227. Sparkles from The Wheel. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

227. Sparkles from The Wheel

1 WHERE the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day,
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching—I pause aside with them.

By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging,
A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife;
Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone—by foot and knee,	5
With measur’d tread, he turns rapidly—As he presses with light but firm hand,
Forth issue, then, in copious golden jets,
Sparkles from the wheel.

2 The scene, and all its belongings—how they seize and affect me!
The sad, sharp-chinn’d old man, with worn clothes, and broad shoulder-band of leather;	10
Myself, effusing and fluid—a phantom curiously floating—now here absorb’d and arrested;

The group, (an unminded point, set in a vast surrounding;)
The attentive, quiet children—the loud, proud, restive base of the streets;
The low, hoarse purr of the whirling stone—the light-press’d blade,
Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,	15
Sparkles from the wheel.