Walt Whitman - To a Locomotive in Winter - Gideon Wagner

To A Locomotive In Winter By Walt Whitman

Thee for my recitative

Thee in the driving storm even as now

The snow the winter-day declining

Thee in thy panoply

Thy measured dual throbbing

And thy beat convulsive

Thy black cylindric body

Golden brass and silvery steel

Thy ponderous side-bars

Parallel and connecting rods gyrating

Shuttling at thy sides

Thy metrical now swelling pant and roar

Now tapering in the distance

Thy great protruding head-light fixed in front

Thy long pale floating vapor-pennants

Tinged with delicate purple

The dense and murky clouds out-belching

From thy smoke-stack

Thy knitted frame thy springs and valves

The tremulous twinkle of

Thy wheels

Thy train of cars behind obedient

Merrily following

Through gale or calm now swift

Now slack yet steadily careering

Type of the modern emblem of motion

And power pulse of the continent

For once come serve the muse

And merge in verse

Even as here I see thee

With storm and buffeting gusts

Of wind and falling snow

By day thy warning ringing bell

To sound it's notes

By night thy silent signal lamps to swing

Fierce-throated beauty

Roll through my chant

With all thy lawless music

Thy swinging lamps

At night

Thy madly-whistled laughter echoing

Rumbling like an earthquake

Rousing all

Law of thyself complete

Thine own track firmly holding

No sweetness debonair of tearful harp

Or glib piano thine

Thy trills of shrieks

By rocks and hills returned

Launched over the prairies wide

Across the lakes

To the free skies unpent and glad and strong