What a filthy
Presidentiad!
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Mother and Babe
I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother,
The sleeping mother and babe--hush'd, I study them long and long.
Thought
Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who
do not believe in men.
Visor'd
A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form,
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
Falling upon her even when she sleeps.
Thought
Of justice--as If could be any thing but the same ample law,
expounded by natural judges and saviors,
As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.
Gliding O'er all
Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul--not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.
Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
Hast never come to thee an hour,
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,
fashions, wealth?
These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,
To utter nothingness?
Thought
Of Equality--as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and
rights as myself--as if it were not indispensable to my own
rights that others possess the same.
To Old Age
I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as
it pours in the great sea.
Locations and Times
Locations and times--what is it in me that meets them all, whenever
and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odors--what is it in me that corresponds
with them?
Offerings
A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and
youths, with offerings.
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. )
BOOK XXI. DRUM-TAPS
First O Songs for a Prelude
First O songs for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum pride and joy in my city,
How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,
How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,
(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!
O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel! )
How you sprang--how you threw off the costumes of peace with
indifferent hand,
How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard
in their stead,
How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of
soldiers,)
How Manhattan drum-taps led.
Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,
Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and
turbulent city,
Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,
With her million children around her, suddenly,
At dead of night, at news from the south,
Incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement.
A shock electric, the night sustain'd it,
Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its myriads.
From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,
Leapt they tumultuous, and lo!
