Page:Leaves of Grass (1860).djvu/204

196 Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south,
 * dropped, to follow those slender winrows,

Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce,
 * left by the tide;

Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other
 * side of me,

Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old
 * thought of likenesses,

These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island, As I wended the shores I know, As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking
 * types.

As I wend the shores I know not, As I listen to the dirge, the voices of men and women
 * wrecked,

As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in
 * upon me,

As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer
 * and closer,

At once I find, the least thing that belongs to me, or
 * that I see or touch, I know not;

I, too, but signify, at the utmost, a little washed-up drift, A few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and
 * drift.

O baffled, balked, Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my
 * mouth,