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

3. 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.

4. 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.

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