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.
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