Skip to content
← Back to poem

CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD.

Walt Whitman

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,

They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun--hark to

the musical clank,

Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop

to drink,

Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the

negligent rest on the saddles,

Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the

ford--while

Scarlet and blue and snowy white,

The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.