Published Works

Books by Whitman

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SPARKLES FROM THE WHEEL.

WHERE the city's ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,

Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with
them.

By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,

A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,

Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee,

With measur'd tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but
firm hand,

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Forth issue then in copious golden jets,

Sparkles from the wheel.

The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me,

The sad sharp-chinn'd old man with worn clothes and broad
shoulder-band of leather,

Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here
absorb'd and arrested,

The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,)

The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the
streets,

The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press'd blade,

Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,

Sparkles from the wheel.

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.