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 ] |