Tag: American Civil War (1861–1865)

Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak”

In Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak,” the poet has created a speaker, who is singing the praises of the true meaning of patriotism through five different voices.

Introduction and Text of “Song of the Banner at Daybreak”

Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak” features a variety of voices who offer their own unique views and attitudes toward patriotism. Five distinct characters perform this little drama: poet, pennant, child, father, and banner.

This sprawling poem celebrates the American flag as an emblem of freedom, democracy, and national identity. Whitman has created a speaker who, through a dramatic exchange featuring a father, his child, and the banner itself, explores the relationship between patriotism and poetic imagination, reflecting on the struggles and aspirations of a nation seeking to fulfill its democratic promise.

Whitman’s speaker employs an expressive voice, combined with free verse, repetition, vivid imagery, and personification, which lends the poem immediacy and emotional depth. By transforming the banner into a living presence, the speaker moves beyond mere patriotic celebration to contemplate the connections among poetry, individual liberty, and national identity and destiny.

(FYI: The poem displayed here conforms to the exact placement as found in Whitman’s deathbed edition of Leave of Grass.)

Song of the Banner at Daybreak

[Poet]  O a new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,
By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice,
Low on the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father and child stand,
In the upward air where their eyes turn,
Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.

Words! bookwords! what are you?
Words no more, for hearken and see,
My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

I’ll weave the chord and twine in,
Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life,
I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs whizz,
(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,
Crying with trumpet voice, _Arouse and beware! Beware and arouse!)
I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy.
Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

[Pennant]  Come up here, bard, bard,
Come up here, soul, soul,
Come up here, dear little child,
To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless
      light.

[Child]  Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?
And what does it say to me all the while?

[Father]  Nothing my babe you see in the sky,
And nothing at all to you it says–but look you my babe,
Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops
        opening,
And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods;
These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these!
How envied by all the earth.

[Poet]  Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,
On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,
The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and
     pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping.

[Child]  O father it is alive–it is full of people–it has children,
O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,
I hear it–it talks to me–O it is wonderful!
O it stretches–it spreads and runs so fast–O my father,
It is so broad it covers the whole sky.

[Father]  Cease, cease, my foolish babe,
What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me;
Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants aloft,
But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-wall’d  houses.

[Banner and Pennant]  Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,
To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all–and yet we know not
    why,
For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,
Only flapping in the wind?

[Poet]  I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,
I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,
I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!
I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,
I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,
I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird,
     and look down as from a height,
I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities
     with wealth incalculable,
I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or barns,
I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded,
     going up, or finished,
I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks
     drawn by the locomotives,
I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New  Orleans,
I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile hovering,
I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the Southern
     plantation, and again to California;
Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gatherings,
     earn’d wages,
See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty  States,
     (and many more to come,)
See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out;
Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant
     shaped like a sword,
Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance—
     and now the halyards have rais’d it,
Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,
Discarding peace over all the sea and land.

[Banner and Pennant]  Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther,
     wider cleave!
No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone,
We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,
Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States,
     (nor any five, nor ten,)
Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,
But these and all, and the brown and spreading land,
     and the mines below, are ours,
And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small,
And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours,
Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours—
     while we over all,
Over the area spread below, the three or four millions
     of square miles, the capitals,
The forty millions of people,—O bard! in life and death supreme,
We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,
Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through you,
This song to the soul of one poor little child.

[Child]  O my father I like not the houses,
They will never to me be any thing, nor do I like money,
But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner I like,
That pennant I would be and must be.

[Father]  Child of mine you fill me with anguish,
To be that pennant would be too fearful,
Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever,
It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy every thing,
Forward to stand in front of wars–and O, such wars!—
     what have you to do with them?
With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?

[Banner]  Demons and death then I sing,
Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,
And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of children,
Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of the sea,
And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop’d in smoke,
And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines,
And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching,
     and the hot sun shining south,
And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern shore,
     and my Western shore the same,
And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi
     with bends and chutes,
And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri,
The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an atom,
Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the yield of all,
Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,
No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,
But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,
Croaking like crows here in the wind.

