Poem: “To The States” by Walt Whitman

Leaves Of Grass

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Walt Whitman – Poems by Walt Whitman – Leaves Of Grass
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To The States

TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1]

Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your
        Arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the
        President?
Then I will sleep a while yet—for I see that these States sleep, for
        reasons.
With gathering murk—with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly
        awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will
        surely awake.

[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor, succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;—1845 to 1857.]

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Walt Whitman – Poems by Walt Whitman – Leaves Of Grass

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Leaves Of Grass

To The States

TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1]

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