Read Alone on the Beach at Night Page 4

Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay,

  Pick’d sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee,

  Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations,

  Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee,

  Indomitable, untamed as thee.

  (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,

  Ever the stock preserv’d and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserv’d.)

  2

  Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!

  Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!

  But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest,

  A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,

  Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates,

  And all that went down doing their duty,

  Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old,

  A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o’er all brave sailors,

  All seas, all ships.

  Patroling Barnegat

  Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,

  Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,

  Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,

  Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,

  Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,

  On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,

  Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,

  Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,

  (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)

  Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,

  Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,

  Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,

  A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,

  That savage trinity warily watching.

  After the Sea-Ship

  After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,

  After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,

  Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,

  Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,

  Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,

  Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,

  Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,

  Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaces the surface,

  Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing,

  The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome under the sun,

  A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,

  Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.

  BOCCACCIO · Mrs Rosie and the Priest

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS · As kingfishers catch fire

  The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY · On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

  FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE · Aphorisms on Love and Hate

  JOHN RUSKIN · Traffic

  PU SONGLING · Wailing Ghosts

  JONATHAN SWIFT · A Modest Proposal

  Three Tang Dynasty Poets

  WALT WHITMAN · On the Beach at Night Alone

  KENKŌ · A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees

  BALTASAR GRACIÁN · How to Use Your Enemies

  JOHN KEATS · The Eve of St Agnes

  THOMAS HARDY · Woman much missed

  GUY DE MAUPASSANT · Femme Fatale

  MARCO POLO · Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls

  SUETONIUS · Caligula

  APOLLONIUS OF RHODES · Jason and Medea

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON · Olalla

  KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS · The Communist Manifesto

  PETRONIUS · Trimalchio’s Feast

  JOHANN PETER HEBEL · How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher’s Dog

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN · The Tinder Box

  RUDYARD KIPLING · The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

  DANTE · Circles of Hell

  HENRY MAYHEW · Of Street Piemen

  HAFEZ · The nightingales are drunk

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER · The Wife of Bath

  MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE · How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing

  THOMAS NASHE · The Terrors of the Night

  EDGAR ALLAN POE · The Tell-Tale Heart

  MARY KINGSLEY · A Hippo Banquet

  JANE AUSTEN · The Beautifull Cassandra

  ANTON CHEKHOV · Gooseberries

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE · Well, they are gone, and here must I remain

  JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE · Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings

  CHARLES DICKENS · The Great Winglebury Duel

  HERMAN MELVILLE · The Maldive Shark

  ELIZABETH GASKELL · The Old Nurse’s Story

  NIKOLAY LESKOV · The Steel Flea

  HONORÉ DE BALZAC · The Atheist’s Mass

  CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN · The Yellow Wall-Paper

  C.P. CAVAFY · Remember, Body …

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY · The Meek One

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT · A Simple Heart

  NIKOLAI GOGOL · The Nose

  SAMUEL PEPYS · The Great Fire of London

  EDITH WHARTON · The Reckoning

  HENRY JAMES · The Figure in the Carpet

  WILFRED OWEN · Anthem For Doomed Youth

  WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART · My Dearest Father

  PLATO · Socrates’ Defence

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI · Goblin Market

  Sindbad the Sailor

  SOPHOCLES · Antigone

  RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA · The Life of a Stupid Man

  LEO TOLSTOY · How Much Land Does A Man Need?

  GIORGIO VASARI · Leonardo da Vinci

  OSCAR WILDE · Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime

  SHEN FU · The Old Man of the Moon

  AESOP · The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon

  MATSUO BASHŌ · Lips too Chilled

  EMILY BRONTË · The Night is Darkening Round Me

  JOSEPH CONRAD · To-morrow

  RICHARD HAKLUYT · The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe

  KATE CHOPIN · A Pair of Silk Stockings

  CHARLES DARWIN · It was snowing butterflies

  BROTHERS GRIMM · The Robber Bridegroom

  CATULLUS · I Hate and I Love

  HOMER · Circe and the Cyclops

  D. H. LAWRENCE · Il Duro

  KATHERINE MANSFIELD · Miss Brill

  OVID · The Fall of Icarus

  SAPPHO · Come Close

  IVAN TURGENEV · Kasyan from the Beautiful Lands

  VIRGIL · O Cruel Alexis

  H. G. WELLS · A Slip under the Microscope

  HERODOTUS · The Madness of Cambyses

  Speaking of Siva

  The Dhammapada

  LITTLEBLACKCLASSICS.COM

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  This selection published in Penguin Classics 2015

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-141-39824-2

 


 

  Walt Whitman, Alone on the Beach at Night

  (Series: # )

 

 


 

 
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