The Drum

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O the drum!
  There is some
  Intonation in thy grum
  Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb,
  As we hear
  Through the clear
  And unclouded atmosphere,
  Thy palpitating syllables roll in upon the car!

  There's a part
  Of the art
  Of thy music-throbbing heart
  That thrills a something in us that awakens with a start,
  And in rhyme
  With the chime
  And exactitude of time,
  Goes marching on to glory to thy melody sublime.

  And the guest
  Of the breast
  That thy rolling robs of rest
  Is a patriotic spirit as a Continental dressed;
  And he looms
  From the glooms
  Of a century of tombs,
  And the blood he spilled at Lexington in living beauty blooms.

  And his eyes
  Wear the guise
  Of a purpose pure and wise,
  As the love of them is lifted to a something in the skies
  That is bright
  Red and white,
  With a blur of starry light,
  As it laughs in silken ripples to the breezes day and night.

  There are deep
  Hushes creep
  O'er the pulses as they leap,
  As thy tumult, fainter growing, on the silence falls asleep,
  While the prayer
  Rising there
  Wills the sea and earth and air
  As a heritage to Freedom's sons and daughters everywhere.

  Then, with sound
  As profound
  As the thunderings resound,
  Come thy wild reverberations in a throe that shakes the ground,
  And a cry
  Flung on high,
  Like the flag it flutters by,
  Wings rapturously upward till it nestles in the sky.

  O the drum!
  There is some
  Intonation in thy grum
  Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb,
  As we hear
  Through the clear
  And unclouded atmosphere,
  Thy palpitating syllables roll in upon the ear!

© James Whitcomb Riley