{
 "id": "walt-whitman/first-o-songs-for-a-prelude",
 "title": "First O Songs for a Prelude",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 142,
 "container": "Drum-Taps",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1865,
  "venue": "Drum-Taps (New York, 1865)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/waltwhitmansdrum00whit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "drum-taps.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 57,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 117,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "First O songs for a prelude,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How you sprang⁠—how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in their stead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of soldiers,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How Manhattan drum-taps led.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and turbulent city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With her million children around her, suddenly,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At dead of night, at news from the south,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "A shock electric, the night sustain’d it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To the drum-taps prompt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The young men falling in and arming,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s hammer, tost aside with precipitation,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The white tents cluster in camps, the arm’d sentries around, the sunrise cannon and again at sunset,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from the wharves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with their guns on their shoulders!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blood of the city up⁠—arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the public buildings and stores,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Soon unlimber’d to begin the red business;)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the mutter of preparation, all the determin’d arming,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no mere parade now;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing to welcome it.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Mannahatta a-march⁠—and it’s O to sing it well!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s O for a manly life in the camp.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And the sturdy artillery,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for courtesies merely,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown’d amid all your children,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}