Poetry: Walt Whitman’s Election Day, November 1884

Nancy FlynnPoetry, Stream of Consciousness Archive

From Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1891-92):
ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
         scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor
         your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
         loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—
         nor Mississippi’s stream:
—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name— the
          still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the
         quadrennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d—sea-board and inland
         —Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia,
         California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and con-
         flict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:)
         the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the
         heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

This photograph of poet Walt Whitman was taken by the American painter and photographer Thomas Eakins in April 1887. The image is courtesy of the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

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