Anyone recognize these lines:

[beagleye]

He wasn't talking about a revolver or a gun but he might have been.

WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan!
Head from the mother’s bowels drawn!
Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean’d, and to lean on.

Hints-
The author loved the republican president of his time immensely and even wrote poetry on that subject.
Cared for fallen solders in the worst American war.

 

[Texas Star]

The Republican president would have been Lincoln and the conflict was the Civil War.

I thought at first we were talking about a spear from an earliier era, but I guess he means a rifle musket with fixed bayonet?

But I'm not sure about the poet. I've never been awfully big on poetry, despite my mother being a pretty big member in the Texas Poetry Society and running a county-wide poetry contest for high school students.

Does Ralph Waldo Emerson fit? It suits his time. Doesn't sound a lot like Walt Whitman, but he did treat wounded Union troops. But I tend to think of him in terms of, Leaves of Grass being sensual. Who was that guy who wrote a poem about standing around in Springfield Armory and looking at the rifles there? Did Henry W. Longfellow write that bit? I did read, "The Song of Hiawatha" as a kid.

Added: I just cheated a bit and looked up these guys on Wiki. Nothing much about them loving Lincoln, although it said that Emerson liked him a little better after meeting him than he had before.
Could be Whitman, who is suspected of being gay or "bi." And he sought and obtained a govt. clerical job. This could even be from the poem I mentioned. ?? Where's Onomea? He's smart...

I dunno. Given their life spans, it could be any of these men or someone else. But thanks for thinking that we might be intelletual enough to know. One of the biggest issues that we have as gun owners is the frequent supposition that we're all just a bunch of ignorant rednecks who drive pickups.

 

[WR Moore]

I'm going to call Walt Whitman as the author. I was leaning toward a lance but "lip" didn't fit.

I did a search and found it, not going to give it away.

 

[Texas Star]

Yeah, it could sure be Whitman, especially if the poem isn't really about the Civil War, but another subject. The Lincoln connection could be to throw us off.

 

[Onomea]

I don't recognize it either, not that I read a lot of poetry. But worst American war? That must be the Civil War...

Did Stephen Crane write poetry?

 

[beagleye]

Yes, Whitman, Song of the Broadaxe. He seems to be expressing his love of america, it's people, and their accomplishments and their labors.

I like his description of the wood and steel in the ax. It captures what I feel about many tools including my revolvers.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

Well why in the hell doesn't he just say Ax????????
Whole thing sounds kinda creepy to me.

 

[carpriver]

I am Cajun, If it's and AX call it and Ax. But then I don't read a lot of poems. But I ain't a redneck but I do own a pick up. I am educated. Just not a poet. I use to own guns before the accident.

 

[MrTrolleyguy]

Walt Whitman was my first guess. Have read (or listened to)just enough of his poetry to recognize the allusions.

The lines have a poetic function that....

oh shut up Trolley 'fore ya make a fool a youself! Just 'cause you wuz born two blocks from 'd Walt Whitman Bridge don't make yo no expert!!

Yes Grandma.



You can see in blue the approach to the WW bridge on the right. And it was my Grandfather who lived on New St, two blocks from the bridge while it was being built. BTW They moved the bridge approach rather than destroy Old St George Church.

And for the record: I did indeed motor (you do not drive trolleycars, you motor them) the Route 50 Trolley car past this very church after I got out of the Army. Whitman had a thing for Motormen you know. Honest.

 

[MrTrolleyguy]

Today, March 26th, is the anniversary of Whitman's death in 1892 at his house on Mickle Street across the bridge in Camden NJ.

 

[beagleye]

Thanks Trolley for the additional info and awesome pics!! What a coincidence, I had no idea about the anniversary! What are the odds!?!

 

[rwsmith]

It sounds like Walt......

It sounds like Walt was given an assignment to describe an axe using as many words as he could EXCEPT for the word 'axe'. He did get a good grade, though.



The Eagle

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.



Another one that isn't so pretty....

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell


And everybody's favorite:

High Flight

By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

(A sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, an American pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on 11 December 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick.)

Portions Of This Lovely Poem Appear On The Headstones
Of Many Interred In Arlington National Cemetery,
Particularly Aviators And Astronauts

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds -
and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

"Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God."

My Lord, I get goosebumps reading that.

 

[beagleye]

It sounds like Walt was given an assignment to describe an axe using as many words as he could EXCEPT for the word 'axe'. He did get a good grade, though.



The Eagle

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.



Another one that isn't so pretty....

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell


And everybody's favorite:

High Flight

By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

(A sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, an American pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on 11 December 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick.)

Portions Of This Lovely Poem Appear On The Headstones
Of Many Interred In Arlington National Cemetery,
Particularly Aviators And Astronauts

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds -
and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

"Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God."

My Lord, I get goosebumps reading that.

To be fair to Walt, Axe was in the title so everyone knew what he was talking about.

That aviators poem is burned into my brain. It was the station sign off when I kid on WHIO TV in Dayton right down the road from Wright Patterson Air Force Base. I heard it many many times and even as a kid was a little blown away by the grace of it. Funny thing, B52s were always coming and going right over head, I thought B52s were just an everyday part of the sky.

 

[shouldazagged]

Wow. The poem about the ball-turret gunner is powerful stuff that I'd never seen. Grim, terse and vivid.

 

[policerevolvercollector]

I remember President Reagan quoting "High Flight" during his addrees to the nation after the shuttle disaster. That speech was comforting and gave you "chill bumps" at the same time.

 

[Kinman]

When I was a kid and first read Whitman I wondered what was wrong with a guy that used so many words to describe something...In my adult years I learned that he played for the other team and it all made sense.
I preferred Sandburg...The Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

 

[V1 Rotate]

Whitman was a talented product of linguistically formal and sophisticated times, and is not as appreciated in our terse, blunt society as he should be. It needs to be remembered that he comforted and united the Northern part of our Nation in a bloody and seemingly unending war.
His brother was a decorated, wounded, Union officer with enormous combat experience, and Whitman, as I recollect, was discouraged from serving because he was the main provider for his family and middle aged. He never complained; he served as an orderly in the military hospitals in Washington, serving the wounded humbly without pay and publicity in an environment that was as horrific and lethal as any battlefield, considering the medical technology of the time.
The war sort of saved his soul, before it he was a middling success, squandering his talent and voice in the taverns and gay bars of New York. He became the voice of the Union, powerfully articulating why the sacrifices of the American people were necessary, and sharing and honoring the sorrow of the fallen.
Called the "Good, Grey Poet", he was beloved and respected by all at the time of his death, and the rest of the Nation, North and South, was starting to reconcile after the war.