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Title: Poems By Walt Whitman
Author: Walt Whitman
Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8388] [This file was first posted on July 6, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, POEMS BY WALT WHITMAN ***
E-text prepared by Andrea Ball, Jon Ingram, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
by WALT WHITMAN
"Or si sa il nome, o per tristo o per buono,
E
si sa pure al mondo ch'io ci sono."
—MICHELANGELO.
"That Angels are human forms, or men, I have seen a thousand times. I have also frequently told them that men in the Christian world are in such gross ignorance respecting Angels and Spirits as to suppose them to be minds without a form, or mere thoughts, of which they have no other idea than as something ethereal possessing a vital principle. To the first or ultimate heaven also correspond the forms of man's body, called its members, organs, and viscera. Thus the corporeal part of man is that in which heaven ultimately closes, and upon which, as on its base, it rests." —SWEDENBORG.
"Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a nation that it get an articulate
voice—that
it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the
heart of
it means."
—CARLYLE.
"Les efforts de vos ennemis contre vous, leurs cris, leur rage impuissante, et leurs petits succès, ne doivent pas vous effrayer; ce ne sont que des égratignures sur les épaules d'Hercule." —ROBESPIERRE.
DEAR SCOTT,—Among various gifts which I have received from you, tangible and intangible, was a copy of the original quarto edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which you presented to me soon after its first appearance in 1855. At a time when few people on this side of the Atlantic had looked into the book, and still fewer had found in it anything save matter for ridicule, you had appraised it, and seen that its value was real and great. A true poet and a strong thinker like yourself was indeed likely to see that. I read the book eagerly, and perceived that its substantiality and power were still ahead of any eulogium with which it might have come commended to me—and, in fact, ahead of most attempts that could be made at verbal definition of them.
Some years afterwards, getting to know our friend Swinburne, I found with much satisfaction that he also was an ardent (not of course a blind) admirer of Whitman. Satisfaction, and a degree almost of surprise; for his intense sense of poetic refinement of form in his own works and his exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception. Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and floundering," "destitute of the A B C of art," and the like, might not unprofitably ponder this very different estimate of him by the author of Atalanta in Calydon.
May we hope that now, twelve years after the first appearance of Leaves of Grass, the English reading public may be prepared for a selection of Whitman's poems, and soon hereafter for a complete edition of them? I trust this may prove to be the case. At any rate, it has been a great gratification to me to be concerned in the experiment; and this is enhanced by my being enabled to associate with it your name, as that of an early and well-qualified appreciator of Whitman, and no less as that of a dear friend.
Yours affectionately,
W. M. ROSSETTI.
October 1867.
DRUM TAPS:
MANHATTAN ARMING
1861
THE
UPRISING
BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!
SONG OF
THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK
THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME
BIVOUAC
ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE
CITY OF SHIPS
VIGIL
ON THE FIELD
THE FLAG
THE WOUNDED
A
SIGHT IN CAMP
A GRAVE
THE DRESSER
A
LETTER FROM CAMP
WAR DREAMS
THE
VETERAN'S VISION
O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY
MANHATTAN
FACES
OVER THE CARNAGE
THE MOTHER OF
ALL
CAMPS OF GREEN
DIRGE FOR TWO
VETERANS
SURVIVORS
HYMN OF DEAD
SOLDIERS
SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE
RECONCILIATION
AFTER
THE WAR
During the summer of 1867 I had the opportunity (which I had often wished for) of expressing in print my estimate and admiration of the works of the American poet Walt Whitman.[1] Like a stone dropped into a pond, an article of that sort may spread out its concentric circles of consequences. One of these is the invitation which I have received to edit a selection from Whitman's writings; virtually the first sample of his work ever published in England, and offering the first tolerably fair chance he has had of making his way with English readers on his own showing. Hitherto, such readers—except the small percentage of them to whom it has happened to come across the poems in some one of their American editions—have picked acquaintance with them only through the medium of newspaper extracts and criticisms, mostly short-sighted, sneering, and depreciatory, and rather intercepting than forwarding the candid construction which people might be willing to put upon the poems, alike in their beauties and their aberrations. Some English critics, no doubt, have been more discerning—as W. J. Fox, of old, in the Dispatch, the writer of the notice in the Leader, and of late two in the Pall Mall Gazette and the London Review;[2] but these have been the exceptions among us, the great majority of the reviewers presenting that happy and familiar critical combination— scurrility and superciliousness.
[Footnote 1: See The Chronicle for 6th July 1867, article Walt
Whitman's
Poems.]
[Footnote 2: Since this Prefatory Notice was written [in 1868], another eulogistic review of Whitman has appeared—that by Mr. Robert Buchanan, in the Broadway.]
As it was my lot to set down so recently several of the considerations which seem to me most essential and most obvious in regard to Whitman's writings, I can scarcely now recur to the subject without either repeating something of what I then said, or else leaving unstated some points of principal importance. I shall therefore adopt the simplest course—that of summarising the critical remarks in my former article; after which, I shall leave without further development (ample as is the amount of development most of them would claim) the particular topics there glanced at, and shall proceed to some other phases of the subject.
Whitman republished in 1867 his complete poetical works in one moderate- sized volume, consisting of the whole Leaves of Grass, with a sort of supplement thereto named Songs before Parting,[3] and of the Drum Taps, with its Sequel. It has been intimated that he does not expect to write any more poems, unless it might be in expression of the religious side of man's nature. However, one poem on the last American harvest sown and reaped by those who had been soldiers in the great war, has already appeared since the volume in question, and has been republished in England.
[Footnote 3: In a copy of the book revised by Whitman himself, which we have seen, this title is modified into Songs of Parting.]
Whitman's poems present no trace of rhyme, save in a couple or so of chance instances. Parts of them, indeed, may be regarded as a warp of prose amid the weft of poetry, such as Shakespeare furnishes the precedent for in drama. Still there is a very powerful and majestic rhythmical sense throughout.
Lavish and persistent has been the abuse poured forth upon Whitman by his own countrymen; the tricklings of the British press give but a moderate idea of it. The poet is known to repay scorn with scorn. Emerson can, however, from the first be claimed as on Whitman's side; nor, it is understood after some inquiry, has that great thinker since then retreated from this position in fundamentals, although his admiration may have entailed some worry upon him, and reports of his recantation have been rife. Of other writers on Whitman's side, expressing themselves with no measured enthusiasm, one may cite Mr. M. D. Conway; Mr. W. D. O'Connor, who wrote a pamphlet named The Good Grey Poet; and Mr. John Burroughs, author of Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, published quite recently in New York. His thorough-paced admirers declare Whitman to be beyond rivalry the poet of the epoch; an estimate which, startling as it will sound at the first, may nevertheless be upheld, on the grounds that Whitman is beyond all his competitors a man of the period, one of audacious personal ascendant, incapable of all compromise, and an initiator in the scheme and form of his works.
Certain faults are charged against him, and, as far as they are true, shall frankly stand confessed—some of them as very serious faults. Firstly, he speaks on occasion of gross things in gross, crude, and plain terms. Secondly, he uses some words absurd or ill-constructed, others which produce a jarring effect in poetry, or indeed in any lofty literature. Thirdly, he sins from time to time by being obscure, fragmentary, and agglomerative—giving long strings of successive and detached items, not, however, devoid of a certain primitive effectiveness. Fourthly, his self- assertion is boundless; yet not always to be understood as strictly or merely personal to himself, but sometimes as vicarious, the poet speaking on behalf of all men, and every man and woman. These and any other faults appear most harshly on a cursory reading; Whitman is a poet who bears and needs to be read as a whole, and then the volume and torrent of his power carry the disfigurements along with it, and away.
The subject-matter of Whitman's poems, taken individually, is absolutely miscellaneous: he touches upon any and every subject. But he has prefixed to his last edition an "Inscription" in the following terms, showing that the key-words of the whole book are two—"One's-self" and "En Masse:"—
Small is the theme of the following chant, yet the greatest.—namely, ONE'S-SELF; that wondrous thing, a simple separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the Muse: I say the form complete is worthier far. The female equally with the male I sing. Nor cease at the theme of One's-self. I speak the word of the modern, the word EN MASSE. My days I sing, and the lands—with interstice I knew of hapless war. O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I return. And thus upon our journey linked together let us go.
The book, then, taken as a whole, is the poem both of Personality and of Democracy; and, it may be added, of American nationalism. It is par excellence the modern poem. It is distinguished also by this peculiarity— that in it the most literal view of things is continually merging into the most rhapsodic or passionately abstract. Picturesqueness it has, but mostly of a somewhat patriarchal kind, not deriving from the "word-painting" of the littérateur; a certain echo of the old Hebrew poetry may even be caught in it, extra-modern though it is. Another most prominent and pervading quality of the book is the exuberant physique of the author. The conceptions are throughout those of a man in robust health, and might alter much under different conditions.
Further, there is a strong tone of paradox in Whitman's writings. He is both a realist and an optimist in extreme measure: he contemplates evil as in some sense not existing, or, if existing, then as being of as much importance as anything else. Not that he is a materialist; on the contrary, he is a most strenuous assertor of the soul, and, with the soul, of the body as its infallible associate and vehicle in the present frame of things. Neither does he drift into fatalism or indifferentism; the energy of his temperament, and ever-fresh sympathy with national and other developments, being an effectual bar to this. The paradoxical element of the poems is such that one may sometimes find them in conflict with what has preceded, and would not be much surprised if they said at any moment the reverse of whatever they do say. This is mainly due to the multiplicity of the aspects of things, and to the immense width of relation in which Whitman stands to all sorts and all aspects of them.
But the greatest of this poet's distinctions is his absolute and entire originality. He may be termed formless by those who, not without much reason to show for themselves, are wedded to the established forms and ratified refinements of poetic art; but it seems reasonable to enlarge the canon till it includes so great and startling a genius, rather than to draw it close and exclude him. His work is practically certain to stand as archetypal for many future poetic efforts—so great is his power as an originator, so fervid his initiative. It forms incomparably the largest performance of our period in poetry. Victor Hugo's Légende des Siècles alone might be named with it for largeness, and even that with much less of a new starting-point in conception and treatment. Whitman breaks with all precedent. To what he himself perceives and knows he has a personal relation of the intensest kind: to anything in the way of prescription, no relation at all. But he is saved from isolation by the depth of his Americanism; with the movement of his predominant nation he is moved. His comprehension, energy, and tenderness are all extreme, and all inspired by actualities. And, as for poetic genius, those who, without being ready to concede that faculty to Whitman, confess his iconoclastic boldness and his Titanic power of temperament, working in the sphere of poetry, do in effect confess his genius as well.
Such, still further condensed, was the critical summary which I gave of Whitman's position among poets. It remains to say something a little more precise of the particular qualities of his works. And first, not to slur over defects, I shall extract some sentences from a letter which a friend, most highly entitled to form and express an opinion on any poetic question—one, too, who abundantly upholds the greatness of Whitman as a poet—has addressed to me with regard to the criticism above condensed. His observations, though severe on this individual point, appear to me not other than correct. "I don't think that you quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength—I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly the poet of democracy; but not wholly, because he tries so openly to be, and asserts so violently that he is— always as if he was fighting the case out on a platform. This is the only thing I really or greatly dislike or revolt from. On the whole" (adds my correspondent), "my admiration and enjoyment of his greatness grow keener and warmer every time I think of him"—a feeling, I may be permitted to observe, which is fully shared by myself, and, I suppose, by all who consent in any adequate measure to recognise Whitman, and to yield themselves to his influence.
To continue. Besides originality and daring, which have been already insisted upon, width and intensity are leading characteristics of his writings—width both of subject-matter and of comprehension, intensity of self-absorption into what the poet contemplates and expresses. He scans and presents an enormous panorama, unrolled before him as from a mountain-top; and yet, whatever most large or most minute or casual thing his eye glances upon, that he enters into with a depth of affection which identifies him with it for a time, be the object what it may. There is a singular interchange also of actuality and of ideal substratum and suggestion. While he sees men, with even abnormal exactness and sympathy, as men, he sees them also "as trees walking," and admits us to perceive that the whole show is in a measure spectral and unsubstantial, and the mask of a larger and profounder reality beneath it, of which it is giving perpetual intimations and auguries. He is the poet indeed of literality, but of passionate and significant literality, full of indirections as well as directness, and of readings between the lines. If he is the 'cutest of Yankees, he is also as truly an enthusiast as any the most typical poet. All his faculties and performance glow into a white heat of brotherliness; and there is a poignancy both of tenderness and of beauty about his finer works which discriminates them quite as much as their modernness, audacity, or any other exceptional point. If the reader wishes to see the great and more intimate powers of Whitman in their fullest expression, he may consult the Nocturn for the Death of Lincoln; than which it would be difficult to find anywhere a purer, more elevated, more poetic, more ideally abstract, or at the same time more pathetically personal, threnody—uniting the thrilling chords of grief, of beauty, of triumph, and of final unfathomed satisfaction. With all his singularities, Whitman is a master of words and of sounds: he has them at his command—made for, and instinct with, his purpose—messengers of unsurpassable sympathy and intelligence between himself and his readers. The entire book may be called the paean of the natural man—not of the merely physical, still less of the disjunctively intellectual or spiritual man, but of him who, being a man first and foremost, is therein also a spirit and an intellect.
There is a singular and impressive intuition or revelation of Swedenborg's: that the whole of heaven is in the form of one man, and the separate societies of heaven in the forms of the several parts of man. In a large sense, the general drift of Whitman's writings, even down to the passages which read as most bluntly physical, bear a striking correspondence or analogy to this dogma. He takes man, and every organism and faculty of man, as the unit—the datum—from which all that we know, discern, and speculate, of abstract and supersensual, as well as of concrete and sensual, has to be computed. He knows of nothing nobler than that unit man; but, knowing that, he can use it for any multiple, and for any dynamical extension or recast.
Let us next obtain some idea of what this most remarkable poet—the founder of American poetry rightly to be so called, and the most sonorous poetic voice of the tangibilities of actual and prospective democracy—is in his proper life and person.
