The Complete Works of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Walt Whitman
Издательство: Bookwire
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Жанр произведения: Языкознание
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isbn: 4064066058128
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      Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking!

       One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,

       steamers, sails,

       And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle — mighty hulls

       dark-gliding in the distance.

       Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water — healthy air and soil!

       Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!

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      I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,

       Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)

       The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,

       The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps — that inbound urge and urge

       of waves,

       Seeking the shores forever.

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      To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,

       To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,

       To calm, devoted engineers — to over-ardent travelers — to pilots on

       their ships,

       To many a lofty song and picture without recognition — I’d rear

       laurel-cover’d monument,

       High, high above the rest — To all cut off before their time,

       Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,

       Quench’d by an early death.

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      A carol closing sixty-nine — a resume — a repetition,

       My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,

       Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;

       Of you, my Land — your rivers, prairies, States — you, mottled Flag I love,

       Your aggregate retain’d entire — Of north, south, east and west, your

       items all;

       Of me myself — the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,

       The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed — the strange inertia

       falling pall-like round me,

       The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,

       The undiminish’d faith — the groups of loving friends.

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      Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through

       the fight;

       But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.

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      This latent mine — these unlaunch’d voices — passionate powers,

       Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,

       (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)

       These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,

       Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,

       Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

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      As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,

       Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,

       Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,

       May filter in my dally songs.

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      Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books,

       Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?

       But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,

       Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,

       Is it not just as great, O soul?

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      Approaching, nearing, curious,

       Thou dim, uncertain spectre — bringest thou life or death?

       Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?

       Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?

       Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,

       Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?

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      Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,

       More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,

       Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,

       Once living men — once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,

       The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.

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      Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,

       As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

       Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass — innocent, golden, calm

       as the dawn,

       The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

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