Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THIS COMPOST: 1., by WALT WHITMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THIS COMPOST: 1., by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Something startles me where I thought I was safest
Last Line: I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
Subject(s): Earth; World


Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade
through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.





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