Publisher: Poemhunter com The World's Poetry Archive

293
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One Song, America, Before I Go
ONE song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee--the Future.
I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality;
I'd fashion thy Ensemble, including Body and Soul;
I'd show, away ahead, thy real Union, and how it may be accomplish'd.
(The paths to the House I seek to make,
But leave to those to come, the House itself.)
Belief I sing--and Preparation;
As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the Present
only, 10
But greater still from what is yet to come,
Out of that formula for Thee I sing.
Walt Whitman
294
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One Sweeps By
ONE sweeps by, attended by an immense train,
All emblematic of peace--not a soldier or menial among them.
One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair,
He has the simple magnificence of health and strength,
His face strikes as with flashes of lightning whoever it turns
toward.
Three old men slowly pass, followed by three others, and they by
three others,
They are beautiful--the one in the middle of each group holds his
companions by the hand,
As they walk, they give out perfume wherever they walk.
Walt Whitman
295
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One's Self I Sing
ONE'S-SELF I sing--a simple, separate Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.
Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse--I say
the Form complete is worthier far;
The Female equally with the male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful--for freest action form'd, under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
Walt Whitman
296
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Or From That Sea Of Time
OR, from that Sea of Time,
Spray, blown by the wind--a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!
Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held,
Murmurs and echoes still bring up--Eternity's music, faint and far,
Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica's rim--strains for the Soul of the
Prairies,
Whisper'd reverberations--chords for the ear of the West, joyously
sounding
Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable;)
Infinitessimals out of my life, and many a life,
(For not my life and years alone I give--all, all I give;) 10
These thoughts and Songs--waifs from the deep--here, cast high and
dry,
Wash'd on America's shores.
Currents of starting a Continent new,
Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,
Fusion of ocean and land--tender and pensive waves,
(Not safe and peaceful only--waves rous'd and ominous too.
Out of the depths, the storm's abysms--Who knows whence? Death's
waves,
Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter'd sail.)
Walt Whitman
297
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Other May Praise What They Like
OTHERS may praise what they like;
But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in
art, or aught else,
Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river--also the
western prairie-scent,
And fully exudes it again.
Walt Whitman