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| 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! | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
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| 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, | 15 |
| Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement. | |
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| A shock electric, the night sustain’d it, | |
| Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads. | |
| From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways, | |
| Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming. | 20 |
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| 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, | 25 |
| The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving; | |
| Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm, | |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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 preceding, clearing the way, | |
| The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favourites, | |
| The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones, | 40 |
| (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; | 45 |
| 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. | |
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| 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, | 50 |
| 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 now besides powder and wadding). | |
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| And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta, | |
| Old matron of this proud, friendly turbulent city, | 55 |
| 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. | |
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