Walt Whitman was born at the farm-village of West Hills, Long Island, in the State of New York, and about thirty miles distant from the capital, on the 31st of May 1819. His father's family, English by origin, had already been settled in this locality for five generations. His mother, named Louisa van Velsor, was of Dutch extraction, and came from Cold Spring, Queen's County, about three miles from West Hills. "A fine-looking old lady" she has been termed in her advanced age. A large family ensued from the marriage. The father was a farmer, and afterwards a carpenter and builder; both parents adhered in religion to "the great Quaker iconoclast, Elias Hicks." Walt was schooled at Brooklyn, a suburb of New York, and began life at the age of thirteen, working as a printer, later on as a country teacher, and then as a miscellaneous press-writer in New York. From 1837 to 1848 he had, as Mr. Burroughs too promiscuously expresses it, "sounded all experiences of life, with all their passions, pleasures, and abandonments." In 1849 he began travelling, and became at New Orleans a newspaper editor, and at Brooklyn, two years afterwards, a printer. He next followed his father's business of carpenter and builder. In 1862, after the breaking-out of the great Civil War, in which his enthusiastic unionism and also his anti-slavery feelings attached him inseparably though not rancorously to the good cause of the North, he undertook the nursing of the sick and wounded in the field, writing also a correspondence in the New York Times. I am informed that it was through Emerson's intervention that he obtained the sanction of President Lincoln for this purpose of charity, with authority to draw the ordinary army rations; Whitman stipulating at the same time that he would not receive any remuneration for his services. The first immediate occasion of his going down to camp was on behalf of his brother, Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Whitman, of the 51st New York Veterans, who had been struck in the face by a piece of shell at Fredericksburg. From the spring of 1863 this nursing, both in the field and more especially in hospital at Washington, became his "one daily and nightly occupation;" and the strongest testimony is borne to his measureless self-devotion and kindliness in the work, and to the unbounded fascination, a kind of magnetic attraction and ascendency, which he exercised over the patients, often with the happiest sanitary results. Northerner or Southerner, the belligerents received the same tending from him. It is said that by the end of the war he had personally ministered to upwards of 100,000 sick and wounded. In a Washington hospital he caught, in the summer of 1864, the first illness he had ever known, caused by poison absorbed into the system in attending some of the worst cases of gangrene. It disabled him for six months. He returned to the hospitals towards the beginning of 1865, and obtained also a clerkship in the Department of the Interior. It should be added that, though he never actually joined the army as a combatant, he made a point of putting down his name on the enrolment- lists for the draft, to take his chance as it might happen for serving the country in arms. The reward of his devotedness came at the end of June 1865, in the form of dismissal from his clerkship by the minister, Mr. Harlan, who learned that Whitman was the author of the Leaves of Grass; a book whose outspokenness, or (as the official chief considered it) immorality, raised a holy horror in the ministerial breast. The poet, however, soon obtained another modest but creditable post in the office of the Attorney-General. He still visits the hospitals on Sundays, and often on other days as well.
The portrait of Mr. Whitman reproduced in the present volume is taken from an engraving after a daguerreotype given in the original Leaves of Grass. He is much above the average size, and noticeably well-proportioned—a model of physique and of health, and, by natural consequence, as fully and finely related to all physical facts by his bodily constitution as to all mental and spiritual facts by his mind and his consciousness. He is now, however, old-looking for his years, and might even (according to the statement of one of his enthusiasts, Mr. O'Connor) have passed for being beyond the age for the draft when the war was going on. The same gentleman, in confutation of any inferences which might be drawn from the Leaves of Grass by a Harlan or other Holy Willie, affirms that "one more irreproachable in his relations to the other sex lives not upon this earth"—an assertion which one must take as one finds it, having neither confirmatory nor traversing evidence at hand. Whitman has light blue eyes, a florid complexion, a fleecy beard now grey, and a quite peculiar sort of magnetism about him in relation to those with whom he comes in contact. His ordinary appearance is masculine and cheerful: he never shows depression of spirits, and is sufficiently undemonstrative, and even somewhat silent in company. He has always been carried by predilection towards the society of the common people; but is not the less for that open to refined and artistic impressions—fond of operatic and other good music, and discerning in works of art. As to either praise or blame of what he writes, he is totally indifferent, not to say scornful—having in fact a very decisive opinion of his own concerning its calibre and destinies. Thoreau, a very congenial spirit, said of Whitman, "He is Democracy;" and again, "After all, he suggests something a little more than human." Lincoln broke out into the exclamation, "Well, he looks like a man!" Whitman responded to the instinctive appreciation of the President, considering him (it is said by Mr. Burroughs) "by far the noblest and purest of the political characters of the time;" and, if anything can cast, in the eyes of posterity, an added halo of brightness round the unsullied personal qualities and the great doings of Lincoln, it will assuredly be the written monument reared to him by Whitman.
The best sketch that I know of Whitman as an accessible human individual is that given by Mr. Conway.[4] I borrow from it the following few details. "Having occasion to visit New York soon after the appearance of Walt Whitman's book, I was urged by some friends to search him out…. The day was excessively hot, the thermometer at nearly 100°, and the sun blazed down as only on sandy Long Island can the sun blaze…. I saw stretched upon his back, and gazing up straight at the terrible sun, the man I was seeking. With his grey clothing, his blue-grey shirt, his iron-grey hair, his swart sunburnt face and bare neck, he lay upon the brown-and-white grass—for the sun had burnt away its greenness—and was so like the earth upon which he rested that he seemed almost enough a part of it for one to pass by without recognition. I approached him, gave my name and reason for searching him out, and asked him if he did not find the sun rather hot. 'Not at all too hot,' was his reply; and he confided to me that this was one of his favourite places and attitudes for composing 'poems.' He then walked with me to his home, and took me along its narrow ways to his room. A small room of about fifteen feet square, with a single window looking out on the barren solitudes of the island; a small cot; a wash-stand with a little looking-glass hung over it from a tack in the wall; a pine table with pen, ink, and paper on it; an old line-engraving representing Bacchus, hung on the wall, and opposite a similar one of Silenus: these constituted the visible environments of Walt Whitman. There was not, apparently, a single book in the room…. The books he seemed to know and love best were the Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare: these he owned, and probably had in his pockets while we were talking. He had two studies where he read; one was the top of an omnibus, and the other a small mass of sand, then entirely uninhabited, far out in the ocean, called Coney Island…. The only distinguished contemporary he had ever met was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, who had visited him…. He confessed to having no talent for industry, and that his forte was 'loafing and writing poems:' he was poor, but had discovered that he could, on the whole, live magnificently on bread and water…. On no occasion did he laugh, nor indeed did I ever see him smile."
[Footnote 4: In the Fortnightly Review, 15th October 1866.]
The first trace of Whitman as a writer is in the pages of the Democratic Review in or about 1841. Here he wrote some prose tales and sketches—poor stuff mostly, so far as I have seen of them, yet not to be wholly confounded with the commonplace. One of them is a tragic school-incident, which may be surmised to have fallen under his personal observation in his early experience as a teacher. His first poem of any sort was named Blood Money, in denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Law, which severed him from the Democratic party. His first considerable work was the Leaves of Grass. He began it in 1853, and it underwent two or three complete rewritings prior to its publication at Brooklyn in 1855, in a quarto volume—peculiar-looking, but with something perceptibly artistic about it. The type of that edition was set up entirely by himself. He was moved to undertake this formidable poetic work (as indicated in a private letter of Whitman's, from which Mr. Conway has given a sentence or two) by his sense of the great materials which America could offer for a really American poetry, and by his contempt for the current work of his compatriots—"either the poetry of an elegantly weak sentimentalism, at bottom nothing but maudlin puerilities or more or less musical verbiage, arising out of a life of depression and enervation as their result; or else that class of poetry, plays, &c., of which the foundation is feudalism, with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and the manners of European high-life-below-stairs in every line and verse." Thus incited to poetic self-expression, Whitman (adds Mr. Conway) "wrote on a sheet of paper, in large letters, these words, 'Make the Work,' and fixed it above his table, where he could always see it whilst writing. Thenceforth every cloud that flitted over him, every distant sail, every face and form encountered, wrote a line in his book."
The Leaves of Grass excited no sort of notice until a letter from Emerson[5] appeared, expressing a deep sense of its power and magnitude. He termed it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."
[Footnote 5: Mr. Burroughs (to whom I have recourse for most biographical facts concerning Whitman) is careful to note, in order that no misapprehension may arise on the subject, that, up to the time of his publishing the Leaves of Grass, the author had not read either the essays or the poems of Emerson.]
The edition of about a thousand copies sold off in less than a year. Towards the end of 1856 a second edition in 16mo appeared, printed in New York, also of about a thousand copies. Its chief feature was an additional poem beginning "A Woman waits for me." It excited a considerable storm. Another edition, of about four to five thousand copies, duodecimo, came out at Boston in 1860-61, including a number of new pieces. The Drum Taps, consequent upon the war, with their Sequel, which comprises the poem on Lincoln, followed in 1865; and in 1867, as I have already noted, a complete edition of all the poems, including a supplement named Songs before Parting. The first of all the Leaves of Grass, in point of date, was the long and powerful composition entitled Walt Whitman—perhaps the most typical and memorable of all of his productions, but shut out from the present selection for reasons given further on. The final edition shows numerous and considerable variations from all its precursors; evidencing once again that Whitman is by no means the rough-and-ready writer, panoplied in rude art and egotistic self-sufficiency, that many people suppose him to be. Even since this issue, the book has been slightly revised by its author's own hand, with a special view to possible English circulation. The copy so revised has reached me (through the liberal and friendly hands of Mr. Conway) after my selection had already been decided on; and the few departures from the last printed text which might on comparison be found in the present volume are due to my having had the advantage of following this revised copy. In all other respects I have felt bound to reproduce the last edition, without so much as considering whether here and there I might personally prefer the readings of the earlier issues.
The selection here offered to the English reader contains a little less than half the entire bulk of Whitman's poetry. My choice has proceeded upon two simple rules: first, to omit entirely every poem which could with any tolerable fairness be deemed offensive to the feelings of morals or propriety in this peculiarly nervous age; and, second, to include every remaining poem which appeared to me of conspicuous beauty or interest. I have also inserted the very remarkable prose preface which Whitman printed in the original edition of Leaves of Grass, an edition that has become a literary rarity. This preface has not been reproduced in any later publication, although its materials have to some extent been worked up into poems of a subsequent date.[6] From this prose composition, contrary to what has been my rule with any of the poems, it has appeared to me permissible to omit two or three short phrases which would have shocked ordinary readers, and the retention of which, had I held it obligatory, would have entailed the exclusion of the preface itself as a whole.
[Footnote 6: Compare, for instance, the Preface, pp. 38, 39, with the poem To a Foiled Revolter or Revoltress, p. 133.]
A few words must be added as to the indecencies scattered through Whitman's writings. Indecencies or improprieties—or, still better, deforming crudities—they may rightly be termed; to call them immoralities would be going too far. Whitman finds himself, and other men and women, to be a compound of soul and body; he finds that body plays an extremely prominent and determining part in whatever he and other mundane dwellers have cognisance of; he perceives this to be the necessary condition of things, and therefore, as he fully and openly accepts it, the right condition; and he knows of no reason why what is universally seen and known, necessary and right, should not also be allowed and proclaimed in speech. That such a view of the matter is entitled to a great deal of weight, and at any rate to candid consideration and construction, appears to me not to admit of a doubt: neither is it dubious that the contrary view, the only view which a mealy-mouthed British nineteenth century admits as endurable, amounts to the condemnation of nearly every great or eminent literary work of past time, whatever the century it belongs to, the country it comes from, the department of writing it illustrates, or the degree or sort of merit it possesses. Tenth, second, or first century before Christ—first, eighth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth century A.D.—it is still the same: no book whose subject-matter admits as possible of an impropriety according to current notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,—can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and this holds good just as much of severely moral or plainly descriptive as of avowedly playful, knowing, or licentious books. For my part, I am far from thinking that earlier state of literature, and the public feeling from which it sprang, the wrong ones— and our present condition the only right one. Equally far, therefore, am I from indignantly condemning Whitman for every startling allusion or expression which he has admitted into his book, and which I, from motives of policy, have excluded from this selection; except, indeed, that I think many of his tabooed passages are extremely raw and ugly on the ground of poetic or literary art, whatever aspect they may bear in morals. I have been rigid in exclusion, because it appears to me highly desirable that a fair verdict on Whitman should now be pronounced in England on poetic grounds alone; and because it was clearly impossible that the book, with its audacities of topic and of expression included, should run the same chance of justice, and of circulation through refined minds and hands, which may possibly be accorded to it after the rejection of all such peccant poems. As already intimated, I have not in a single instance excised any parts of poems: to do so would have been, I conceive, no less wrongful towards the illustrious American than repugnant, and indeed unendurable, to myself, who aspire to no Bowdlerian honours. The consequence is, that the reader loses in toto several important poems, and some extremely fine ones—notably the one previously alluded to, of quite exceptional value and excellence, entitled Walt Whitman. I sacrifice them grudgingly; and yet willingly, because I believe this to be the only thing to do with due regard to the one reasonable object which a selection can subserve—that of paving the way towards the issue and unprejudiced reception of a complete edition of the poems in England. For the benefit of misconstructionists, let me add in distinct terms that, in respect of morals and propriety, I neither admire nor approve the incriminated passages in Whitman's poems, but, on the contrary, consider that most of them would be much better away; and, in respect of art, I doubt whether even one of them deserves to be retained in the exact phraseology it at present exhibits. This, however, does not amount to saying that Whitman is a vile man, or a corrupt or corrupting writer; he is none of these.
The only division of his poems into sections, made by Whitman himself, has been noted above: Leaves of Grass, Songs before Parting, supplementary to the preceding, and Drum Taps, with their Sequel. The peculiar title, Leaves of Grass, has become almost inseparable from the name of Whitman; it seems to express with some aptness the simplicity, universality, and spontaneity of the poems to which it is applied. Songs before Parting may indicate that these compositions close Whitman's poetic roll. Drum Taps are, of course, songs of the Civil War, and their Sequel is mainly on the same theme: the chief poem in this last section being the one on the death of Lincoln. These titles all apply to fully arranged series of compositions. The present volume is not in the same sense a fully arranged series, but a selection: and the relation of the poems inter se appears to me to depend on altered conditions, which, however narrowed they are, it may be as well frankly to recognise in practice. I have therefore redistributed the poems (a latitude of action which I trust the author may not object to), bringing together those whose subject-matter seems to warrant it, however far separated they may possibly be in the original volume. At the same time, I have retained some characteristic terms used by Whitman himself, and have named my sections respectively—
1. Chants Democratic (poems of democracy). 2. Drum Taps (war songs). 3. Walt Whitman (personal poems). 4. Leaves of Grass (unclassified poems). 5. Songs of Parting (missives).
The first three designations explain themselves. The fourth, Leaves of Grass, is not so specially applicable to the particular poems of that section here as I should have liked it to be; but I could not consent to drop this typical name. The Songs of Parting, my fifth section, are compositions in which the poet expresses his own sentiment regarding his works, in which he forecasts their future, or consigns them to the reader's consideration. It deserves mention that, in the copy of Whitman's last American edition revised by his own hand, as previously noticed, the series termed Songs of Parting has been recast, and made to consist of poems of the same character as those included in my section No. 5.
Comparatively few of Whitman's poems have been endowed by himself with titles properly so called. Most of them are merely headed with the opening words of the poems themselves—as "I was looking a long while;" "To get betimes in Boston Town;" "When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed;" and so on. It seems to me that in a selection such a lengthy and circuitous method of identifying the poems is not desirable: I should wish them to be remembered by brief, repeatable, and significant titles. I have therefore supplied titles of my own to such pieces as bear none in the original edition: wherever a real title appears in that edition, I have retained it.
