Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By WaltWhitman

371 To the Man-of-War-Bird

THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm,

Walking renewed on thy prodigious pinions,

(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascendedst,

And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee)

Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,

As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,

(Myself a speck, a point on the world’s floating vast.)

Far, far at sea,

After the night’s fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,

With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,

The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,

The limpid spread of air cerulean,

Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings)

To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,

Thou ship of air that never furl’st thy sails,

Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,

At dusk that look’st on Senegal, at morn America,

That sport’st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,

In them, in thy experiences, hadst thou my soul,

What joys! what joys were thine!