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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD.
THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm, |
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions, |
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, |
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) |
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, |
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee, |
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.) |
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After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks, |
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, |
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, |
The limpid spread of air cerulean, |
Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) |
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, |
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, |
Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms
gyrating,
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At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, |
That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, |
In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou my soul, |
What joys! what joys were thine! |
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