[Poet]  My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,
Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and
     resolute,
I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and blinded,
My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,)
I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,
Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner!
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,
You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast,
     full of comfort, built with money,
May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them
     and all stand fast;)
O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you,
     nor the material good nutriment,
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships,
Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power,
     fetching and carrying cargoes,
Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues–but you as henceforth
     I see you,
Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars,
     (ever-enlarging stars,)
Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun,
     measuring the sky,
(Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child,
While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching thrift,
      thrift;)
O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake hissing so
     curious,
Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for,
     risking bloody death, loved by me,
So loved–O you banner leading the day with stars brought from the
     night!
Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—
     (absolute owner of all)—O banner and pennant!
I too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing–houses,
     machines are nothing–I see them not,
I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes,
     I sing you only,
Flapping up there in the wind.

Commentary on “Song of the Banner at Daybreak”

In Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Banner at Daybreak,” the speakers stage a dramatic conversation, which elevates the flag as a living symbol of national purpose amid the call of war.

Poet: “O A new song, a free song”

Upon observing the flag and pennant of his country and the military, the poet wishes to make the ultimate statement about the meaning of patriotism. With all of the voices who may express a thought, the poet will attempt to “twine them in” and give life to  them. 

Pennant: “Come up here, bard, bard” 

The pennant representing the military invites the poet and the others to join him as he flies high in the sky and “play[s] with the measureless light.”

 Child: “Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?” 

The child is thrilled by the invitation of the pennant but does not quite understand what it is or what it means; thus, he asks his father what it is that is so inviting to him.

Father: “Nothing my babe you see in the sky” 

The father typically tries to avert the child’s attention from the military pennant’s allure and points that attention to other areas of life. The father points out that there are houses and money and cars loaded with goods to be dealt with. 

His implications are that the land is rich with material wealth with he would like his child to become engaged with instead of having to serve in the military to protect these things. 

Poet: “Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high” 

Here the poet again interjects his beautiful words: “But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings.” And in addition to some lovely landscape description, the poet adds, “And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant, / Aloft there flapping and flapping.” 

Child: “O father it is alive—it is full of people–it has children” 

The child, despite the father’s attempt to redirect his attention, becomes even more

enthralled by the pennant; in it, the child sees people, especially children: “It is talking to children / I hear it–it talks to me.” 

Father: “Cease, cease, my foolish babe” 

Again, the father seeks to dissuade the child from noting the pennant and directs the child’s attention to things on the ground.

Banner and Pennant: “Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan” 

Now the flag and the pennant both appeal to the poet to talk to the children and help

them understand that the banner and pennant are more then mere strips of cloth. 

Poet: “I hear and see not strips of cloth alone” 

The poet avers that the banner and pennant are not merely strips of cloth: “I hear and see not strips of cloth alone, / I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry, / I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!” 

Banner and Pennant: “Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!” 

The banner and pennant, however, feel that poet needs to be even more emphatic: “Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! / No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone.” 

Child: “O my father I like not the houses” 

The child then tells his father that he is not interested in the material things of this world; he prefers to work for higher ideals as symbolized by the pennant and banner.

Father: “Child of mine you fill me with anguish” 

Naturally, the father fears for the child as any father would fear for a son or daughter who joins the military service. As the child seeks to perform duties that honor his country, the father only sees the possibility of the child fighting and dying in war. 

Banner: “Demons and death then I sing” 

The banner then admits that duty is filled with “demons and death,” but the banner nevertheless insists that it will sing these things. It then catalogues the guts and glory that is represents and is unashamed of the work it symbolizes. 

Poet: “My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last”

 The poet is finally emboldened to sing the praises of the banner and pennant, claiming, “a little child taught me.” The poet now thinks only of the heightened duty symbolized by the pennant and banner, not of the material wealth accumulated by a free people. The key focus is on the freedom, without which the material wealth would remain an unachieved desire.