Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Breaks forth a lightning flash.

Thou of the tawny flowing hair in battle,

I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a

bright sword in thy hand,

Now ending well in death the splendid fever of thy deeds,

(I bring no dirge for it or thee, I bring a glad triumphal sonnet,)

Desperate and glorious, aye in defeat most desperate, most glorious,

After thy many battles in which never yielding up a gun or a color,

Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers,

Thou yieldest up thyself.

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In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish,

Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look,)

Of the dead on their backs with arms extended wide,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,

Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so

unearthly bright,

Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and

gather the heaps,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields,

Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away

from the fallen,

Onward I sped at the time — but now of their forms at night,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

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Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars!

Long yet your road, fateful flag — long yet your road, and lined with

bloody death,

For the prize I see at issue at last is the world,

All its ships and shores I see interwoven with your threads greedy banner;

Dream’d again the flags of kings, highest borne to flaunt unrival’d?

O hasten flag of man — O with sure and steady step, passing highest

flags of kings,

Walk supreme to the heavens mighty symbol — run up above them all,

Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!

What Best I See in Thee

[To U. S. G. return’d from his World’s Tour]

What best I see in thee,

Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways,

Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle,

Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace,

Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia swarm’d upon,

Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade;

But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks with kings,

Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois,

Ohio’s, Indiana’s millions, comrades, farmers, soldiers, all to the front,

Invisibly with thee walking with kings with even pace the round

world’s promenade,

Were all so justified.

Spirit That Form’d This Scene

[Written in Platte Canyon, Colorado]

Spirit that form’d this scene,

These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,

These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,

These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,

I know thee, savage spirit — we have communed together,

Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;

Wast charged against my chants they had forgotten art?

To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?

The lyrist’s measur’d beat, the wrought-out temple’s grace — column

and polish’d arch forgot?

But thou that revelest here — spirit that form’d this scene,

They have remember’d thee.

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As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,

(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,

Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,

Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,

Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,

Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)

Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,

The announcements of recognized things, science,

The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)

The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,

And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things,

Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,

Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,

triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,

They stand for realities — all is as it should be.

Then my realities;

What else is so real as mine?

Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face

of the earth,

The rapt promises and lumine of seers, the spiritual world, these

centuries-lasting songs,

And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements

of any.

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This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou

lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

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As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud,

A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.

I shall go forth,

I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long,

Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will

suddenly cease.

O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?

Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? — and yet it is

enough, O soul;

O soul, we have positively appear’d — that is enough.

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Years of the modern! years of the unperform’d!

Your horizon rises, I see it parting away for more august dramas,

I see not America only, not only Liberty’s nation but other nations

preparing,

I see tremendous entrances and exits, new combinations, the solidarity

of races,

I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage,

(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts

suitable to them closed?)

I see Freedom, completely arm’d and victorious and very haughty,

with Law on one side and Peace on the other,

A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste;

What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?

I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions,

I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken,

I see the landmarks of European kings removed,

I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, (all others give way;)

Never were such sharp questions ask’d as this day,

Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a God,

Lo, how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest!

His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the

Pacific, the archipelagoes,

With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the

wholesale engines of war,

With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all

geography, all lands;

What whispers are these O lands, running ahead of you, passing under

the seas?

Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?

Is humanity forming en-masse? for lo, tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim,