Book XX: By the Roadside - To The States

To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters,
Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,
        your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that 
        the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for 
        reasons;
(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we
        all duly awake,
South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)