Read "To the States" by Walt Whitman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1]
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 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.
[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor, / succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce; -- 1845 to 1857.]