With these remarks I commend to the English reader the ensuing selection from a writer whom I sincerely believe to be, whatever his faults, of the order of great poets, and by no means of pretty good ones. I would urge the reader not to ask himself, and not to return any answer to the questions, whether or not this poet is like other poets—whether or not the particular application of rules of art which is found to hold good in the works of those others, and to constitute a part of their excellence, can be traced also in Whitman. Let the questions rather be—Is he powerful? Is he American? Is he new? Is he rousing? Does he feel and make me feel? I entertain no doubt as to the response which in due course of time will be returned to these questions and such as these, in America, in England, and elsewhere—or to the further question, "Is Whitman then indeed a true and a great poet?" Lincoln's verdict bespeaks the ultimate decision upon him, in his books as in his habit as he lives—"Well, he looks like a man."
Walt Whitman occupies at the present moment a unique position on the globe, and one which, even in past time, can have been occupied by only an infinitesimally small number of men. He is the one man who entertains and professes respecting himself the grave conviction that he is the actual and prospective founder of a new poetic literature, and a great one—a literature proportional to the material vastness and the unmeasured destinies of America: he believes that the Columbus of the continent or the Washington of the States was not more truly than himself in the future a founder and upbuilder of this America. Surely a sublime conviction, and expressed more than once in magnificent words—none more so than the lines beginning
"Come, I will make this continent indissoluble."[7]
[Footnote 7: See the poem headed Love of Comrades, p. 308.]
Were the idea untrue, it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue? Is it not, on the contrary, true, if not absolutely, yet with a most genuine and substantial approximation? I believe it is thus true. I believe that Whitman is one of the huge, as yet mainly unrecognised, forces of our time; privileged to evoke, in a country hitherto still asking for its poet, a fresh, athletic, and American poetry, and predestined to be traced up to by generation after generation of believing and ardent—let us hope not servile—disciples.
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Shelley, who knew what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken—that is to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more their announcer than their inspirer.
1868. W. M. ROSSETTI.
N.B.—The above prefatory notice was written in 1868, and is reproduced practically unaltered. Were it to be brought up to the present date, 1886, I should have to mention Whitman's books Two Rivulets and Specimen-days and Collect, and the fact that for several years past he has been partially disabled by a paralytic attack. He now lives at Camden, New Jersey.
1886. W. M. R.
America does not repel the past, or what it has produced under its forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old religions; accepts the lesson with calmness; is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms; perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house; perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days, that its action has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans, of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical Nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations. Here is action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and details, magnificently moving in vast masses.
Here is the hospitality which for ever indicates heroes. Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial, unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop apples, or the bays contain fish, or men beget children.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies: but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlours, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendships,—the freshness and candour of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage—their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment— their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—the fluency of their speech—their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul—their good temper and open- handedness—the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. Not nature, nor swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous business, nor farms nor capital nor learning, may suffice for the ideal of man, nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either. A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best authority the cheapest—namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and grandeur, and of the subjects of poets.—As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired since in North and South America, were less than the small theatre of the antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the Middle Ages! The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude or geography or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the breed of full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple.
The American poets are to enclose old and new; for America is the race of races. Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. To him the other continents arrive as contributions: he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. His spirit responds to his country's spirit: he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes. Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the Falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him. The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland, and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine, and over Manhattan Bay, and over Champlain and Erie, and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas, and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer, and the Pacific coast stretches longer, he easily stretches with them north or south. He spans between them also from east to west, and reflects what is between them. On him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and live-oak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and lime-tree and cottonwood and tulip-tree and cactus and wild-vine and tamarind and persimmon, and tangles as tangled as any cane-brake or swamp, and forests coated with transparent ice and icicles, hanging from the boughs and crackling in the wind, and sides and peaks of mountains, and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie,—with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild-pigeon and high-hold and orchard- oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-bawk and fish-hawk and white-ibis and Indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mocking-bird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary countenance descends, both mother's and father's. To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events—of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines—the tribes of red aborigines—the weather-beaten vessels entering new ports, or making landings on rocky coasts—the first settlements north or south—the rapid stature and muscle—the haughty defiance of '76, and the war and peace and formation of the constitution— the union always surrounded by blatherers, and always calm and impregnable—the perpetual coming of immigrants—the wharf-hemmed cities and superior marine—the unsurveyed interior—the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and trappers—the free commerce—the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging—the endless gestations of new states—the convening of Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost parts—the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free American workmen and workwomen—the general ardour and friendliness and enterprise—the perfect equality of the female with the male—the large amativeness—the fluid movement of the population—the factories and mercantile life and labour-saving machinery— the Yankee swap—the New York firemen and the target excursion—the Southern plantation life—the character of the north-east and of the north- west and south-west-slavery, and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases, or the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease. For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the theme is creative, and has vista. Here comes one among the well-beloved stone-cutters, and plans with decision and science, and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.
Of all nations, the United States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most needs poets, and will doubtless have the greatest, and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. Of all mankind, the great poet is the equable man. Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque or eccentric, or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good, and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse, and he is the key. He is the equaliser of his age and land: he supplies what wants supplying, and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce—lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality—federal, state or municipal government, marriage, health, free-trade, intertravel by land and sea—nothing too close, nothing too far off,—the stars not too far off. In war, he is the most deadly force of the war. Who recruits him recruits horse and foot: he fetches parks of artillery, the best that engineer ever knew. If the time becomes slothful and heavy, he knows how to arouse it: he can make every word he speaks draw blood. Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation, he never stagnates. Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach, he stands turning a concentrated light; he turns the pivot with his finger; he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily overtakes and envelops them. The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith; he spreads out his dishes; he offers the sweet firm-fibred meat that grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer, he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. As he sees the farthest, he has the most faith. His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul and eternity and God, off of his equal plane, he is silent. He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement: he sees eternity in men and women,—he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. Faith is the antiseptic of the soul,—it pervades the common people and preserves them: they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist. The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him, but never the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, he is not what is wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers; not parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way, see after him! there is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or colour, or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell; and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.
The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer—he is individual—he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not. He is not one of the chorus—he does not stop for any regulation—he is the President of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit, and given audience to far and near and to the sunset, and had all things enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or jostling or jam.
The land and sea, the animals, fishes, and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains, and rivers, are not small themes: but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects,—they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough—probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of the poetic, in outdoor people. They can never be assisted by poets to perceive: some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme; and of uniformity, that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws, and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent, but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough—the fact will prevail through the universe: but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured: others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches, and shall master all attachment.
The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent which chance happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak, or a scene of the winter woods, or the presence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love, above all love, has leisure and expanse—he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover—he is sure—he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him: suffering and darkness cannot—death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth—he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore, or the shore of the sea, than he is of the fruition of his love, and of all perfection and beauty.
The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss—it is inevitable as life—it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these respond perfections, not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest, but in the rest themselves just the same. These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods—that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself—that it is profuse and impartial—that there is not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre of the earth or sea, without it—nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment, nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance,—one part does not need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ: the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and similes and sound.
Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual character, as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the laws that pursue and follow time. What is the purpose must surely be there, and the clue of it must be there; and the faintest indication is the indication of the best, and then becomes the clearest indication. Past and present and future are not disjoined, but joined. The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins, and stands them again on their feet: he says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realise you. He learns the lesson—he places himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions,—he finally ascends and finishes all: he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond—he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown: by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralise or make applications of morals,—he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both, and they are vital in his style and thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity,—nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse, and pierce intellectual depths, and give all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art. If you, have looked on him who has achieved it, you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the grey-gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood-horse, or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest poet has less a marked style, and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art,—I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or pourtray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side, and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of writers, savans, musicians, inventors, and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behaviour, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft or any craft, he is greatest for ever and for ever who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes one.
The messages of great poets to each man and woman are,—Come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you; what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another—and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and the power of the sea, and the motion of nature, and of the throes of human desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul which says,—Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere; master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all pain.
The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors: they shall be kosmos—without monopoly or secrecy—glad to pass anything to any one—hungry for equals night and day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege,—they shall be riches and privilege: they shall perceive who the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most nor the body most; and not be for the eastern states more than the western, or the northern states more than the southern.
Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset and remembrance are there—there the arms that lifted him first and brace him best—there he returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer, are not poets; but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter what rises or is uttered, they send the seed of the conception of it: of them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be love and content between the father and the son, and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells the soul of the poet: yet is president of itself always. The depths are fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are resumed— they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the special and supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it, departs as a dream. What has ever happened, what happens, and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all: they are sufficient for any case and for all cases—none to be hurried or retarded—any miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion, and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and women, and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.
Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are simply to be taken as they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candour. Upon this basis philosophy speculates, ever looking toward the poet, ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever comprehends less than that—whatever is less than the laws of light and of astronomical motion—or less than the laws that follow the thief, the liar, the glutton, and the drunkard, through this life, and doubtless afterward— or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of density, or the patient upheaving of strata—is of no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against some being or influence is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble characterise the great master:—spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the mass—he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To be under the general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are unspeakably great—that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children, and bring them up well—that to be is just as great as to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women exist; but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand idea,—to them it is confided, and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or degrade it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them a while, and, though they neither speak nor advise, you shall learn the faithful American lesson. Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat—the enemy triumphs—the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote, and lead-balls, do their work—the cause is asleep—the strong throats are choked with their own blood—the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other … and is liberty gone out of that place? No, never. When liberty goes, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go: it waits for all the rest to go—it is the last. When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away—when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators—when the boys are no more christened after the same, but christened after tyrants and traitors instead—when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted, and laws for informers and blood-money are sweet to the taste of the people— when I and you walk abroad upon the earth, stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship, and calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves— when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night, and surveys its experience, and has much ecstasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority—when those in all parts of these states who could easier realise the true American character, but do not yet[1]—when the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or Congress or the Presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people, whether they get the offices or no— when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer, with his hat unmoved from his head, and firm eyes, and a candid and generous heart—and when servility by town or state or the federal government, or any oppression on a large scale or small scale, can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion, against the smallest chance of escape—or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.
[Footnote 1: This clause is obviously imperfect in some respect: it is here reproduced verbatim from the American edition.]
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real body and soul and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts are showered over with light—the daylight is lit with more volatile light—also the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many- fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty: the multiplication-table its—old age its—the carpenter's trade its—the grand opera its: the huge-hulled clean-shaped New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatched beauty—the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs, and the commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of use—they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit. You large proprietor, they say, shall not realise or perceive more than any one else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it, having bought and paid for it. Any one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease, and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large. These American states, strong and healthy and accomplished, shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work, nothing outré can be allowed; but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and vigorous children are conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances. As soon as histories are properly told, there is no more need of romances.
The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by the justification of perfect personal candour. Then folks echo a new cheap joy and a divine voice leaping from their brains. How beautiful is candour! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candour. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass has deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade—and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person shall be discovered and despised—and that the soul has never been once fooled and never can be fooled—and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff—and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs— these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid gains, and did well for himself and his family, and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clapboards around and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil owned, and the easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlours, or shameless stuffing while others starve,—and all the loss of the bloom and odour of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naïveté, and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or majesty,—is the great fraud upon modern civilisation and forethought; blotching the surface and system which civilisation undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reached kisses of the soul. Still the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteemed life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when little and large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for immortality. What is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year or seventy or eighty years, to wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself—all else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is of consequence. Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in a day or a month, or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is always as great and real as the direct. The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body. Not one name of word or deed—not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rum-drinkers— not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder—no serpentine poison of those that seduce women—not the foolish yielding of women—not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means—not any nastiness of appetite— not any harshness of officers to men, or judges to prisoners, or fathers to sons, or sons to fathers, or of husbands to wives, or bosses to their boys—not of greedy looks or malignant wishes—nor any of the wiles practised by people upon themselves—ever is or ever can be stamped on the programme, but it is duly realised and returned, and that returned in further performances, and they returned again. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be anything else than the profoundest reason, whether it bring arguments to hand or no. No specification is necessary—to add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it for ever. If the savage or felon is wise, it is well—if the greatest poet or savant is wise, it is simply the same—if the President or chief justice is wise, it is the same—if the young mechanic or farmer is wise, it is no more or less. The interest will come round—all will come round. All the best actions of war and peace—all help given to relatives and strangers, and the poor and old and sorrowful, and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons—all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves—all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others take the seats of the boats—all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake—all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbours—all the vast sweet love and precious suffering of mothers—all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded—all the grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit—and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient nations unknown to us by name or date or location—all that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no—all that has at any time been well suggested out of the divine heart of man, or by the divinity of his mouth, or by the shaping of his great hands—and all that is well thought or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe, or on any of the wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here—or that is henceforth to be well thought or done by you, whoever you are, or by any one—these singly and wholly inured at their time, and inured now, and will inure always, to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring. Did you guess any of them lived only its moment? The world does not so exist— no parts, palpable or impalpable, so exist—no result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest mentionable spot coining a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot…. Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and glut of the soul, is not contemptuous of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular Sabbath or judgment-day, divides not the living from the dead or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act by its correlative, knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement—knows that the young man who composedly perilled his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself, while the man who has not perilled his life, and retains it to old age in riches and ease, has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning—and that only that person has no great prudence to learn who has learnt to prefer long-lived things, and favours body and soul the same, and perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again—and who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries nor avoids death.
The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides— and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself, and hang on its neck with incomparable love—and if he be not himself the age transfigured—and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour, and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—let him merge in the general run and wait his development…. Still, the final test of poems or any character or work remains. The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Has no new discovery in science, or arrival at superior planes of thought and judgment and behaviour, fixed him or his so that either can be looked down upon? Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middle-aged and the old think of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages, in common, and for all degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or woman, but rather a beginning. Has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and realise and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring— he brings neither cessation nor sheltered fatness and ease. The touch of him tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained. Thenceforward is no rest: they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. The companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars, and learns one of the meanings. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos. The elder encourages the younger, and shows him how: they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait a while—perhaps a generation or two,—dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place—the gangs of kosmos and prophets en masse shall take their place. A new order shall arise; and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend immortality, or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America, and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression—it is brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who, through all change of circumstance, was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance—it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of all who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith, self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible.
No great literature, nor any like style of behaviour or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions, or the treatment by bosses of employed people, nor executive detail, or detail of the army or navy, nor spirit of legislation, or courts or police, or tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, or the costumes of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart after that which passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea, for use to me, to-day, here? I know that what answers for me, an American, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part of my materials. Does this answer? or is it without reference to universal needs? or sprung of the needs of the less developed society of special ranks? or old needs of pleasure overlaid by modern science and forms? Does this acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought, for life and death? Will it help breed one good-shaped man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate? Does it improve manners? Is it for the nursing of the young of the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the breasts of the mother of many children? Has it too the old, ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? Does it look with the same love on the last-born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside of their own?
