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A poem by Walt Whitman |
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To The States |
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Title: To The States Author: Walt Whitman [More Titles by Whitman] TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1]
What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters! Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your Arctic freezings!) Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the President? Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for reasons. With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.
[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor, succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;--1845 to 1857.] [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |