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Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
184. Thought
| AS I sit with others, at a great feast, suddenly, while the music is playing, | | | To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral, in mist, of a wreck at sea; | | | Of certain ships—how they sail from port with flying streamers, and wafted kisses—and that is the last of them! | | | Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President; | | | Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations, founder’d off the Northeast coast, and going down—Of the steamship Arctic going down, | 5 | | Of the veil’d tableau—Women gather’d together on deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close—O the moment! | | | A huge sob—A few bubbles—the white foam spirting up—And then the women gone, | | | Sinking there, while the passionless wet flows on—And I now pondering, Are those women indeed gone? | | | Are Souls drown’d and destroy’d so? | | | Is only matter triumphant? | 10 |
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