Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ELEMENTAL DRIFTS: 4, by WALT WHITMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ELEMENTAL DRIFTS: 4, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return)
Last Line: Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.
Variant Title(s): As I Ebb'd With The Ocean Of Life: 4


Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I
touch you or gather from you.

I mean tenderly by you and all,
I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where
we lead, and following me and mine.

Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,
See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves
floating, drifted at random,
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,
Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,
We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread
out before you,
You up there walking or sitting,
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.





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