Monthly Archives: September 2015
Daily Whitman
Death of General Grant
As one by one withdraw the lofty actors, From that great play on history's stage eterne, That lurid, partial act of war and peace—of old and new contending, Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense; All past—and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing, Victor's and vanquish'd—Lincoln's and Lee's—now thou with them, Man of the mighty days—and equal to the days! Thou from the prairies!—tangled and many-vein'd and hard has been thy part, To admiration has it been enacted!
Daily Whitman
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions, (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,) Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos'd hurricanes, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all eternity in thy content, (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest—no less could make thee,) Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet never gain'st, Surely some right withheld—some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of freedom-lover pent, Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers, By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath, And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, And undertones of distant lion roar, (Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear—but now, rapport for once, A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,) The first and last confession of the globe, Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, The tale of cosmic elemental passion, Thou tellest to a kindred soul.
Daily Whitman
Election Day, November, 1884
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, 'Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon's white cones—nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi's stream: —This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name—the still small voice vibrating—America's choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,) The stretch of North and South arous'd—sea-board and inland— Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California, The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict, The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all, Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross: —Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships, Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.
Daily Whitman
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
[VII] By That Long Scan of Waves By that long scan of waves, myself call'd back, resumed upon myself, In every crest some undulating light or shade—some retrospect, Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas—scenes ephemeral, The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead, Myself through every by-gone phase—my idle youth—old age at hand, My three-score years of life summ'd up, and more, and past, By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing, And haply yet some drop within God's scheme's ensemble—some wave, or part of wave, Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.
Daily Whitman
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
[VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, All throbs, dilates—the farms, woods, streets of cities—workmen at work, Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—steamers' pennants of smoke—and under the forenoon sun, Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the inward bound, Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.
Daily Whitman
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
[V] And Yet Not You Alone And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb, Nor you, ye lost designs alone—nor failures, aspirations; I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming; Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again—duly the hinges turning, Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending, Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself, The rhythmus of Birth eternal.
Daily Whitman
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
[IV] Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning Last of ebb, and daylight waning, Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming, With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies, Many a muffled confession—many a sob and whisper'd word, As of speakers far or hid. How they sweep down and out! how they mutter! Poets unnamed—artists greatest of any, with cherish'd lost designs, Love's unresponse—a chorus of age's complaints—hope's last words, Some suicide's despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and never again return. On to oblivion then! On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide! On for your time, ye furious debouche!
Daily Whitman
FANCIES AT NAVESINK [III] You Tides with Ceaseless Swell You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work! You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread, Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations, What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius'? what Capella's? What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all? What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in you? what fluid, vast identity, Holding the universe with all its parts as one—as sailing in a ship?
Daily Whitman
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
[II] Had I the Choice Had I the choice to tally greatest bards, To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will, Homer with all his wars and warriors—Hector, Achilles, Ajax, Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—Tennyson's fair ladies, Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme, delight of singers; These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter, Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer, Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse, And leave its odor there.