Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/409

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Messenger Leaves.
401

What a filthy Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid
suns! O north, your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great
Judges? Is that the President?
Then I will sleep a while yet—for I see that These
States sleep, for reasons;
(With gathering murk—with muttering thunder and
lambent shoots, we all duly awake,
South, north, east, west, inland and seaboard, we will
surely awake.)

To a Cantatrice.

Here, take this gift!
I was reserving it for some hero, orator, or general,
One who should serve the good old cause, the progress
and freedom of the race, the cause of
my Soul;
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you
just as much as to any.

Walt Whitman's Caution.

To The States, or any one of them, or any city of
The States, Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, of this
earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.

34*