Elemental Drifts. in
General
1
ELEMENTAL drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!
As I ebb’d with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems,
Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.
Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide:
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses,
These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk’d with that eternal Self of me, seeking types.
2
As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,
I, too, but signify, at the utmost, a little wash’d-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,
Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now, that, amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the
least
idea who or what I am,
But that before all my insolent poems the real ME stands yet untouch’d, untold,
altogether
unreach’d,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
Now I perceive I have not understood anything—not a single object—and that no
man
ever can.
I perceive Nature, here in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me, to dart upon me,
and
sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth, to sing at all.
3
You oceans both! I close with you;
We murmur alike reproachfully, rolling our sands and drift, knowing not why,
These little shreds indeed, standing for you and me and all.
You friable shore, with trails of debris!
You fish-shaped island! I take what is underfoot;
What is yours is mine, my father.
I too Paumanok,
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been wash’d on your shores;
I too am but a trail of drift and debris,
I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island.
I throw myself upon your breast, my father,
I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm, till you answer me something.
Kiss me, my father,
Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love,
Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the murmuring I envy.
4
Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways—but fear not, deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you and all,
I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me
and
mine.
Me and mine!
We, loose winrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
See—the prismatic colors, glistening and rolling!)
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
Buoy’d hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell;
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil;
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown;
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random;
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature;
Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets;
We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you,
You, up there, walking or sitting,
Whoever you are—we too lie in drifts at your feet.
By
Walt Whitman
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Other poems by Walt Whitman:
- 1861.
- A Boston Ballad, 1854.
- A Broadway Pageant.
- A Carol of Harvest, for 1867 .
- A Child’s Amaze.
- A Clear Midnight.
- A Farm-Picture.
- A Hand-Mirror.
- A Leaf for Hand in Hand.
- A Noiseless Patient Spider.
- A Paumanok Picture.
- A Promise to California.
- A Riddle Song.
- A Sight in Camp.
- A Song.
- A Woman Waits for Me.
- Aboard at a Ship’s Helm.
- Adieu to a Soldier.
- After the Sea-Ship.
- Ages and Ages, Returning at Intervals.
- Ah Poverties, Wincings and Sulky Retreats.
- All is Truth.
- American Feuillage.
- Among the Multitude.
- An Army Corps on the March.
- An Old Man’s Thought of School.
- Apostroph.
- Are You the New person, drawn toward Me?
- As At Thy Portals Also Death.
- As Consequent, Etc.
- As I lay with Head in your Lap, Camerado.
- As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days.
- As I Watch’d the Ploughman Ploughing.
- As the Time Draws Nigh.
- Ashes of Soldiers.
- Assurances.
- Base of all Metaphysics, The.
- Bathed in War’s Perfume.
- Beat! Beat! Drums!
- Beautiful Women.
- Beginners.
- Beginning my Studies.
- Behavior.
- Behold this Swarthy Face.
- Bivouac on a Mountain Side.
- Brother of All, with Generous Hand.
- By Broad Potomac’s Shore.
- By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame.
- Camps of Green.
- Carol of Occupations.
- Carol of Words.
- Cavalry Crossing a Ford.
- Centenarian’s Story, The.
- Chanting the Square Deific.
- City Dead-House, The.
- City of Orgies.
- City of Ships.
- Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.
- Dalliance of the Eagles, The.
- Darest Thou Now, O Soul.
- Debris.
- Delicate Cluster.
- Dirge for Two Veterans.
- Drum-Taps.
- Earth! my Likeness!
- Eidólons.
- Elemental Drifts.
- Europe, the 72d and 73d years of These States.
- Excelsior.
- Facing West from California’s Shores.
- Fast Anchor’d, Eternal, O Love.
- For Him I Sing.
- France, the 18th year of These States.
- From Far Dakota’s Cañons.
- From My Last Years.
- From Paumanok Starting.
- From Pent-up Aching Rivers.
- Full of Life, Now.
- Germs.
- Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun.
- Gods.
- Great are the Myths.
- Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour.
- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me.
- Here, Sailor.
- Hours Continuing Long.
- How Solemn as One by One.
- Hush’d be the Camps To-day.
- I am He that Aches with Love.
- I Hear America Singing.
- I hear it was Charged against Me.
- I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing.
- I saw Old General at Bay.
- I Sing the Body Electric.
- I Sit and Look Out.
- I Thought I was not Alone.
- I was Looking a Long While.
- In Former Songs.
- In Midnight Sleep.
- In Paths Untrodden.
- In the New Garden in all the Parts.
