Poet's Corner: Walt Whitman's "Election Day"

I’m not a huge poetry guy. But when I do force myself to dip an occasional toe in that literary form, the poems I gravitate towards are usually contemporary and very simple in language. Because of the timely subject matter, I’ll make an exception for this poem by Walt Whitman. (Also because he uses the word “powerfulest,” the band-name-worthy phrase “spasmic geyserloops,” and the awesome visual imagery of “The final ballot-shower from East to West.” See for yourself- and go vote tomorrow!:

Election Day, November 1884

By Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:

—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d-sea-board and inland-Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.