The Sea Is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings by Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman

Author:Walt Whitman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Poetry, American, General
Publisher: University Press of New England
Published: 2017-04-04T00:43:29.013000+00:00

As If a Phantom Caress’d Me

AS if a phantom caress’d me,

I thought I was not alone, walking here by the shore;

But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore, the one I loved that caress’d me,

As I lean and look through the glimmering light—that one has utterly disappear’d,

And those appear that are hateful to me, and mock me.

from Songs Before Parting

from As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario’s Shores

6

Land of lands, and bards to corroborate!

Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light his west-bred face,

To him the hereditary countenance bequeath’d, both mother’s and father’s,

His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,

Built of the common stock, having room for far and near.

Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,

Attracting it Body and Soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love,

Plunging his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits,

Making its cities, beginnings, events, diversities, wars, vocal in him,

Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,

Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes—

Columbia, Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,

If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south,

Spanning between them east and west, and touching whatever is between them,

Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cotton-wood, orange, magnolia,

Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp,

He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice,

Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie,

Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle;

His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil,

Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,

Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,

Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle,

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