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Home  »  Leaves of Grass  »  282. Spirit That Form’d This Scene

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

282. Spirit That Form’d This Scene

SPIRIT that form’d this scene,

These tumbled rock-piles grim and red,

These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks,

These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness,

These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own,

I know thee, savage spirit—we have communed together,

Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own;

Was’t charged against my chants they had forgotten art?

To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse?

The lyrist’s measur’d beat, the wrought-out temple’s grace—column and polish’d arch forgot?

But thou that revelest here—spirit that form’d this scene,

They have remember’d thee.