- Indications, The.
- Inscription.
- Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
- Kosmos.
- Last Invocation, The.
- Laws for Creations.
- Lessons.
- Lo! Victress on the Peaks.
- Locations and Times.
- Long I Thought that Knowledge.
- Longings for Home.
- Look Down, Fair Moon.
- Manhattan Streets I Saunter’d, Pondering.
- Mannahatta.
- Me Imperturbe.
- Mediums.
- Miracles.
- Mother and Babe.
- My Picture-Gallery.
- Myself and Mine.
- Native Moments.
- Night on The Prairies.
- No Labor-Saving Machine.
- Not Heat Flames up and Consumes.
- Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only.
- Not My Enemies Ever Invade Me.
- Not Youth Pertains to Me.
- Now Finale to the Shore.
- O Bitter Sprig! Confession Sprig!
- O Captain! My Captain!
- O Living Always—Always Dying.
- O Star of France.
- O Sun of Real Peace.
- O You Whom I Often and Silently Come.
- Of Him I Love Day and Night.
- Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances.
- Of the Visage of Things.
- Offerings.
- Old Ireland.
- On Journeys Through The States.
- On the Beach at Night, Alone.
- On the Beach at Night.
- One Hour to Madness and Joy.
- One Song, America, Before I Go.
- One Sweeps By.
- Or from that Sea of Time.
- Others may Praise what They Like.
- Out from Behind this Mask.
- Over the Carnage.
- Ox Tamer, The.
- Patroling Barnegat.
- Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, I Heard the Mother of
- Perfections.
- Pioneers! O Pioneers!
- Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy.
- Poets to Come.
- Portals.
- Prairie States, The.
- Prayer of Columbus.
- Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love.
- Quicksand Years.
- Reconciliation.
- Recorders Ages Hence.
- Respondez!
- Rise, O Days.
- Roaming in Thought.
- Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone.
- Runner, The.
- Says.
- Scented Herbage of My Breast.
- Ship Starting, The.
- Shut Not Your Doors, &c.
- Sleepers, The.
- So Far and So Far, and on Toward the End.
- Sobbing of The Bells, The.
- Solid, Ironical, Rolling Orb.
- Sometimes with One I Love.
- Song at Sunset.
- Song for All Seas, All Ships.
- Song of the Broad-Axe.
- Song of the Universal.
- Souvenirs of Democracy.
- Spain 1873–’74.
- Sparkles from The Wheel.
- Spirit That Form’d This Scene.
- Spirit whose Work is Done.
- Spontaneous Me.
- Starting from Paumanok.
- States!
- Still, though the One I Sing.
- Tears.
- Tests.
- That Music Always Round Me.
- There was a Child went Forth.
- These Carols.
- These, I, Singing in Spring.
- Thick-Sprinkled Bunting.
- Think of the Soul.
- This Compost.
- This Day, O Soul.
- This Dust was Once the Man.
- This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful.
- Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling.
- Thou Reader.
- Thought.
- Thoughts.
- To a Certain Civilian.
- To a Common Prostitute.
- To a foil’d European Revolutionaire.
- To a Historian.
- To a Locomotive in Winter.
- To a President.
- To a Pupil.
- To a Stranger.
- To Foreign Lands.
- To Him that was Crucified.
- To Old Age.
- To One Shortly to Die.
- To Oratists.
- To the East and to the West.
- To the Garden the World.
- To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod.
- To the Man-of-War-Bird.
- To The States.
- To Thee, Old Cause!
- To Think of Time.
- To You.
- Torch, The.
- Trickle, Drops.
- Turn, O Libertad.
- Two Rivulets.
- Unfolded Out of the Folds.
- Unnamed Lands.
- Untold Want, The.
- Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field.
- Virginia—The West.
- Visor’d.
- Voices.
- Wandering at Morn.
- Warble for Lilac-Time.
- We Two Boys Together Clinging.
- We Two—How Long We were Fool’d.
- Weave in, Weave in, My Hardy Life.
- What am I, After All?
- What Best I See In Thee.
- What General has a Good Army.
- What Place is Besieged?
- What think You I take my Pen in Hand?
- What Weeping Face.
- When I heard at the Close of the Day.
- When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer.
- When I peruse the Conquer’d Fame.
- When I read the Book.
- Whispers of Heavenly Death.
- Who is now Reading This?
- Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
- Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand.
- With All Thy Gifts.
- With Antecedents.
- World Below the Brine, The.
- Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60.
- Year that Trembled.
- Years of the Modern.
- You Felons on Trial in Courts.