The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. The coward will surely pass away. The expectation of the vital and great can only be satisfied by the demeanour of the vital and great. The swarms of the polished, deprecating, and reflectors, and the polite, float off and leave no remembrance. America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome. The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite—they are not unappreciated—they fall in their place and do their work. The soul of the nation also does its work. No disguise can pass on it—no disguise can conceal from it. It rejects none, it permits all. Only toward as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is true, the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
[Script: Meantime, dear friend,
Farewell, Walt Whitman.]
1.
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok,[1] where I was born,
Well-begotten,
and raised by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands—lover of
populous pavements;
Dweller in Mannahatta,[2] city of ships, my
city,—or on southern savannas;
Or a soldier camped, or carrying
my knapsack and gun—or a miner in
California;
Or
rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the
spring;
Or
withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the
clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt and happy;
Aware of the
fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri—aware of mighty
Niagara
Aware
of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains—the hirsute and strong-
breasted
bull;
Of earths, rocks, fifth-month flowers, experienced—stars, rain,
snow, my
amaze;
Having
studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountain hawk's,
And heard
at dusk the unrivalled one, the hermit thrush, from the
swamp-cedars,
Solitary,
singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
2.
Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
Yourself, the present and
future lands, the indissoluble compacts, riches,
mystery,
Eternal
progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
This, then, is life;
Here is what has come to the surface after so
many throes and convulsions.
How curious! how real!
Under foot the divine soil—over head the sun.
See, revolving, the globe;
The ancestor-continents, away, grouped
together;
The present and future continents, north and south, with
the isthmus
between.
See, vast trackless spaces;
As in a dream, they change, they swiftly
fill;
Countless masses debouch upon them;
They are now covered
with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.
See, projected through time,
For me an audience interminable.
With firm and regular step they wend—they never stop,
Successions
of men, Americanos, a hundred millions;
One generation playing its
part, and passing on,
Another generation playing its part, and
passing on in its turn,
With faces turned sideways or backward
towards me, to listen,
With eyes retrospective towards me.
3.
Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;
Foremost! century
marches! Libertad! masses!
For you a programme of chants.
Chants of the prairies;
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and
down to the Mexican Sea;
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota;
Chants going forth from the centre, from
Kansas, and thence, equidistant,
Shooting in pulses of fire,
ceaseless, to vivify all.
4.
In the Year 80 of the States,[3]
My tongue, every atom of my blood,
formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here, from
parents the same, and their parents
the same,
I,
now thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease
not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
(Retiring back a while, sufficed at
what they are, but never forgotten.)
I harbour, for good or bad—I permit to speak, at every hazard—
Nature
now without check, with original energy.
5.
Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take them North!
Make
welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;
Surround
them, East and West! for they would surround you;
And you precedents!
connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly
with
you.
I conned old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters:
Now,
if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study me!
In the name of these States, shall I scorn the antique?
Why, these
are the children of the antique, to justify it.
6.
Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists, inventors,
governments long since,
Language-shapers on other shores,
Nations
once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not
proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted
hither:
I
have perused it—own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)
Think
nothing can ever be greater—nothing can ever deserve more than it
deserves;
Regarding
it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
I stand in my
place, with my own day, here.
Here lands female and male;
Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the
world—here the flame of
materials;
Here
spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,
The ever-tending,
the finale of visible forms;
The satisfier, after due long-waiting,
now advancing,
Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.
7.
The SOUL! For ever and for ever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer than water ebbs and flows.
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most
spiritual
poems;
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,
For
I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul, and of
immortality.
I will make a song for these States, that no one State may under any
circumstances
be subjected to another State;
And I will make a song that there
shall be comity by day and by night
between all the States,
and between any two of them;
And I will make a song for the ears of
the President, full of weapons with
menacing points,
And
behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:
And a song make I,
of the One formed out of all;
The fanged and glittering one whose
head is over all;
Resolute, warlike one, including and over all;
However
high the head of any else, that head is over all.
I will acknowledge contemporary lands;
I will trail the whole
geography of the globe, and salute courteously every
city
large and small;
And employments! I will put in my poems, that with
you is heroism, upon
land and sea—And I will report all
heroism from an American point
of view;
And
sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me—for I am determined
to
tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.
I will sing the song of companionship;
I will show what alone must
finally compact these;
I believe These are to found their own ideal
of manly love, indicating it
in me;
I
will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening
to
consume me;
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering
fires;
I will give them complete abandonment;
I will write the
evangel-poem of comrades and of love;
For who but I should understand
love, with all its sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet
of comrades?
8.
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;
I advance from the
people en masse in their own spirit;
Here is what sings
unrestricted faith.
Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;
I
make the poem of evil also—I commemorate that part also;
I am
myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—And I say there is
in
fact no evil,
Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you,
to the land, or to
me, as anything else.
I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate a Religion—I too
go
to the wars;
It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries
thereof, the winner's
pealing shouts;
Who
knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above everything.
Each is not for its own sake; I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's sake.
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;
None has ever yet
adored or worshipped half enough;
None has begun to think how divine
he himself is, and how certain the
future is.
I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their
religion;
Otherwise
there is no real and permanent grandeur;
Nor character, nor life
worthy the name, without religion;
Nor land, nor man or woman,
without religion.
9.
What are you doing, young man?
Are you so earnest—so given up to
literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities,
politics, points?
Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?
It is well—Against such I say not a word—I am their poet also;
But
behold! such swiftly subside—burnt up for religion's sake;
For
not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of
the
earth,
Any more than such are to religion.
10.
What do you seek, so pensive and silent?
What do you need, Camerado?
Dear
son! do you think it is love?
Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or son! It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—and yet it satisfies—it is great; But there is something else very great—it makes the whole coincide; It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands, sweeps and provides for all.
11.
Know you: to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,
The
following chants, each for its kind, I sing.
My comrade!
For you, to share with me, two greatnesses—and a third
one, rising
inclusive and more resplendent,
The
greatness of Love and Democracy—and the greatness of Religion.
Mélange mine own! the unseen and the seen;
Mysterious ocean
where the streams empty;
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and
flickering around me;
Living beings, identities, now doubtless near
us in the air, that we know
not of;
Contact
daily and hourly that will not release me;
These selecting—these, in
hints, demanded of me.
Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me
Has winded
and twisted around me that which holds me to him,
Any more than I am
held to the heavens, to the spiritual world,
And to the identities of
the Gods, my lovers, faithful and true,
After what they have done to
me, suggesting themes.
O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O divine average!
O
warblings under the sun—ushered, as now, or at noon, or setting!
O
strain, musical, flowing through ages—now reaching hither,
I
take to your reckless and composite chords—I add to them, and cheerfully
pass
them forward.
12.
As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk, I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the briars, hatching her brood. I have seen the he-bird also; I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully singing.
And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not
there
only,
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the
echoes;
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge
transmitted, and gift occult, for those being born.
13.
Democracy!
Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and
joyfully singing.
Ma femme!
For the brood beyond us and of us,
For
those who belong here, and those to come,
I, exultant, to be ready
for them, will now shake out carols stronger and
haughtier
than have ever yet been heard upon earth.
I will make the songs of passion, to give them their way, And your songs, outlawed offenders—for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any.
I will make the true poem of riches,— To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and goes forward, and is not dropped by death.
I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all—and I will be the bard
of
personality;
And I will show of male and female that either is but
the equal of the
other;
And
I will show that there is no imperfection in the present—and can be
none
in the future;
And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody, it
may be turned to
beautiful results—and I will show that nothing can
happen more beautiful
than death;
And
I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,
And
that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as
profound
as any.
I will not make poems with reference to parts;
But I will make
leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says, thoughts, with
reference
to ensemble:
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with
reference to all
days;
And
I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a poem, but has reference
to
the soul;
Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I
find there is no
one, nor any particle of one, but has
reference to the soul.
14.
Was somebody asking to see the Soul? See! your own shape and countenance—persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.
All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:
How can the real
body ever die, and be buried?
Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real body,
Item for item,
it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners, and pass to
fitting
spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to
the moment of
death.
Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning,
the
main concern,
Any more than a man's substance and life, or a woman's
substance and life,
return in the body and the soul,
Indifferently
before death and after death.
Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern—and includes and is the soul; Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it.
15.
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.
Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for
one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
Live
words—words to the lands.
O the lands! interlinked,
food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of
cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and
hemp! Land of the apple and
grape!
Land
of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! Land of those
sweet-aired
interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy
house of adobie!
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where
the south-west
Colorado winds!
Land
of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!
Land of Ontario,
Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land!
Land of Vermont and
Connecticut!
Land
of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and
sailors! Fishermen's land!
Inextricable lands! the clutched together!
the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger
brothers! the bony-limbed!
The great women's land! the feminine! the
experienced sisters and the
inexperienced sisters!
Far-breathed
land! Arctic-braced! Mexican-breezed! the diverse! the
compact!
The
Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
O all and each
well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any rate
include you
all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you—not from one,
any sooner than another!
O Death! O!—for all that, I am yet of you unseen, this hour, with
irrepressible
love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,
Splashing my
bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, on Paumanok's
sands,
Crossing
the prairies—dwelling again in Chicago—dwelling in every town,
Observing
shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to the
orators and the oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the
States, as during life[4]—each man and woman my
neighbour,
The
Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,
The
Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me—and I yet with any of them;
Yet
upon the plains west of the spinal river—yet in my house of adobie,
Yet
returning eastward—yet in the Sea-Side State, or in Maryland,
Yet
Canadian cheerily braving the winter—the snow and ice welcome to me,
or
mounting the Northern Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;
Yet a true son
either of Maine, or of the Granite State,[5] or of the
Narragansett
Bay State, or of the Empire State;[6]
Yet sailing to other shores to
annex the same—yet welcoming every new
brother;
Hereby
applying these leaves to the new ones, from the hour they unite with
the
old ones;
Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion and
equal—coming
personally to you now;
Enjoining
you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
16.
With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on.
For your life,
adhere to me;
Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you and
toughen you;
I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent
to give myself to
you—but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
No dainty dolce affettuoso
I;
Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have arrived,
To
be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of the universe;
For
such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
17.
On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still
the Present I raise aloft—still the Future of the States I harbinge,
glad
and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the
red aborigines.
The red aborigines! Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names; Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla; Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names.
18.
O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments,
turbulent, quick, and audacious;
A world primal again—vistas of
glory, incessant and branching;
A new race, dominating previous ones,
and grander far, with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and
religions, new inventions and arts.
These my voice announcing—I will sleep no more, but arise; You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.
19.
See! steamers steaming through my poems! See in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; See in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own shores; See pastures and forests in my poems—See animals, wild and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, countless herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly grass; See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce; See the many-cylindered steam printing-press—See the electric telegraph, stretching across the Continent, from the Western Sea to Manhattan; See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American, Europe reaching—pulses of Europe, duly returned; See the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing the steam-whistle; See ploughmen, ploughing farms—See miners, digging mines—See the numberless factories; See mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—See, from among them, superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working dresses; See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and night; Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the hints come at last.
20.
O Camerado close!
O you and me at last—and us two only.
O a
word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something ecstatic and
undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph—and you shall also;
O
hand in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one more desirer and lover!
O
to haste, firm holding—to haste, haste on, with me.
[Footnote 1: Paumanok is the native name of Long Island, State of New
York.
It presents a fish-like shape on the map.]
[Footnote 2: Mannahatta, or Manhattan, is (as many readers will know) New
York.]
[Footnote 3: 1856.]
[Footnote 4: The poet here contemplates himself as yet living spiritually and in his poems after the death of the body, still a friend and brother to all present and future American lands and persons.]
[Footnote 5: New Hampshire.]
[Footnote 6: New York State.]
AMERICA always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida's green
peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana!
Always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California's golden hills
and hollows—and the silver mountains of
New Mexico! Always
soft-breathed Cuba!
Always the vast slope drained by the Southern
Sea—inseparable with the
slopes drained by the Eastern
and Western Seas!
The area the eighty-third year of these
States[1]—the three and a half
millions of square miles;
The
eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main—the
thirty
thousand miles of river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct
families, and the same number of dwellings—
Always these, and
more, branching forth into numberless branches;
Always the free range
and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy!
Always the
prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada,
the
snows;
Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the
belt stringing
the huge oval lakes;
Always
the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—
the
habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
All
sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,
All
characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed.
Through
Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering.
On interior
rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats
wooding
up:
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the
valleys of the
Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the
Roanoke and Delaware;
In their northerly wilds beasts of prey
haunting the Adirondacks the
hills—or lapping the Saginaw
waters to drink;
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently; In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done—they rest standing—they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed—the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the tempest dashes. On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of the elk; In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree-tops, Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria—the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat; Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing plants, parasites, with coloured flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp of Georgia waggoners, just after dark—the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, Thirty or forty great waggons—the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees—the flames—also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast—the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery—the large sweep- seines—the windlasses on shore worked by horses—the clearing, curing, and packing houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees—There are the turpentine works, There are the negroes at work, in good health—the ground in all directions is covered with pine straw. —In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse. On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree. —Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target company from an excursion returning home at evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play—or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around. California life—the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude costume—the staunch California friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path; Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins—drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts—cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves. Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love, one Dilation or Pride. —In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines—the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endorsement, The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, The setting-out of the war-party—the long and stealthy march, The single-file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise and slaughter of enemies. —All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes, of these States— reminiscences, all institutions, All these States, compact—Every square mile of these States, without excepting a particle—you also—me also. Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the fall-traveller southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside; The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the capstan; Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the shine is. The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the copiousness—the individuality of the States, each for itself—the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass, lever, pulley— All certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity; In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands! O lands! O all so dear to me—what you are (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is. Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding, Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amusement—And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves—the body of the flock feed—the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels—And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—And I plunging at the hunters, cornered and desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands—my body no more inevitably united part to part, and made one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral plains, Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil—these me,— These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clue of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?
[Footnote 1: 1858-59.]
I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and
for
these chants—and now I have found it.
It
is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept
nor
reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is in
the present—it is this earth to-day;
It is in Democracy—in this
America—the Old World also;
It is the life of one man or one
woman to-day, the average man of to-day;
It is languages, social
customs, literatures, arts;
It is the broad show of artificial
things, ships, machinery, politics,
creeds, modern
improvements, and the interchange of nations,
All for the average man
of to-day.
Years of the unperformed! your horizon rises—I see it part away for more
august
dramas;
I see not America only—I see not only Liberty's nation but
other nations
embattling;
I
see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the
solidarity
of races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the
world's stage;
Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts
suitable to them
closed?
I
see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law
by
her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste;
—What
historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
I see men
marching and countermarching by swift millions!
I see the frontiers
and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken;
I see the landmarks
of European kings removed;
I see this day the People beginning their
landmarks, all others give way;
Never were such sharp questions asked
as this day;
Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more
like a God.
Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His
daring foot is on land and sea everywhere—he colonises the Pacific,
the
archipelagoes;
With the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the
newspaper, the wholesale
engines of war,
With
these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography,
all
lands;
—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you,
passing under the
seas?
Are all nations communing? is there going
to be but one heart to the globe?
Is humanity forming en masse?—for
lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim;
The earth, restive, confronts a
new era, perhaps a general divine war;
No one knows what will happen
next—such portents fill the days and nights.
Years prophetical!
the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it,
is
full of phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their
shapes around me;
This incredible rush and heat—this strange ecstatic
fever of dreams, O
years!
Your
dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I
sleep
or wake!)
The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in
shadow behind me,
The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance,
advance upon me.
Of these years I sing, How they pass through convulsed pains, as through parturitions; How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity; How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States—or see freedom or spirituality—or hold any faith in results. But I see the athletes—and I see the results glorious and inevitable—and they again leading to other results; How the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun; And how the States are complete in themselves—And how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and transitions. And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic masses, too, serve—and how every fact serves, And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.
1.
Come closer to me;
Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess;
Yield
closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.
This is unfinished business with me—How is it with you?
(I was
chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)
Male and Female! I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.
American masses! I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me—I know that it is good for you to do so.
2.
This is the poem of occupations;
In the labour of engines and trades,
and the labour of fields, I find the
developments,
And
find the eternal meanings.
Workmen and Workwomen!
Were all
educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me,
what
would it amount to?
Were I as the head teacher, charitable
proprietor, wise statesman, what
would it amount to?
Were
I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?
The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms;
A man like
me, and never the usual terms.
Neither a servant nor a master am I;
I take no sooner a large price
than a small price—I will have my own,
whoever enjoys
me;
I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.
If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop; If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend; If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome; If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake; If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table; If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her—why I often meet strangers in the street, and love them.
Why, what have you thought of yourself?
Is it you then that thought
yourself less?
Is it you that thought the President greater than you?
Or
the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?
Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a
thief,
Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;
Or
from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw
your
name in print,
Do you give in that you are any less immortal?
3.
Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable
and
untouching;
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle
whether you are
alive or no;
I
own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.
Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see, And all else behind or through them.
The wife—and she is not one jot less than the husband;
The
daughter—and she is just as good as the son;
The mother—and she
is every bit as much as the father.
Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,
Young
fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,
Sailor-men,
merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,
All these I see—but nigher and
farther the same I see;
None shall escape me, and none shall wish to
escape me.
I bring what you much need, yet always have,
Not money,
amours, dress, eating, but as good;
I send no agent or medium, offer
no representative of value, but offer the
value itself.
There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;
It is
not what is printed, preached, discussed—it eludes discussion and
print;
It
is not to be put in a book—it is not in this book;
It is for
you, whoever you are—it is no farther from you than your hearing
and
sight are from you;
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest—it
is ever provoked by them.
You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it; You may read the President's Message, and read nothing about it there; Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily papers or the weekly papers, Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock.
4.
The sun and stars that float in the open air;
The apple-shaped earth,
and we upon it—surely the drift of them is
something
grand!
I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it
is
happiness,
And
that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot,
or
reconnoissance,
And that it is not something which by luck may turn
out well for us, and
without luck must be a failure for us,
And
not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.
The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed
that
with perfect complaisance devours all things, the
endless pride and
outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and
sorrows,
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the
wonders that
fill each minute of time for ever,
What
have you reckoned them for, camerado?
Have you reckoned them for a
trade, or farm-work? or for the profits of a
store?
Or
to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a
lady's
leisure?
Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture? Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung? Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans? Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts? Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names? Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture itself?
Old institutions—these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures—will we rate them so high? Will we rate our cash and business high?—I have no objection; I rate them as high as the highest—then a child born of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate.
We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand;
I do not say
they are not grand and good, for they are;
I am this day just as much
in love with them as you;
Then I am in love with you, and with all my
fellows upon the earth.
We consider Bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine;
I
say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still;
It
is not they who give the life—it is you who give the life;
Leaves
are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they
are
shed out of you.
5.
When the psalm sings, instead of the singer;
When the script
preaches, instead of the preacher;
When the pulpit descends and goes,
instead of the carver that carved the
supporting desk;
When
I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch
my
body back again;
When a university course convinces, like a
slumbering woman and child
convince;
When
the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's
daughter;
When
warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly
companions;
I
intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and
women
like you.
The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you
are;
The President is there in the White House for you—it is not you
who are
here for him;
The
Secretaries act in their bureaus for you—not you here for them;
The
Congress convenes every twelfth month for you;
Laws, courts, the
forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and
coming
of commerce and mails, are all for you.
List close, my scholars dear!
All doctrines, all politics and
civilisation, exsurge from you;
All sculpture and monuments, and
anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied
in you;
The
gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the records reach, is
in
you this hour, and myths and tales the same;
If you were not
breathing and walking here, where would they all be?
The most
renowned poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be
vacuums.
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it; Did you think it was in the white or grey stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?
All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the
instruments;
It
is not the violins and the cornets—it is not the oboe nor the beating
drums,
nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet
romanza—nor
that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's
chorus,
It
is nearer and farther than they.
6.
Will the whole come back then?
Can each see signs of the best by a
look in the looking-glass? is there
nothing greater or more?
Does
all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen soul?
Strange and hard that paradox true I give;
Objects gross and the
unseen Soul are one.
House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;
Blacksmithing,
glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle-
dressing,
Ship-joining,
dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks
by
flaggers,
The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln
and brick-kiln,
Coal-mines, and all that is down there,—the lamps in
the darkness, echoes,
songs, what meditations, what vast
native thoughts looking through
smutched faces,
Ironworks,
forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks—men around
feeling
the melt with huge crowbars—lumps of ore, the due
combining
of ore, limestone, coal—the blast-furnace and the
puddling-furnace,
the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last—
the
rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean
shaped
T-rail for railroads;
Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the
sugar-house, steam-saws, the
great mills and factories;
Stone-cutting,
shapely trimmings for façades, or window or door lintels—
the
mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb, Oakum,
the
oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling vault-
cement,
and the fire under the kettle,
The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook,
the saw and buck of the sawyer, the
mould of the moulder, the
working knife of the butcher, the ice-
saw, and all the work
with ice,
The implements for daguerreotyping—the tools of the rigger,
grappler,
sail-maker, block-maker,
Goods
of gutta-percha, papier-mâché, colours, brushes, brush-making,
glaziers'
implements,
The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments,
the decanter and
glasses, the shears and flat-iron,
The
awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and
stool,
the writing-pen of quill or metal—the making of all sorts
of
edged tools,
The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything
that is done by
brewers, also by wine-makers, also
vinegar-makers,
Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making,
rope-twisting, distilling,
sign-painting, lime-burning,
cotton-picking—electro-plating,
electrotyping,
stereotyping,
Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,
ploughing-machines,
thrashing-machines, steam waggons,
The cart of the carman, the
omnibus, the ponderous dray;
Pyrotechny, letting off coloured
fireworks at night, fancy figures and
jets,
Beef
on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the
butcher
in his killing-clothes,
The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer,
the hog-hook, the scalder's tub,
gutting, the cutter's
cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous
winter-work of
pork-packing,
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice—the
barrels and the half
and quarter barrels, the loaded barges,
the high piles on wharves
and levees,
The
men, and the work of the men, on railroads, coasters, fish-boats,
canals;
The
daily routine of your own or any man's life—the shop, yard, store, or
factory;
These
shows all near you by day and night-workmen! whoever you are, your
daily
life!
In that and them the heft of the heaviest—in them far more than
you
estimated, and far less also;
In
them realities for you and me—in them poems for you and me;
In
them, not yourself—you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of
estimation;
In
them the development good—in them, all themes and hints.
I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile—I do not advise you to
stop;
I do not say leadings you thought great are not great;
But I
say that none lead to greater than those lead to.
7.
Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
In things best
known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,
In folks
nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest;
Happiness,
knowledge, not in another place, but this place—not for another
hour,
but this hour;
Man in the first you see or touch—always in friend,
brother, nighest
neighbour—Woman in mother, sister, wife;
The
popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,
You
workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine and strong
life,
And
all else giving place to men and women like you.
1.
Weapon, shapely, naked, wan;
Head from the mother's bowels drawn!
Wooded
flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
Grey-blue leaf
by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
Resting
the grass amid and upon,
To be leaned, and to lean on.
Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes—masculine trades, sights
and
sounds;
Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music;
Fingers of
the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.
2.
Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind;
Welcome are lands
of pine and oak;
Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig;
Welcome
are lands of gold;
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize—welcome those
of the grape;
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice;
Welcome are
cotton-lands—welcome those of the white potato and sweet
potato;
Welcome
are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies;
Welcome the rich
borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,
Welcome the measureless
grazing-lands—welcome the teeming soil of
orchards,
flax, honey, hemp;
Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced
lands;
Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands;
Lands
of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores;
Lands of coal, copper,
lead, tin, zinc;
LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe!
3.
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;
The sylvan hut,
the vine over the doorway, the space cleared for a garden,
The
irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is
lulled,
The
wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
The thought
of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam-ends, and
the
cutting away of masts;
The sentiment of the huge timbers of
old-fashioned houses and barns;
The remembered print or narrative,
the voyage at a venture of men,
families, goods,
The
disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
The voyage of those who
sought a New England and found it—the outset
anywhere,
The
settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
The slow
progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
The beauty of
all adventurous and daring persons,
The beauty of wood-boys and
wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces,
The beauty of
independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
The
American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience
of
restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling through random
types, the
solidification;
The
butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops,
the
raftsman, the pioneer,
Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in
the woods, stripes of snow on
the limbs of trees, the
occasional snapping,
The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the
merry song, the natural life
of the woods, the strong day's
work,
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk,
the bed of
hemlock boughs, and the bearskin;
—The
house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
The preparatory
jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
The hoist-up of beams, the
push of them in their places, laying them
regular, Setting
the studs by their tenons in the mortises,
according as they
were prepared,
The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the
men, their curved
limbs,
Bending,
standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts
and
braces,
The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,
The
floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed,
Their postures
bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
The echoes resounding
through the vacant building;
The huge store-house carried up in the
city, well under way,
The six framing men, two in the middle, and two
at each end, carefully
bearing on their shoulders a heavy
stick for a cross-beam,
The crowded line of masons with trowels in
their right hands, rapidly
laying the long side-wall, two
hundred feet from front to rear,
The flexible rise and fall of backs,
the continual click of the trowels
striking the bricks,
The
bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike in its place, and
set
with a knock of the trowel-handle,
The piles of materials, the mortar
on the mortar-boards, and the steady
replenishing by the
hod-men;
—Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of
well-grown apprentices,
The swing of their axes on the square-hewed
log, shaping it toward the
shape of a mast,
The
brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,
The
butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,
The
limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes;
The
constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays
against
the sea;
—The city fireman—the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the
close-packed
square,
The
arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
The
strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line, the rise
and
fall of the arms forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic blue-white
jets—the bringing to bear of the hooks and
ladders, and
their execution,
The crash and cut-away of connecting woodwork, or
through floors, if the
fire smoulders under them,
The
crowd with their lit faces, watching—the glare and dense shadows;
—The
forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron after him,
The
maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
The
chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the edge
with
his thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in
the socket;
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past
users also,
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and
engineers,
The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
The
Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
The antique European warrior
with his axe in combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the
helmeted head,
The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush of
friend and foe
thither,
The
siege of revolted lieges determined for liberty,
The summons to
surrender, the battering at castle-gates, the truce and
parley;
The
sack of an old city in its time,
The bursting in of mercenaries and
bigots tumultuously and disorderly,
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness,
madness,
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of
women in the gripe
of brigands,
Craft
and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
The
hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
The list of all executive deeds
and words, just or unjust,
The power of personality, just or unjust.
4.
Muscle and pluck for ever!
What invigorates life invigorates death,
And
the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no
more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and
of man encloses as
much as the delicatesse
of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures? Do you think the great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best- built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chefs-d'oeuvre of engineering, forts, armaments?
Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves;
They fill their
hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play
for them;
The
show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till
one flash of defiance.
The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman; If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
5.
The place where the great city stands is not the place of stretched wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce, Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers, or the anchor-lifters of the departing, Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, Nor the place of the best libraries and schools—nor the place where money is plentiest, Nor the place of the most numerous population.
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards;
Where
the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in return,
and
understands them;
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the
common words and deeds;
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is
in its place;
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws;
Where
the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases;
Where the populace
rise at once against the never-ending audacity of
elected
persons;
Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the
whistle of death
pours its sweeping and unripped waves;
Where
outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside
authority;
Where
the citizen is always the head and ideal—and President, Mayor,
Governor,
and what not, are agents for pay;
Where children are taught to be
laws to themselves, and to depend on
themselves;
Where
equanimity is illustrated in affairs;
Where speculations on the Soul
are encouraged;
Where women walk in public processions in the
streets, the same as the men;
Where they enter the public assembly
and take places the same as the men;
Where the city of the
faithfullest friends stands;
Where the city of the cleanliness of the
sexes stands;
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands;
Where
the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,—
There the great
city stands.
6.
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or woman's look!
All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being appears;
A strong
being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of the
universe;
When
he or she appears, materials are overawed,
The dispute on the Soul
stops,
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or
laid away.
What is your money-making now? What can it do now?
What is your
respectability now?
What are your theology, tuition, society,
traditions, statute-books, now?
Where are your jibes of being now?
Where
are your cavils about the Soul now?
Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid?
Riches, opinions,
politics, institutions, to part obediently from the path
of
one man or woman!
The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under
the foot-soles of one
man or woman!
7.
A sterile landscape covers the ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance; There is the mine, there are the miners; The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the hammersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers; What always served and always serves is at hand.
Than this nothing has better served—it has served all:
Served
the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek;
Served
in building the buildings that last longer than any;
Served the
Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee;
Served the
mound-raiser on the Mississippi—served those whose relics
remain
in Central America;
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with
unhewn pillars, and the
druids;
Served
the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills
of
Scandinavia;
Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite
walls rough
sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships,
ocean-waves;
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths—served
the pastoral tribes
and nomads;
Served
the long long distant Kelt—served the hardy pirates of the Baltic;
Served,
before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia;
Served
the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of
those
for war;
Served all great works on land, and all great works on the
sea;
For the mediaeval ages, and before the mediaeval ages;
Served
not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.
8.
I see the European headsman;
He stands masked, clothed in red, with
huge legs and strong naked arms,
And leans on a ponderous axe.
Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman?
Whose is that
blood upon you, so wet and sticky?
I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs;
I see from the scaffolds the
descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached
ministers, rejected
kings,
Rivals,
traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest.
I see those who in any land have died for the good cause;
The seed is
spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out;
(Mind you, O
foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)
I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe;
Both blade and
helve are clean;
They spirt no more the blood of European nobles—they
clasp no more the
necks of queens.
