Issues of the Day

Floor Speech

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Mr. SUOZZI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I want to read into the Record a poem by an American poet who happened to live in my district in the 1800s. This poem was brought to my attention by my sister, Rosemary Lloyd, and the poem was brought to her attention by a historian from my college, Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson.

In this poem Walt Whitman spoke about America's choosing day. We see the confrontations and divisions we have in our country right now, but in 1884 there were great divisions in this country, less than 20 years after the Civil War, and there was great disruption among the political parties to decide how we would move forward.

Madam Speaker, I want to read Walt Whitman's poem into the Record. It is a great guidance for all of us today. If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, 'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless prairies-- nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes-- nor Mississippi's stream: This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's choosing day, The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing, The stretch of North and South arous'd--seaboard and inland-- Texas to Maine--the prairie States--Vermont, Virginia, California, The final ballot shower from East to West--the paradox and conflict, The countless snowflakes falling--a swordless conflict, Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's: the peaceful choice of all, Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker odds, the dross: Foams and ferments the wine? It serves to purify--while the heart pants, life glows: These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships, Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

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