No More Learning

The engagement opens there and then, in my busy brain unreal;
The skirmishers begin--they crawl cautiously ahead--I hear the irregular
snap! snap!
I hear the sound of the different missiles--the short _t-h-t! t-h-t! _ of
the rifle-balls;
I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds--I hear the great
shells shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick,
tumultuous, now the contest rages! )
All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;
The crashing and smoking--the pride of the men in their pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the
right time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the
effect;
--Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging--the young colonel leads
himself this time, with brandished sword;
I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys, quickly filled up--no delay;
I breathe the suffocating smoke--then the flat clouds hover low, concealing
all;
Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either
side;
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of
officers;
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout
of applause, (some special success;)
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, rousing, even in dreams, a
devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my
soul;
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions--batteries, cavalry,
moving hither and thither;
The falling, dying, I heed not--the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not--
some to the rear are hobbling;
Grime, heat, rush--aides-de-camp galloping by, or on a full run:
With the patter of small arms, the warning _s-s-t_ of the rifles, (these in
my vision I hear or see,)
And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-coloured rockets.



_O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY. _


O tan-faced prairie boy!
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food--till at last, among the
recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give--we but looked on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.



_MANHATTAN FACES. _


1.

Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;
Give me a field where the unmowed grass grows;
Give me an arbour, give me the trellised grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat--give me serene-moving animals, teaching
content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk
undisturbed;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom I should never tire;
Give me a perfect child--give me, away, aside from the noise of the world,
a rural domestic life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved, recluse by myself, for my
own ears only;
Give me solitude--give me Nature--give me again, O Nature, your primal
sanities!
--These, demanding to have them, tired with ceaseless excitement, and
racked by the war-strife,
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to my city;
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your streets,
Where you hold me enchained a certain time, refusing to give me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul--you give me for ever
faces;
O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;
I see my own soul trampling down what it asked for.


2.
Keep your splendid silent sun;
Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your cornfields and orchards;
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the ninth-month bees hum.
Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless
along the _trottoirs_!
Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by
the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of the
trumpets and drums!
The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flushed and
reckless;
Some, their time up, returning, with thinned ranks--young, yet very old,
worn, marching, noticing nothing;
--Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!