Walt Whitman

To the States

 
  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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