More Whitman

His Civil War poetry seems to strike a chord with me currently.  Here is another:

LONG, TOO LONG AMERICA.

Long, too long America,Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

- Whitman, Walt; Gilchrist, Anne (2014-02-20). The Complete Walt Whitman: Drum-Taps, Leaves of Grass, Patriotic Poems, Complete Prose Works, The Wound Dresser, Letters (Kindle Locations 1384-1393). Bybliotech. Kindle Edition.

I found something from "Paradise Lost" I intend to share as well, but since I had already posted this to FB, I figured it would make more sense to do this one today, with the other used at a later date. One nice thing about poetry is that it allows us to remember that what we face today is little but a different aspect of what has been faced in the past, no less pernicious, and no less unpleasant, but not something completely new.

Edit: I attempted to correct formatting on this but I didn't succeed. Rather than fuss with it forever, I am just going to leave it.