on the ground and high in the air,

  On the ground where father and child stand,

  In the upward air where their eyes turn,

  Where the banner at day-break is flapping.

  Words! book-words! what are you?

  Words no more, for hearken and see,

  My song is there in the open air—and I must sing,

  With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

  I’ll weave the chord and twine in,*

  Man’s desire and babe’s desire—I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life;

  I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point—I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz;

  I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy;

  Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,

  With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

  BANNER AND PENNANT

  Come up here, bard, bard;

  Come up here, soul, soul;

  Come up here, dear little child,

  To fly in the clouds and winds with us, and play with the measureless light.*

  CHILD

  Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?

  And what does it say to me all the while?

  FATHER

  Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky;

  And nothing at all to you it says. But look you, my babe,

  Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening;

  And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods:

  These! ah, these! how valued and toil’d for, these!

  How envied by all the earth!

  POET

  Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high;

  On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels;

  On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;

  The great steady wind from west and west-by-south
,

  Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters.

  But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;

  I am not the wind, with girlish laughter;

  Not the immense wind which strengthens—not the wind which lashes;

  Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death:

  But I am of 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;

  Speak to our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,

  Where our factory-engines hum, where our miners delve the ground,

  Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-plows are plowing;

  Speak, O bard! 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,