I see the headsman withdraw and become useless;
I see the scaffold
untrodden and mouldy—I see no longer any axe upon it;
I see the
mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race—the
newest,
largest race.
9.
America! I do not vaunt my love for you;
I have what I have.
The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid utterances;
They
tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flail,
plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb,
lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ,
exhibition house, library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony,
window, shutter, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon,
staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
wedge, rounce,
Chair,
tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest,
stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
Capitols of States,
and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in avenues,
hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or
sick,
Manhattan
steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas.
The shapes arise! Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbours them, Cutters-down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec, Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia, Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande—friendly gatherings, the characters and fun, Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river—dwellers on coasts and off coasts, Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets;
Shapes
of the two-threaded tracks of railroads;
Shapes of the sleepers of
bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of
barges, tows, lake craft, river craft.
The shapes arise! Shipyards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a bay and by-place, The live-oak kelsons, the pine-planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees, The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside, The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.
10.
The shapes arise! The shape measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained, The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud; The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride's bed; The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle; The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet; The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly parents and children, The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman, The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work.
The shapes arise!
The shape of the prisoner's place in the
court-room, and of him or her
seated in the place;
The
shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the young rum-drinker and the
old
rum-drinker;
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod, by
sneaking footsteps;
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous
unwholesome couple;
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish
winnings and losings;
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted
and sentenced murderer, the
murderer with haggard face and
pinioned arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and
white-lipped crowd,
the sickening dangling of the rope.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances;
The
door passing the dissevered friend, flushed and in haste;
The door
that admits good news and bad news;
The door whence the son left
home, confident and puffed up;
The door he entered again from a long
and scandalous absence, diseased,
broken down, without
innocence, without means.
11.
Her shape arises,
She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than
ever;
The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and
soiled;
She knows the thoughts as she passes—nothing is concealed
from her;
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor;
She
is the best beloved—it is without exception—she has no reason to
fear,
and she does not fear;
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, smutty
expressions, are idle to her as
she passes;
She
is silent—she is possessed of herself—they do not offend her;
She
receives them as the laws of nature receive them—she is strong,
She
too is a law of nature—there is no law stronger than she is.
12.
The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy, total result of centuries;
Shapes,
ever projecting other shapes;
Shapes of a hundred Free States,
begetting another hundred;
Shapes of turbulent manly cities;
Shapes
of the women fit for these States,
Shapes of the friends and
home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth, and braced
with the whole earth.
1.
With antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations
of past ages:
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be
here, as I am;
With Egypt, India, Phoenicia, Greece, and Rome;
With
the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique
maritime ventures,—with laws, artisanship, wars, and
journeys;
With
the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;
With the
sale of slaves—with enthusiasts—with the troubadour, the
crusader,
and the monk;
With those old continents whence we have come to this
new continent;
With the fading kingdoms and kings over there;
With
the fading religions and priests;
With the small shores we look back
to from our own large and present
shores;
With
countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these years;
You
and Me arrived—America arrived, and making this year;
This
year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.
2.
O but it is not the years—it is I—it is You;
We touch all
laws, and tally all antecedents;
We are the skald, the oracle, the
monk, and the knight—we easily include
them, and more;
We
stand amid time, beginningless and endless—we stand amid evil and good;
All
swings around us—there is as much darkness as light;
The very
sun swings itself and its system of planets around us:
Its sun, and
its again, all swing around us.
3.
As for me, (torn, stormy, even as I, amid these vehement days;)
I
have the idea of all, and am all, and believe in all;
I believe
materialism is true, and spiritualism is true—I reject no part.
Have I forgotten any part?
Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I
give you recognition.
I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews;
I adopt each
theory, myth, god, and demi-god;
I see that the old accounts, bibles,
genealogies, are true, without
exception;
I
assert that all past days were what they should have been;
And that
they could nohow have been better than they were,
And that to-day is
what it should be—and that America is,
And that to-day and
America could nohow be better than they are.
4.
In the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Past,
And
in the name of these States, and in your and my name, the Present time.
I know that the past was great, and the future will be great,
And I
know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,
For the sake
of him I typify—for the common average man's sake—your sake,
if
you are he;
And that where I am, or you are, this present day, there
is the centre of
all days, all races,
And
there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever come of races and
days,
or ever will come.
1.
O take my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and
sounds!
Such joined unended links, each hooked to the next!
Each
answering all—each sharing the earth with all.
What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding?
What
climes? what persons and lands are here?
Who are the infants? some
playing, some slumbering?
Who are the girls? who are the married
women?
Who are the three old men going slowly with their arms about
each others'
necks?
What
rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
What are the
mountains called that rise so high in the mists?
What myriads of
dwellings are they, filled with dwellers?
2.
Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens;
Asia, Africa, Europe,
are to the east—America is provided for in the west;
Banding
the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
Curiously north and
south turn the axis-ends;
Within me is the longest day—the sun wheels
in slanting rings—it does not
set for months.
Stretched
in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the
horizon,
and sinks again;
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plants, volcanoes,
groups,
Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
3.
What do you hear, Walt Whitman?
I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife singing;
I hear in
the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the
day;
I
hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky,
hunting
on hills;
I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild
horse;
I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut
shade, to the
rebeck and guitar;
I
hear continual echoes from the Thames;
I hear fierce French liberty
songs;
I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of
old poems;
I hear the Virginian plantation chorus of negroes, of a
harvest night, in
the glare of pine-knots;
I
hear the strong barytone of the 'long-shore-men of Mannahatta;
I hear
the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and singing;
I hear the screams
of the water-fowl of solitary north-west lakes;
I hear the rustling
pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and
grass with
the showers of their terrible clouds;
I hear the Coptic refrain,
toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast
of the black
venerable vast mother, the Nile;
I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on
the streams of Canada;
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and
the bells of the mule;
I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top
of the mosque;
I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their
churches—I hear the
responsive bass and soprano;
I
hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired Irish grandparents,
when
they learn the death of their grandson;
I hear the cry of the
Cossack, and the sailor's voice, putting to sea at
Okotsk;
I
hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on—as the husky
gangs
pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-
chains
and ankle-chains;
I hear the entreaties of women tied up for
punishment—I hear the sibilant
whisk of thongs through
the air;
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;
I hear
the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the
Romans;
I
hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God,
the
Christ;
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves,
wars, adages,
transmitted safely to this day from poets who
wrote three thousand
years ago.
4.
What do you see, Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one
after another salute you?
I see a great round wonder rolling through the air: I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories, palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads, upon the surface; I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers are sleeping—and the sun-lit part on the other side; I see the curious silent change of the light and shade; I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me.
I see plenteous waters;
I see mountain-peaks—I see the sierras of
Andes and Alleghanies, where
they range;
I
see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts;
I see the
Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds;
I see the Styrian Alps, and
the Karnac Alps;
I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians—and to the
north the Dofrafields,
and off at sea Mount Hecla;
I
see Vesuvius and Etna—I see the Anahuacs;
I see the Mountains
of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red
Mountains of
Madagascar;
I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of
Cordilleras;
I see the vast deserts of Western America;
I see the
Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;
I see huge dreadful Arctic and
Anarctic icebergs;
I see the superior oceans and the inferior
ones—the Atlantic and Pacific,
the sea of Mexico, the
Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
The Japan waters, those of
Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of
Guinea,
The
spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay
of
Biscay,
The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of
its islands,
The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,
The
White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.
I behold the mariners of the
world;
Some are in storms—some in the night, with the watch on the
look-out;
Some drifting helplessly—some with contagious diseases.
I behold the sail and steam ships of the world, some in clusters in port,
some
on their voyages;
Some double the Cape of Storms—some Cape
Verde,—others Cape Guardafui,
Bon, or Bajadore;
Others
Dondra Head—others pass the Straits of Sunda—others Cape Lopatka—
others
Behring's Straits;
Others Cape Horn—others the Gulf of Mexico, or
along Cuba or Hayti—others
Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay;
Others
pass the Straits of Dover—others enter the Wash—others the Firth
of
Solway—others round Cape Clear—others the Land's End;
Others
traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld;
Others add to the exits and
entrances at Sandy Hook;
Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar,
or the Dardanelles;
Others sternly push their way through the
northern winter-packs;
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena:
Others
the Niger or the Congo—others the Indus, the Burampooter and
Cambodia;
Others
wait at the wharves of Manhattan, steamed up, ready to start;
Wait,
swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia;
Wait at Liverpool,
Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburg,
Bremen,
Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen;
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro,
Panama;
Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Charleston, New
Orleans, Galveston, San Francisco.
5.
I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth;
I see them welding
State to State, city to city, through North America;
I see them in
Great Britain, I see them in Europe;
I see them in Asia and in Africa.
I see the electric telegraphs of the earth; I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains, passions, of my race.
I see the long river-stripes of the earth;
I see where the
Mississippi flows—I see where the Columbia flows;
I see the
Great River, and the Falls of Niagara;
I see the Amazon and the
Paraguay;
I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow
River, the
Yiang-tse, and the Pearl;
I
see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the
Guadalquivir
flow;
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder;
I
see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po;
I
see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.
6.
I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that
of
India;
I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.
I
see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human
forms;
I
see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth—oracles,
sacrificers,
brahmins, sabians, lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters;
I see where
druids walked the groves of Mona—I see the mistletoe and
vervain;
I
see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods—I see the old
signifiers.
I see Christ once more eating the bread of His last supper, in the midst of youths and old persons: I see where the strong divine young man, the Hercules, toiled faithfully and long, and then died; I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limbed Bacchus; I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head; I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country—I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes in his turn.
7.
I see the battlefields of the earth—grass grows upon them, and blossoms
and
corn;
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.
I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth; I see the places of the sagas; I see pine-trees and fir-frees torn by northern blasts; I see granite boulders and cliffs—I see green meadows and lakes; I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors; I see them raised high with stones, by the marge of restless oceans, that the dead men's spirits, when they wearied of their quiet graves, might rise up through the mounds, and gaze on the tossing billows, and be refreshed by storms, immensity, liberty, action.
I see the steppes of Asia;
I see the tumuli of Mongolia—I see the
tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs;
I see the nomadic tribes, with herds
of oxen and cows;
I see the table-lands notched with ravines—I see
the jungles and deserts;
I see the camel, the wild steed, the
bustard, the fat-tailed sheep, the
antelope, and the
burrowing-wolf.
I see the highlands of Abyssinia;
I see flocks of goats feeding, and
see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,
And see fields of teff-wheat, and
see the places of verdure and gold.
I see the Brazilian vaquero;
I see the Bolivian ascending Mount
Sorata;
I see the Wacho crossing the plains—I see the incomparable
rider of horses
with his lasso on his arm;
I see over the pampas
the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.
8.
I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited; I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Paumanok, quite still; I see ten fishermen waiting—they discover now a thick school of mossbonkers—they drop the joined sein-ends in the water, The boats separate—they diverge and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers; The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore, Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats—others stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, poised on strong legs; The boats are partly drawn up—the water slaps against them; On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green- backed spotted mossbonkers.
9.
I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering about the banks of
Moingo,
and about Lake Pepin;
He has heard the quail and beheld the
honey-bee, and sadly prepared to
depart.
I see the regions of snow and ice;
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and
the Finn;
I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance;
I
see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs;
I see the
porpess-hunters—I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and
the
North Atlantic;
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of
Switzerland—I mark the
long winters, and the isolation.
I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random a part of them;
I
am a real Parisian;
I am a habitant of Vienna, St. Petersburg,
Berlin, Constantinople;
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne;
I am
of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
I am of Madrid,
Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne,
Frankfort,
Stuttgart, Turin, Florence;
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw—or
northward in Christiania or
Stockholm—or in Siberian
Irkutsk—or in some street in Iceland;
I descend upon all those
cities, and rise from them again.
10.
I see vapours exhaling from unexplored countries; I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned splint, the fetish, and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns;
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne,
Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia;
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton,
Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo;
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the
Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their
huts;
I
see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo;
I see the picturesque crowds at
the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat;
I see Teheran—I see Muscat
and Medina, and the intervening sands—I see
the
caravans toiling onward;
I see Egypt and the Egyptians—I see the
pyramids and obelisks;
I look on chiselled histories, songs,
philosophies, cut in slabs of
sandstone or on granite blocks;
I
see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalmed, swathed in linen
cloth,
lying there many centuries;
I look on the fallen Theban, the
large-balled eyes, the side-drooping neck,
the hands folded
across the breast.
I see the menials of the earth, labouring;
I see the prisoners in the
prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of the earth;
I see the
blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics;
I see the
pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the
earth;
I
see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
I see male and female everywhere;
I see the serene brotherhood of
philosophs;
I see the constructiveness of my race;
I see the
results of the perseverance and industry of my race;
I see ranks,
colours, barbarisms, civilisations—I go among them—I mix
indiscriminately,
And
I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
11.
You, where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the
mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
You
dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed,
nobly-formed,
superbly destined, on equal terms with me!
You Norwegian! Swede!
Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You
Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of
the Netherlands!
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian!
farmer of Styria!
You neighbour of the Danube!
You working-man of
the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman
too!
You
Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
You
citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek!
You lithe matador in the
arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or
Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions
feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle
shooting arrows
to the mark!
You
Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
You women of
the earth subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old
age through every risk, to stand once on
Syrian ground!
You
other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful
Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you
peering
amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!
You foot-worn
pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of
Mecca!
You
sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babelmandeb, ruling your families
and
tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth,
Damascus, or
Lake Tiberias!
You
Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
You
Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Borneo!
All
you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of
place!
All
you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And
you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and
everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the
same!
Health
to you! Goodwill to you all—from me and America sent.
Each of us inevitable;
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or
her right upon the earth;
Each of us allowed the eternal purports of
the earth:
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
12.
You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired hordes!
You
owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
You human forms
with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!
I dare
not refuse you—the scope of the world, and of time and space, are
upon
me.
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your
glimmering
language and spirituality!
You low expiring aborigines of the hills
of Utah, Oregon, California!
You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander,
Lap!
You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,
grovelling,
seeking your food!
You
Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee!
You
plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You bather bathing in
the Ganges!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you
Fejee-man!
You peon of Mexico! you slave of Carolina, Texas,
Tennessee!
I do not prefer others so very much before you either;
I
do not say one word against you, away back there, where you stand;
You
will come forward in due time to my side.
My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
earth;
I
have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
lands;
I
think some divine rapport has equalised me with them.
13.
O vapours! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
continents,
and fallen down there, for reasons;
I think I have blown with you, O
winds;
O waters, I have fingered every shore with you.
I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through; I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on the highest embedded rocks, to cry thence.
Salut au Monde!
What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I
penetrate those cities
myself;
All
islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself.
Toward all
I raise high the perpendicular hand—I make the signal,
To
remain after me in sight for ever,
For all the haunts and homes of
men.
1.
