To The States

Walt Whitman

   WHY reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
   What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters!
   Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
   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 awhile 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.)

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