The Walt Whitman Archive
Published Works
Books by Whitman
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [begin page 209] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
AFTER THE SEA-SHIP.
AFTER the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface,
Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully
flowing,
flowing,
The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome
under the sun,
under the sun,
A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,
Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.