Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

Whitman, Walt

Walt Whitman

(America’s most original and creative poet, 1819–1892; printer and journalist, during the war an army nurse, and later a government clerk, discharged for publishing what his superiors considered an “indecent” book)

BEAUTIFUL World of new, superber Birth, that rises to my eyes,

Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky.…

Thou Wonder World, yet undefined, unformed—neither do I define thee;

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?

I feel thy ominous greatness, evil as well as good;

I watch thee, advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past;

I see thy light lighting and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe;

But I do not undertake to define thee—hardly to comprehend thee;

I but thee name—thee prophesy—as now!