Over sea, hither from Niphon,
Courteous, the Princes of Asia,
swart-cheeked princes,
First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes,
Lesson-giving
princes, leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed,
impassive,
This
day they ride through Manhattan.
2.
Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
In
the procession, along with the Princes of Asia, the errand-bearers,
Bringing
up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching;
But I
will sing you a song of what I behold, Libertad.
3.
When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements;
When
the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love;
When
the round-mouthed guns, out of the smoke and smell I love, spit their
salutes;
When
the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me—when heaven-clouds
canopy
my city with a delicate thin haze;
When, gorgeous, the countless
straight stems, the forests at the wharves,
thicken with
colours;
When every ship, richly dressed, carries her flag at the
peak;
When pennants trail, and street-festoons hang from the windows;
When
Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers—
when
the mass is densest;
When the façades of the houses are alive with
people—when eyes gaze,
riveted, tens of thousands at a
time;
When the guests from the islands advance—when the pageant moves
forward,
visible;
When
the summons is made—when the answer, that waited thousands of years,
answers;
I
too, arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd,
and
gaze with them.
4.
Superb-faced Manhattan!
Comrade Americanos!—to us, then, at last, the
Orient comes.
To us, my city,
Where our tall-topped marble and
iron beauties range on opposite sides—to
walk in the
space between,
To-day our Antipodes comes.
The Originatress comes,
The land of Paradise—land of the Caucasus—the
nest of birth,
The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the
race of eld,
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with
passion,
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,
With
sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,
The race of
Brahma comes!
See, my cantabile! these, and more, are flashing to us from the
procession;
As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves
changing before us.
Not the errand-bearing princes, nor the tanned Japanee only;
Lithe
and silent, the Hindoo appears—the whole Asiatic continent itself
appears—the
Past, the dead,
The murky night-morning of wonder and fable,
inscrutable,
The enveloped mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,
The
North—the sweltering South—Assyria—the Hebrews—the Ancient of
ancients,
Vast
desolated cities—the gliding Present—all of these, and more, are in
the
pageant-procession.
Geography, the world, is in it;
The Great Sea, the brood of islands,
Polynesia, the coast beyond;
The coast you henceforth are facing—you
Libertad! from your Western golden
shores;
The
countries there, with their populations—the millions en masse,
are
curiously here;
The
swarming market-places—the temples, with idols ranged along the sides,
or
at the end—bronze, brahmin, and lama;
The mandarin, farmer,
merchant, mechanic, and fisherman;
The singing-girl and the
dancing-girl—the ecstatic person—the divine
Buddha;
The
secluded Emperors—Confucius himself—the great poets and heroes—the
warriors,
the castes, all,
Trooping up, crowding from all directions—from the
Altay mountains,
From Thibet—from the four winding and far-flowing
rivers
of China,
From
the Southern peninsulas, and the demi-continental islands—from
Malaysia;
These,
and whatever belongs to them, palpable, show forth to me, and are
seized
by me,
And I am seized by them, and friendlily held by them,
Till,
as here, them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and for you.
5.
For I too, raising my voice, join the ranks of this pageant;
I am the
chanter—I chant aloud over the pageant;
I chant the world on my
Western Sea;
I chant, copious, the islands beyond, thick as stars in
the sky;
I chant the new empire, grander than any before—As in a
vision it comes to
me;
I
chant America, the Mistress—I chant a greater supremacy;
I
chant, projected, a thousand blooming cities yet, in time, on those
groups
of sea-islands;
I chant my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the
archipelagoes;
I chant my stars and stripes fluttering in the wind;
I
chant commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work—races
reborn,
refreshed;
Lives, works, resumed—The object I know not—but the old,
the Asiatic,
resumed, as it must be,
Commencing
from this day, surrounded by the world.
And you, Libertad of the world!
You shall sit in the middle,
well-poised, thousands of years;
As to-day, from one side, the
Princes of Asia come to you;
As to-morrow, from the other side, the
Queen of England sends her eldest
son to you.
The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,
The ring is circled, the
journey is done;
The box-lid is but perceptibly opened—nevertheless
the perfume pours
copiously out of the whole box.
6.
Young Libertad!
With the venerable Asia, the all-mother,
Be
considerate with her, now and ever, hot Libertad—for you are all;
Bend
your proud neck to the long-off mother, now sending messages over the
archipelagoes
to you:
Bend your proud neck for once, young Libertad.
7.
Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the tramping?
Were
the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise so long?
Were
the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while unknown, for
you,
for reasons?
They are justified—they are accomplished—they shall now
be turned the
other way also, to travel toward you thence;
They
shall now also march obediently eastward, for your sake, Libertad.
1.
Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave,
an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen—now lean and tattered,
seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevelled round
her shoulders;
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long
silent—she too long silent—mourning her shrouded hope and heir;
Of
all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.
2.
Yet a word, ancient mother;
You need crouch there no longer on the
cold ground, with forehead between
your knees;
O
you need not sit there, veiled in your old white hair, so dishevelled;
For
know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an
illusion—the heir, the son you love, was not really dead;
The
Lord is not dead—he is risen again, young and strong, in another
country;
Even
while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave,
What you wept
for was translated, passed from the grave,
The winds favoured, and
the sea sailed it,
And now, with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day
in a new country.
1.
To get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early;
Here's a
good place at the corner—I must stand and see the show.
2.
Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal! Way
for the government cannon!
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons—and
the apparitions copiously
tumbling.
I love to look on the stars and stripes—I hope the fifes will play
"Yankee
Doodle,"
How
bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
Every man holds
his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.
3.
A fog follows—antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear
wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.
Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
The
old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see!
Phantoms! phantoms
countless by flank and rear!
Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches
made of mist!
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's
shoulders!
What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare
gums?
Does
the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for
firelocks,
and level them?
If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the President's
marshal;
If
you groan such groans, you might baulk the government cannon.
For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms, and let your white
hair
be;
Here gape your great grandsons—their wives gaze at them from the
windows,
See how well-dressed—see how orderly they conduct themselves.
Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
Is this hour
with the living too dead for you?
Retreat then! Pell-mell!
To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old
limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.
4.
But there is one thing that belongs here—shall I tell you what it is,
gentlemen
of Boston?
I will whisper it to the Mayor—He shall send a committee to England;
They
shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal
vault—haste!
Dig
out King George's coffin, unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes, box
up
his bones for a journey;
Find a swift Yankee clipper—here is freight
for you, black-bellied
clipper,
Up
with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston
bay.
5.
Now call for the President's marshal again, bring out the government
cannon,
Fetch
home the roarers from Congress,—make another procession, guard it
with
foot and dragoons.
This centre-piece for them!
Look, all orderly citizens! Look from the
windows, women!
The committee open the box; set up the regal ribs; glue those that will
not
stay;
Clap the
skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.
You have got your revenge, old bluster! The crown is come to its own, and
more
than its own.
6.
Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan—you are a made man from this
day;
You
are mighty 'cute—and here is one of your bargains.
1.
A great year and place; A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother's heart closer than any yet.
2.
I walked the shores of my Eastern Sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings; Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running—nor from the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils; Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shocked at the repeated fusillades of the guns.
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
Could
I wish humanity different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and
stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?
3.
O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the bullet, and the
axe, in reserve to fetch them out
in case of need,
Here
too, though long repressed, can never be destroyed;
Here too could
rise at last, murdering and ecstatic;
Here too demanding full arrears
of vengeance.
Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not deny that
terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I
heard wailing—and wait with perfect
trust, no matter
how long;
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the bequeathed
cause, as for
all lands,
And
I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some chansonniers
there will understand them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in
France—floods of it.
O I hear already the bustle of
instruments—they will soon be drowning all
that would
interrupt them;
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free
march,
It reaches hither—it swells me to joyful madness,
I
will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song
for you, ma femme!
[Footnote 1: 1793-4—-The great poet of Democracy is "not so shocked" at the great European year of Democracy.]
1.
Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like
lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the
ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of
kings.
O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many
a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.
2.
And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for
numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its
manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity
the poor
man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and
laughed at in the
breaking,
Then
in their power, not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the
heads
of the nobles fall;
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.
3.
But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened
rulers
come back;
Each comes in state with his train—hangman, priest,
tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
4.
Yet behind all, lowering, stealing—lo, a Shape,
Vague as the
night, draped interminably, head, front, and form, in scarlet
folds,
Whose
face and eyes none may see:
Out of its robes only this—the red robes,
lifted by the arm—
One finger crooked, pointed high over the
top, like the head of a snake
appears.
5.
Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves—bloody corpses of young men;
The
rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying,
the
creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits—and
they are good.
Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the
gibbets—those hearts pierced by the grey
lead,
Cold
and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughtered
vitality.
They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again
ready to defy you!
They were purified by death—they were taught and
exalted.
Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for
freedom, in its
turn to bear seed,
Which
the winds carry afar and resow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose, But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counselling, cautioning.
6.
Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.
Is the house shut? Is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready—be not
weary of watching:
He will soon return—his messengers come anon.
[Footnote 1: The years 1848 and 1849.]
1.
Courage! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be
subserved, whatever occurs;
That is nothing that is quelled by one or
two failures, or any number of
failures,
Or
by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any
unfaithfulness,
Or
the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.
2.
What we believe in waits latent for ever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagoes of the sea.
What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, Waiting patiently, waiting its time.
3.
The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent advance and
retreat,
The infidel triumphs—or supposes he triumphs,
The
prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead-
balls,
do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The
great speakers and writers are exiled—they lie sick in distant lands,
The
cause is asleep—the strongest throats are still, choked
with
their own blood,
The young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground
when they meet;
But, for all this, Liberty has not gone out of the
place, nor the infidel
entered into possession.
When Liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the
second
or third to go,
It
waits for all the rest to go—it is the last.
When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all
life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from
any
part of the earth,
Then only shall Liberty be discharged from that
part of the earth,
And the infidel and the tyrant come into
possession.
4.
Then courage! revolter! revoltress!
For till all ceases neither must
you cease.
5.
I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor
what
anything is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being
foiled,
In defeat, poverty, imprisonment—for they too are great.
Did we think victory great?
So it is—But now it seems to me, when it
cannot be helped, that defeat is
great,
And
that death and dismay are great.
1.
First, O songs, for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the stretched
tympanum, pride and joy in my city,
How she led the rest to arms—how
she gave the cue,
How at once with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment,
she sprang;
O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!
O
strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!
How
you sprang! how you threw off the costumes of peace with indifferent
hand;
How
your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard in
their
stead;
How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude,
songs of
soldiers,)
How
Manhattan drum-taps led.
2.
Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading;
Forty years as a
pageant—till unawares, the Lady of this teeming and
turbulent
city,
Sleepless, amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,
With
her million children around her—suddenly,
At dead of night, at
news from the South,
Incensed, struck with clenched hand the pavement.
A shock electric—the night sustained it;
Till, with ominous
hum, our hive at daybreak poured out its myriads.
From the houses then, and the workshops, and through all the doorways,
Leaped
they tumultuous—and lo! Manhattan arming.
3.
To the drum-taps prompt,
The young men falling in and arming;
The
mechanics arming, the trowel, the jack-plane, the black-smith's hammer,
tossed
aside with precipitation;
The lawyer leaving his office, and
arming—the judge leaving the court;
The driver deserting his
waggon in the street, jumping down, throwing the
reins
abruptly down on the horses' backs;
The salesman leaving the
store—the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;
Squads
gathering everywhere by common consent, and arming;
The new recruits,
even boys—the old men show them how to wear their
accoutrements—they
buckle the straps carefully;
Outdoors arming—indoors arming—the flash
of the musket-barrels;
The white tents cluster in camps—the armed
sentries around—the sunrise
cannon, and again at sunset;
Armed
regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark from
the
wharves;
How good they look, as they tramp down to the river, sweaty,
with their
guns on their shoulders!
How
I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces, and their
clothes
and knapsacks covered with dust!
The blood of the city up—armed!
armed! the cry everywhere;
The flags flung out from the steeples of
churches, and from all the public
buildings and stores;
The
tearful parting—the mother kisses her son—the son kisses his mother;
Loth
is the mother to part—yet not a word does she speak to detain him;
The
tumultuous escort—the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way;
The
unpent enthusiasm—the wild cheers of the crowd for their favourites;
The
artillery—the silent cannons, bright as gold, drawn along, rumble
lightly
over the stones;
Silent cannons—soon to cease your silence,
Soon,
unlimbered, to begin the red business!
All the mutter of
preparation—all the determined arming;
The hospital service—the
lint, bandages, and medicines;
The women volunteering for nurses—the
work begun for, in earnest—no mere
parade now;
War!
an armed race is advancing!—the welcome for battle—no turning away;
War!
be it weeks, months, or years—an armed race is advancing to welcome
it.
4.
Mannahatta a-march!—and it's O to sing it well!
It's O for a
manly life in the camp!
5.
And the sturdy artillery!
The guns, bright as gold—the work for
giants—to serve well the guns:
Unlimber them! no more, as the
past forty years, for salutes for courtesies
merely;
Put in
something else now besides powder and wadding.
6.
And you, Lady of Ships! you, Mannahatta!
Old matron of the city! this
proud, friendly, turbulent city!
Often in peace and wealth you were
pensive, or covertly frowned amid all
your children;
But now you
smile with joy, exulting old Mannahatta!
1861.
Armed year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or sentimental
love verses for you, terrible year!
Not you as some pale poetling,
seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano;
But as a strong man, erect,
clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a
rifle on your
shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands—with a
knife in the
belt at your side,
As
I heard you shouting loud—your sonorous voice ringing across the
continent;
Your
masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the
men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in
Manhattan;
Or
with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana,
Rapidly
crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the
Alleghanies;
Or
down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio
river;
Or
southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on
the
mountain-top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in
blue, bearing
weapons, robust year;
Heard
your determined voice, launched forth again and again;
Year that
suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipped cannon,
I repeat you,
hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.
1.
Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier and fiercer
sweep!
Long
for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devoured what the earth gave me;
Long
I roamed the woods of the North—long I watched Niagara pouring;
I
travelled the prairies over, and slept on their breast—I crossed the
Nevadas,
I
crossed the plateaus;
I ascended the towering rocks along the
Pacific, I sailed out to sea;
I sailed through the storm, I was
refreshed by the storm;
I watched with joy the threatening maws of
the waves;
I marked the white combs where they careered so high,
curling over;
I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds;
Saw
from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and
powerful!)
Heard
the continuous thunder, as it bellowed after the lightning;
Noted the
slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden and fast amid
the
din they chased each other across the sky;
—These, and such as these,
I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and
masterful;
All
the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
Yet there with my
soul I fed—I fed content, supercilious.
2.
'Twas well, O soul! 'twas a good preparation you gave me!
Now we
advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill;
Now we go forth to
receive what the earth and the sea never gave us;
Not through the
mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities;
Something for us
is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring;
Torrents of men, (sources
and rills of the North-west, are you indeed
inexhaustible?)
