| Thee for my recitative, |
| Thee in the driving storm even as now,
the snow, the winter-day declining, |
| Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual
throbbing and thy beat convulsive, |
| Thy black cylindric body, golden brass
and silvery steel, |
| Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and
connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, |
| Thy metrical, now swelling pant and
roar, now tapering in the distance, |
| Thy great protruding head-light fix’d
in front, |
| Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants,
tinged with delicate purple, |
| The dense and murky clouds out-belching
from thy smokestack, |
| Thy knitted frame, thy springs and
valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, |
| Thy train of cars behind, obedient,
merrily following, |
| Through gale or calm, now swift, now
slack, yet steadily careering ; |
| Type of the modern—emblem of motion and
power—pulse of the continent, |
| For once come serve the Muse and merge
in verse, even as here I see thee, |
| With storm and buffeting gusts of wind
and falling snow, |
| By day thy warning ringing bell to
sound its notes, |
By night thy silent signal lamps to
swing.
|
| Fierce-throated beauty ! |
| Roll through my chant with all thy
lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, |
| Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing,
rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, |
| Law of thyself complete, thine own
track firmly holding, |
| (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp
or glib piano thine,) |
| Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and
hills return’d, |
| Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across
the lakes, |
To the free skies unpent and glad and
strong.
|
| Walt
Whitman |
Classic Poems |
| |
|
[ Song of Myself XXIV ] [ Song of Myself LII ] [ Crossing Brooklyn Ferry ] [ When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd ] [ To a Locomotive in Winter ] |
