To the Man-of-War-Bird
Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renewd 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 worlds floating vast.)
Far, far at sea,
After the nights fierce drifts have strewn the shores 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 furlst thy sails,
Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating,
At dusk that lookst on Senegal, at morn America,
That sportst amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
In them, in thy experience, hadst thou my soul,
What joys! what joys were thine!
Poems by Walt Whitman
