Vintage Colorado Poetry Poem of the Week -- Labor Day -- September 6, 2004

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In September 1879, Walt Whitman visits Colorado, the farthest west he'd ever get.  While in the three-year-old Centennial State, Whitman rebukes critics of his poetry with this poem.

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[Written in Platte Cañon, Colorado]

Spirit That Form'd This Scene Spirit that form'd this scene, These tumbled rock-piles grim and red, These reckless heaven-ambitous peaks, These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this naked freshness, These formless wild arrays, for reasons of their own, I know thee, savage spirit---we have communed together, Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of their own; Was't charged against my chants they had forgotten art? To fuse within themselves its rules precise and delicatesse? The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out temple's grace---       column and polish'd arch forgot? But thou that revelest here---spirit that form'd this scene, They have remember'd thee.                                        --Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass, [9th edition; "Deathbed" edition], Philadelphia, 1891-1892.