Читать книгу The Essential Works of Walt Whitman - Walt Whitman - Страница 347

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If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

’Twould not be you, Niagara — nor you, ye limitless prairies — nor

your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite — nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic

geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones — nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes — nor

Mississippi’s stream:

— This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name — the still

small voice vibrating — America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen — the act itself the main, the

quadriennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d — sea-board and inland —

Texas to Maine — the Prairie States — Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West — the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling — (a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the

peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity — welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

— Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify — while the heart

pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.