{
 "id": "walt-whitman/election-day-november-1884",
 "title": "Election Day, November, 1884",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 314,
 "container": "Sands at Seventy",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1888,
  "venue": "November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888)",
  "note": "Printed in “Sands at Seventy,” the verse section of November Boughs, and gathered into Leaves of Grass as the First Annex in 1891–92, which is the arrangement the corpus text follows. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/novemberboughs00whitrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/novemberboughs00whitgoog"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "sands-at-seventy.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 128,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twould not be you, Niagara⁠—nor you, ye limitless prairies⁠—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor you, Yosemite⁠—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor Oregon’s white cones⁠—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes⁠—nor Mississippi’s stream:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name⁠—the still small voice vibrating⁠—America’s choosing day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(The heart of it not in the chosen⁠—the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The stretch of North and South arous’d⁠—sea-board and inland⁠—Texas to Maine⁠—the Prairie States⁠—Vermont, Virginia, California,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The final ballot-shower from East to West⁠—the paradox and conflict,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The countless snow-flakes falling⁠—(a swordless conflict,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or good or ill humanity⁠—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify⁠—while the heart pants, life glows:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}