Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THOUGHTS (2), by WALT WHITMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THOUGHTS (2), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Of these years I sing
Last Line: To savageness and freedom?)


1

Of these years I sing,
How they pass and have pass'd through convuls'd pains, as
through parturitions,
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise,
the sure fulfilment, the absolute success, despite of
people -- illustrates evil as well as good,
The vehement struggle so fierce for unity in one's-self;
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed,
caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity,
How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the Western
States, or see freedom or spirituality, or hold any
faith in results,
(But I see the athletes, and I see the results of the war
glorious and inevitable, and they again leading to
other results.)

How the great cities appear -- how the Democratic masses,
turbulent, wilful, as I love them,
How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good,
the sounding and resounding, keep on and on,
How society waits unform'd, and is for a while between
things ended and things begun,
How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph
of freedom and of the Democracies, and of the fruits
of society, and of all that is begun,
And how the States are complete in themselves -- and how
all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves,
to lead onward,
And how these of mine and of the States will in their turn
be convuls'd, and serve other parturitions and transitions,
And how all people, sights, combinations, the democratic
masses too, serve -- and how every fact, and war
itself, with all its horrors, serves,
And how now or at any time each serves the exquisite
transition of death.

2

Of seeds dropping into the ground, of births,
Of the steady concentration of America, inland, upward, to
impregnable and swarming places,
Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and the rest, are to be,
Of what a few years will show there in Nebraska, Colorado,
Nevada, and the rest,
(Or afar, mounting the Northern Pacific to Sitka or Alaska,)
Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation for --
and of what all sights, North, South, East and West, are,
Of this Union welded in blood, of the solemn price paid, of
the unnamed lost ever present in my mind;
Of the temporary use of materials for identity's sake,
Of the present, passing, departing -- of the growth of
completer men than any yet,
Of all sloping down there where the fresh free giver the
mother, the Mississippi flows,
Of mighty inland cities yet unsurvey'd and unsuspected,
Of the new and good names, of the modern developments, of
inalienable homesteads,
Of a free and original life there, of simple diet and clean
and sweet blood,
Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect physique there,
Of immense spiritual results future years far West, each
side of the Anahuacs,
Of these songs, well understood there, (being made for that area,)
Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there,
(O it lurks in me night and dav -- what is gain after all
to savageness and freedom?)





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