Sortes Whitmanae

Low-hanging moon! What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow? O it is the shape, the shape of my mate! O moon do not keep her from me any longer

Victory, union, faith, identity, time, The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports

As I wend to the shores I know not, As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd,

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries?

The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;

For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,

Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads.

Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward the old, most populous, wealthiest of earth's lands

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me,

My lovers suffocate me, Crowding my lips thick in the pores of my skin,

Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec,

The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing, The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go.

I saw an old general at bay, (Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out in battle like stars,)

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,