All 3 Uses of
spurn
in
Leaves of Grass
- from the conqueress' field return'd,
I mark the new aureola around your head,
No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing,
And your port immovable where you stand,
With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted fist,
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner utterly
crush'd beneath you,
The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his
senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife,
The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so much,
To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth,
An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.†Chpt 23spurn'd = rejected as not good enough
- O you fables spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known,
mounting to heaven!†Chpt 26 *spurning = rejecting as not good enough
- Raise main-sail and jib—steer forth,
O little white-hull'd sloop, now speed on really deep waters,
(I will not call it our concluding voyage,
But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)
Depart, depart from solid earth—no more returning to these shores,
Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,
Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,
Sail out for good, eidolon yacht of me!†Chpt 34
Definitions:
-
(1)
(spurn) reject as not good enough
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, and archaically, spurn can mean to strike or kick.