THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm, <br /> Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions, <br /> (Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st, <br /> And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) <br /> Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, <br /> As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee, <br /> (Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.) <br /> <br /> Far, far at sea, <br /> After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shores with wrecks, <br /> With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene, 10 <br /> The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, <br /> The limpid spread of air cerulean, <br /> Thou also re-appearest. <br /> <br /> Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) <br /> To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, <br /> Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, <br /> Days, even weeks untired and onward, through spaces, realms gyrating, <br /> At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, <br /> That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud, <br /> In them, in thy experience, had'st thou my soul, 20 <br /> What joys! what joys were thine!<br /><br />Walt Whitman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-man-of-war-bird/
