The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest / The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

by Unknown

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

By Walt Whitman

(See pages [174], [268], [578], [726])

Beautiful World of new, superber Birth, that rises to my eyes,

Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky....

Thou Wonder World, yet undefined, unformed—neither do I define thee;

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future?

I feel thy ominous greatness, evil as well as good;

I watch thee, advancing, absorbing the present, transcending the past;

I see thy light lighting and thy shadow shadowing, as if the entire globe;

But I do not undertake to define thee—hardly to comprehend thee;

I but thee name—thee prophesy—as now!