A Promise to California
A promise to California, / Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon;
You Tides with Ceaseless Swell
❦
You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!
You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread,
Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,
What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius'?
what Capella's?
What central heart--and you the pulse--vivifies all? what boundless
aggregate of all?
What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in
you? what fluid, vast identity,
Holding the universe with all its parts as one--as sailing in a ship?
More poems by Walt Whitman
O Me O Life
O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring, / Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
To Those Who've Fail'd
To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, / To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
I Sit and Look Out
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all / oppression and shame,