AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD IN YOUR LAP CAMERADO.
As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,
The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I
resume,
I know I am restless and make others so,
I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle
them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have
been had all accepted me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, 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.