by Whitman · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance

Abstract

A free-verse metapoetic lyric on the latent power of typeface, the unspoken words slumbering as ocean waves; themes of writing, the book and creative potency.

Connections

Motifs: Letters and Writing, Book Reading, Sea Themes & Concepts: Imagination, Artist and Society

Testo integrale / Full text

Cluster: SANDS AT SEVENTY

This latent mine—these unlaunch’d voices—passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within the pallid slivers slumbering.