Election Day
Posted by Danielle Bean in Just me on Tuesday, November 04, 2008 5:49 PM
Are you watching the coverage tonight? Or does it make you too nervous?
While driving this afternoon, I heard a reading of Walt Whitman’s poem, Election Day 1884, on the NPR show Here and Now.
I love how it compares the power of the voting masses with some of our nation’s greatest natural wonders. I thought that on this historic day, you might appreciate the imagery too.
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.
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