Flux by Walt Whitman — Read

Of these years I sing, / How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions; / How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people -- Illustrates evil as well as good; / How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity; / How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States -- or see freedom or / spirituality -- or hold any faith in results. / But I see the athletes -- and I see the results glorious and inevitable -- and they again leading to other results; / How the great cities appear -- How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, / How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and / resounding, keep on and on; / How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; / How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun; / And how the States are complete in themselves -- And how all triumphs and / glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, / And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and transitions. / And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses, too, serve -- and how every fact serves, / And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.