Read "Elemental Drifts" by Walt Whitman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
1. Elemental drifts! / O I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been / impressing me.
As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life, / As I wended the shores I know, / As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, / Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, / Where the fierce old Mother endlessly cries for her castaways, / I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, / Alone, held by this eternal self of me, out of the pride of which I have / uttered my poems, / Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, / In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of / the globe.