cautions,
    majorities, nor ridicule,
And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me,
And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado!  I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still
    urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

} Delicate Cluster

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life! 
Covering all my lands—­all my seashores lining! 
Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing! 
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean—­sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled! 
Ah my silvery beauty—­ah my woolly white and crimson! 
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty! 
My sacred one, my mother.

} To a Certain Civilian

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.

} Lo, Victress on the Peaks

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.

} Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]

Spirit whose work is done—­spirit of dreadful hours! 
Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering
    pressing,)
Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene—­electric spirit,
That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a
    tireless phantom flitted,
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum,
Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,
    reverberates round me,
As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles,
As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,
As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,