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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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YEAR OF METEORS.
(1859–60.)
YEAR of meteors! brooding year! |
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs, |
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad, |
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the
scaffold in Virginia,
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(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch'd, |
I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but
trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted
the scaffold;)
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I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States, |
The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships
and their cargoes,
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The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with
immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,
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Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I
welcome give,
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And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me,
young prince of England!
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(Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with
your cortege of nobles?
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There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;) |
Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my
bay,
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Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she
was 600 feet long,
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Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget
not to sing;
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Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in
heaven,
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Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shoot-
ing over our heads,
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(A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light
over our heads,
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Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;) |
Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with gleams from them would
I gleam and patch these chants,
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Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good—year of
forebodings!
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Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—lo! even here
one equally transient and strange!
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As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this
chant,
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What am I myself but one of your meteors? |
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