Daily Whitman

To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]

  Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
  What deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters,
  Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?
  What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,
      your arctic freezings!)
  Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that
      the President?
  Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for
      reasons;
  (With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we
      all duly awake,
  South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)