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 | Leaves of grass. |  |
POET.
7 Fresh and rosy red, the
sun is mounting high;
On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels;
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;
The great steady wind from west and west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters.
8 But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;
I am not the wind, with girlish laughter;
Not the immense wind which strengthens — not the wind which lashes;
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death:
But I am of that which unseen comes and sings, sings,
sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land;
Which the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping.
On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels;
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;
The great steady wind from west and west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant, with milk-white foam on the waters.
8 But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;
I am not the wind, with girlish laughter;
Not the immense wind which strengthens — not the wind which lashes;
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death:
11a
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land;
Which the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping.
| Leaves of grass. | |