{
 "id": "walt-whitman/song-of-the-banner-at-daybreak",
 "title": "Song of the Banner at Daybreak",
 "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": 146,
 "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",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 48,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 1,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 2.8 character advances (~1.4 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 144,
  "n_stanzas": 17,
  "n_parts": 14,
  "longest_line_chars": 146,
  "max_indent": 1
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 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [
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   "ordinal": null,
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 ],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "O a new song, a free song,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Low on the ground and high in the air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the ground where father and child stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the upward air where their eyes turn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Words! book-words! what are you?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Words no more, for hearken and see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the banner and pennant a-flapping.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I’ll weave the chord and twine in,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the banner and pennant a-flapping.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Come up here, bard, bard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come up here, soul, soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come up here, dear little child,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what does it say to me all the while?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nothing my babe you see in the sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And nothing at all to you it says⁠—but look you my babe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How envied by all the earth!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But I am not the sea nor the red sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am not the wind with girlish laughter,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aloft there flapping and flapping.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O father it is alive⁠—it is full of people⁠—it has children,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear it⁠—it talks to me⁠—O it is wonderful!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O it stretches⁠—it spreads and runs so fast⁠—O my father,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is so broad it covers the whole sky.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Cease, cease, my foolish babe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall’d houses.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all⁠—and yet we know not why,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only flapping in the wind?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird, and look down as from a height,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities with wealth incalculable,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or barns,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or finish’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by the locomotives,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern plantation, and again to California;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings, earn’d wages,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty States, (and many more to come,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant shaped like a sword,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance⁠—and now the halyards have rais’d it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Discarding peace over all the sea and land.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor ten,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below, are ours,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours⁠—while we over all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square miles, the capitals,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The forty millions of people,⁠—O bard! in life and death supreme,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This song to the soul of one poor little child.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O my father I like not the houses,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They will never to me be anything, nor do I like money,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That pennant I would be and must be.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Child of mine you fill me with anguish,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To be that pennant would be too fearful,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forward to stand in front of wars⁠—and O, such wars!⁠—what have you to do with them?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Demons and death then I sing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop’d in smoke,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and the hot sun shining south,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore, and my Western shore the same,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi with bends and chutes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Croaking like crows here in the wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and blinded,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of those houses to destroy them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast, full of comfort, built with money,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them and all stand fast;)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you, nor the material good nutriment,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and carrying cargoes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues⁠—but you as henceforth I see you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever-enlarging stars,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun, measuring the sky,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift, thrift;)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing so curious,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death, loved by me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So loved⁠—O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the night!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all⁠—(absolute owner of all)⁠—O banner and pennant!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I too leave the rest⁠—great as it is, it is nothing⁠—houses, machines are nothing⁠—I see them not,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing you only,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flapping up there in the wind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}