ARM'D year! year of the struggle!
 No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!
 Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas
 piano;
 But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
 carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
 With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands--with a knife in
 the belt at your side,
 As I heard you shouting loud--your sonorous voice ringing across the
 continent;
 Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities,
 Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the
 dwellers in Manhattan;
 Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and
 Indiana,
 Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the
 Alleghanies; 10
 Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along
 the Ohio river;
 Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
 Chattanooga on the mountain top,
 Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing
 weapons, robust year;
 Heard your determin'd voice, launch'd forth again and again;
 Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon,
 I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.