Publisher: Poemhunter com The World's Poetry Archive

593
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I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes;
I will duly pass the day, O my mother, and duly return to you.
Walt Whitman
594
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The Sobbing Of The Bells
THE sobbing of the bells, the sudden death-news everywhere,
The slumberers rouse, the rapport of the People,
(Full well they know that message in the darkness,
Full well return, respond within their breasts, their brains, the sad
reverberations,)
The passionate toll and clang--city to city, joining, sounding,
passing,
Those heart-beats of a Nation in the night.
Walt Whitman
595
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The Torch
ON my northwest coast in the midst of the night, a fishermen's group
stands watching;
Out on the lake, that expands before them, others are spearing
salmon;
The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,
Bearing a Torch a-blaze at the prow.
Walt Whitman
596
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The Unexpressed
How dare one say it?
After the cycles, poems, singers, plays,
Vaunted Ionia's, India's -Homer, Shakespeare -the long, long times, thick
dotted roads, areas,
The shining clusters and the Milky Ways of stars -Nature's pulses reaped,
All retrospective passions, heroes, war, love, adoration,
All ages' plummets dropped to their utmost depths,
All human lives, throats, wishes, brains -all experiences' utterance;
After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,
Still something not yet told in poesy's voice or print -something lacking,
(Who knows? the best yet unexpressed and lacking.)
Walt Whitman
597
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The Untold Want
THE untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
Walt Whitman
598
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The Voice Of The Rain
And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:
I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,
Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, altogether changed, and
yet the same,
I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,
And all that in them without me were seeds only, latent, unborn;
And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,
and make pure and beautify it;
(For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)
Walt Whitman
599
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The World Below The Brine
THE world below the brine;
Forests at the bottom of the sea--the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds--the thick
tangle, the openings, and the pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold--the
play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks--coral, gluten, grass, rushes--
and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling
close to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting
with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard,
and the sting-ray;
Passions there--wars, pursuits, tribes--sight in those ocean-depths--
breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do;
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed
by beings like us, who walk this sphere; 10
The change onward from ours, to that of beings who walk other
spheres.
Walt Whitman