Book XXI. Drum-Taps: 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;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped
artilleryman;)
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, cau–
tions, 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.
Altre opere di Walt Whitman...
