Walt Whitman, one of the greatest of all American artists, was born this day in 1819. To honor the day of his birth, a selection from his Passage to India: Singing my days, Singing the great achievements of the present, Singing the strong, light works of engineers, Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal, The New by its mighty railroad spann’d, The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires, I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul, The Past! the Past! the Past! The Past! the dark, unfathom’d retrospect! The teeming gulf! the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past? (As a projectile, form’d, impell’d, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form’d, impell’d by the past.)
Posted on: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 02:35:20 +0000
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