Published Works

Books by Whitman

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [begin page 238] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TO THE STATES,
To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.

WHY reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all
drowsing?

What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the
waters!

Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the
Capitol?

What a filthy Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid suns!
O north, your arctic freezings!)

Judges? Is that the President?

Then I will sleep a while yet—for I see that These
States sleep, for reasons;

(With gathering murk—with muttering thunder and
lambent shoots, we all duly awake,

South, north, east, west, inland and seaboard, we will
surely awake.)

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