What,
to pavements and homesteads here—what were those storms of the
mountains
and sea?
What, to passions I witness around me to-day, was the sea
risen?
Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?
Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage;
Manhattan,
rising, advancing with menacing front—Cincinnati, Chicago,
unchained;
—What
was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here!
How it
climbs with daring feet and hands! how it dashes!
How the true
thunder bellows after the lightning! how bright the flashes of
lightning!
How
DEMOCRACY with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the
dark
by those flashes of lightning!
Yet a mournful wail and low sob I
fancied I heard through the dark,
In a lull of the deafening
confusion.
3.
Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!
And do
you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities!
Crash heavier,
heavier yet, O storms! you have done me good;
My soul, prepared in
the mountains, absorbs your immortal strong nutriment.
Long had I
walked my cities, my country roads, through farms, only half
satisfied;
One
doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawled on the ground before
me,
Continually
preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing
low;
—The
cities I loved so well I abandoned and left—I sped to the
certainties
suitable to me
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies,
and Nature's
dauntlessness,
I
refreshed myself with it only, I could relish it only;
I waited the
bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I waited
long.
—But
now I no longer wait—I am fully satisfied—I am glutted;
I
have witnessed the true lightning—I have witnessed my cities electric;
I
have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America rise;
Hence
I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,
No more
on the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea.
1.
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the
windows—through doors—burst like a force of ruthless men,
Into
the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school
where the scholar is studying:
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no
happiness must he have now with his
bride;
Nor
the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his
grain;
So
fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
2.
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of
cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds
prepared, for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must
sleep
in those beds;
No bargainers' bargains by day—no brokers or
speculators—Would they
continue?
Would
the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the
lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then
rattle quicker, heavier, drums—you bugles wilder blow.
3.
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for
no expostulation;
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind
not the old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the child's voice
be heard, nor the mother's entreaties;
Make even the trestles to
shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the
hearses,
So
strong you thump, O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.
O a new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by
sounds, by voices clearer,
By the wind's voice and that of the drum,
By
the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and father's
voice,
Low
on the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father and
child stand,
In the upward air where their eyes turn,
Where the
banner at daybreak is flapping.
Words! book-words! what are you?
Words no more, for hearken and see,
My
song is there in the open air—and I must sing,
With the banner
and pennant a-flapping.
I'll weave the chord and twine in,
Man's desire and babe's
desire—I'll twine them in, I'll put in life;
I'll put the
bayonet's flashing point—I'll let bullets and slugs whizz;
I'll
pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of joy;
Then
loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,
With the banner and pennant
a-flapping.
Come up here, bard, bard;
Come up here, soul, soul;
Come up here,
dear little child,
To fly in the clouds and winds with us, and play
with the measureless
light.
Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?
And
what does it say to me all the while?
Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky;
And nothing at all to you it
says. But look you, my babe,
Look at these dazzling things in the
houses, and see you the money-shops
opening;
And
see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods:
These!
ah, these! how valued and toiled for, these!
How envied by all the
earth!
Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high;
On floats the sea in
distant blue, careering through its channels;
On floats the wind over
the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;
The great steady wind
from west and west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant, with milk-white
foam on the waters.
But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;
I am not the wind, with
girlish laughter;
Not the immense wind which strengthens—not the wind
which lashes;
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror
and death:
But I am of that which unseen comes and sings, sings,
sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land;
Which
the birds know in the woods, mornings and evenings,
And the
shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and that banner and
pennant,
Aloft
there flapping and flapping.
O father, it is alive—it is full of people—it has children!
O
now it seems to me it is talking to its children!
I hear it—it talks
to me—O it is wonderful!
O it stretches—it spreads and runs so
fast! O my father,
It is so broad it covers the whole sky!
Cease, cease, my foolish babe,
What you are saying is sorrowful to
me—much it displeases me;
Behold with the rest, again I
say—behold not banners and pennants aloft;
But the
well-prepared pavements behold—and mark the solid-walled houses.
Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan;
Speak to our children
all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Where our factory-engines hum,
where our miners delve the ground,
Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles,
where our prairie-ploughs are ploughing;
Speak, O bard! point this
day, leaving all the rest, to us over all—and
yet we
know not why;
For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting
nothing,
Only flapping in the wind?
I hear and see not strips of cloth alone;
I hear the tramp of armies,
I hear the challenging sentry;
I hear the jubilant shouts of millions
of men—I hear LIBERTY!
I hear the drums beat, and the trumpets
blowing;
I myself move abroad, swift-rising, flying then;
I use
the wings of the land-bird, and use the wings of the sea-bird, and
look
down as from a height.
I do not deny the precious results of peace—I
see populous cities, with
wealth incalculable;
I
see numberless farms—I see the farmers working in their fields or barns;
I
see mechanics working—I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or
finished;
I
see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks, drawn by the
locomotives;
I
see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans;
I
see far in the west the immense area of grain—I dwell a while, hovering;
I
pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern
plantation,
and again to California;
Sweeping the whole, I see the countless
profit, the busy gatherings, earned
wages;
See
the identity formed out of thirty-six spacious and haughty States, (and
many
more to come;)
See forts on the shores of harbours—see ships sailing
in and out;
Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthened
pennant shaped like a
sword
Runs
swiftly up, indicating war and defiance—And now the halyards have
raised
it,
Side of my banner broad and blue—side of my starry banner,
Discarding
peace over all the sea and land.
Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!
No
longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone;
We can be
terror and carnage also, and are so now.
Not now are we one of these
spacious and haughty States, (nor any five, nor
ten;)
Nor
market nor depot are we, nor money-bank in the city;
But these, and
all, and the brown and spreading land, and the mines below,
are
ours;
And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and
small;
And the fields they moisten are ours, and the crops, and the
fruits are
ours;
Bays
and channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours—and we over all,
Over
the area spread below, the three millions of square miles—the
capitals,
The
thirty-five millions of people—O bard! in life and death supreme,
We,
even we, from this day flaunt out masterful, high up above,
Not for
the present alone, for a thousand years, chanting through you
This
song to the soul of one poor little child.
O my father, I like not the houses;
They will never to me be
anything—nor do I like money!
But to mount up there I would
like, O father dear—that banner I like;
That pennant I would
be, and must be.
Child of mine, you fill me with anguish,
To be that pennant would be
too fearful;
Little you know what it is this day, and henceforth for
ever;
It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything;
Forward
to stand in front of wars—and O, such wars!—what have you to do
with
them?
With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?
Demons and death then I sing;
Put in all, aye all, will
I—sword-shaped pennant for war, and banner so
broad and
blue,
And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of
children,
Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land, and the liquid
wash of the sea;
And the icy cool of the far, far north, with
rustling cedars and pines;
And the whirr of drums, and the sound of
soldiers marching, and the hot sun
shining south;
And
the beach-waves combing over the beach on my eastern shore, and my
western
shore the same;
And all between those shores, and my ever-running
Mississippi, with bends
and chutes;
And
my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of Missouri;
The
CONTINENT—devoting the whole identity, without reserving an atom,
Pour
in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all, and the yield of
all.
Aye all! for ever, for all!
From sea to sea, north and south, east
and west,
Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole;
No
more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,
But out of the night
emerging for good, our voice persuasive no more,
Croaking like crows
here in the wind.
My limbs, my veins dilate;
The blood of the world has filled me
full—my theme is clear at last.
—Banner so broad, advancing out
of the night, I sing you haughty and
resolute;
I
burst through where I waited long, too long, deafened and blinded;
My
sight, my hearing and tongue, are come to me, (a little child taught
me;)
I
hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call and demand;
Insensate!
insensate! yet I at any rate chant you, O banner!
Not houses of peace
are you, nor any nor all their prosperity; if need be,
you shall have
every one of those houses to destroy them;
You thought not to destroy
those valuable houses, standing fast, full of
comfort, built
with money;
May they stand fast, then? Not an hour, unless you, above
them and all,
stand fast.
—O
banner! not money so precious are you, nor farm produce you, nor the
material
good nutriment,
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the
ships;
Not the superb ships, with sail-power or steam-power, fetching
and carrying
cargoes,
Nor
machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues,—But you, as henceforth I see
you,
Running
up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, ever-enlarging
stars;
Divider
of daybreak you, cutting the air, touched by the sun, measuring the
sky,
Passionately
seen and yearned for by one poor little child,
While others remain
busy, or smartly talking, for ever teaching thrift,
thrift;
O
you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake, hissing so
curious,
Out
of reach—an idea only—yet furiously fought for, risking bloody
death—loved
by me!
So loved! O you banner, leading the day, with stars brought
from the night!
Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding
all—O banner and
pennant!
I
too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing—houses, machines are
nothing—I
see them not;
I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad,
with stripes, I sing
you only,
Flapping
up there in the wind.
By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn
and sweet and slow;—but first I
note
The
tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim outline,
The
darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire—the silence;
Like a
phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and
trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily
watching
me;)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous
thoughts,
Of life and death—of home and the past and loved, and of
those that are
far away;
A
solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the
bivouac's fitful flame.
I see before me now a travelling army halting;
Below, a fertile
valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer;
Behind, the
terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high;
Broken
with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen;
The
numerous camp-fires scattered near and far, some away up on the
mountain;
The
shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized, flickering;
And
over all, the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the
eternal
stars.
City of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce ships!
O the
beautiful, sharp-bowed steam-ships and sail-ships!)
City of the
world! (for all races are here;
All the lands of the earth make
contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering
tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling
in and out,
with eddies and foam!
City
of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of marble and iron!
Proud
and passionate city! mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
Spring up, O
city! not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike!
Fear not!
submit to no models but your own, O city!
Behold me! incarnate me, as
I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you offered me—whom
you adopted, I have adopted;
Good or bad, I never question you—I love
all—I do not condemn anything;
I chant and celebrate all that
is yours—yet peace no more;
In peace I chanted peace, but now
the drum of war is mine;
War, red war, is my song through your
streets, O city!
VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night,
When you, my son and my
comrade, dropped at my side that day.
One look I but gave, which your
dear eyes returned with a look I shall
never forget;
One
touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reached up as you lay on the ground.
Then
onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle;
Till, late in
the night relieved, to the place at last again I made my way;
Found
you in death so cold, dear comrade—found your body, son of
responding
kisses, (never again on earth responding;)
Bared your face in the
starlight—curious the scene—cool blew the moderate
night-wind.
Long
there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield
spreading;
Vigil
wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night.
But not
a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh—Long, long I gazed;
Then
on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in
my
hands;
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with you,
dearest comrade—
Not a tear, not a word;
Vigil of silence,
love, and death—vigil for you, my son and my soldier,
As onward
silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;
Vigil final for
you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your
death,
I
faithfully loved you and cared for you living—I think we shall surely
meet
again;)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the
dawn appeared,
My comrade I wrapped in his blanket, enveloped well
his form,
Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head,
and carefully
under feet;
And
there and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in
his
rude-dug grave, I deposited;
Ending my vigil strange with that—vigil
of night and battlefield dim;
Vigil for boy of responding kisses,
never again on earth responding;
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain,
vigil I never forget—how as day
brightened
I
rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And
buried him where he fell.
Bathed in war's perfume—delicate flag!
O to hear you call the
sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful
woman!
O
to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they
arm
with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O
to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the
eyes of women.
A march in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road unknown;
A route
through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness;
Our army
foiled with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
Till
after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building;
We
come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted
building.
'Tis
a large old church, at the crossing roads—'tis now an impromptu
hospital;
—Entering
but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and
poems
ever made:
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving,
candles and lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with
wild red flame, and clouds
of smoke;
By
these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some in the
pews
laid down;
At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in
danger of bleeding to
death, (he is shot in the abdomen;)
I
staunch the blood temporarily, (the youngster's face is white as a lily;)
Then
before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene, fain to absorb it all;
Faces,
varieties, postures, beyond description, most in obscurity, some of
them
dead;
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of
ether, the
odour of blood;
The
crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—the yard outside
also
filled;
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some
in the death-
spasm sweating;
An
occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls;
The
glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the
torches;
These
I resume as I chant—I see again the forms, I smell the odour;
Then
hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall in.
But
first I bend to the dying lad—his eyes open—a half-smile gives he me;
Then
the eyes close, calmly close: and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming,
marching, as ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown
road still marching.
1.
A sight in camp in the daybreak grey and dim,
As from my tent I
emerge so early, sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the
path near by the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers
lying, brought out there, untended lying;
Over each the blanket
spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,
Grey and heavy blanket,
folding, covering all.
2.
Curious, I halt, and silent stand; Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift the blanket; Who are you, elderly man, so gaunt and grim, with well-greyed hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you, my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step—And who are you, my child and darling?
Who
are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory: Young man, I think I know you—I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ Himself; Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again He lies.
1.
As toilsome I wandered Virginia's woods,
To the music of rustling
leaves kicked by my feet—for 'twas autumn—
I marked at
the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he, and
buried on the retreat—easily all could I
understand;
The
halt of a mid-day hour—when, Up! no time to lose! Yet this sign left
On
a tablet scrawled and nailed on the tree by the grave,
Bold,
cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
2.
Long, long I muse,—then on my way go wandering,
Many a
changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life.
Yet at times
through changeful season and scene, abrupt,—alone, or in the
crowded
street,—
Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the
inscription rude in
Virginia's woods,
Bold,
cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
1.
An old man bending, I come among new faces,
Years, looking backward,
resuming, in answer to children,
"Come tell us, old man," (as from
young men and maidens that love me, Years
hence) "of these
scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpassed
heroes—(was one side so brave? the other was equally brave)
Now
be witness again—paint the mightiest armies of earth;
Of those
armies, so rapid, so wondrous, what saw you to tell us?
What stays
with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought
engagements, or sieges tremendous, what deepest remains?"
2.
O maidens and young men I love, and that love me,
What you ask of my
days, those the strangest and sudden your talking
recalls,
Soldier
alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust;
In
the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush
of
successful charge;
Enter the captured works,…yet lo! like a
swift-running river, they fade,
Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell
not on soldiers' perils or soldiers'
joys;
(Both
I remember well—many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was
content.)
But in silence, in dreams' projections,
While the world of gain and
appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and
waves wash the imprints off the sand,
In nature's reverie sad, with
hinged knees returning, I enter the
doors—(while for you up
there, Whoever you are, follow me without
noise, and be of
strong heart.)
Bearing the bandages, water, and sponge,
Straight
and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground, after the
battle brought in;
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the
ground;
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roofed
hospital;
To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return;
To
each and all, one after another, I draw near—not one do I miss;
An
attendant follows, holding a tray—he carries a refuse-pail,
Soon
to be filled with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and filled again.
I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand, to dress
wounds;
I am firm with each—the pangs are sharp, yet unavoidable;
One
turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet
I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you if that would
save
you.
On, on I go—(open, doors of time! open, hospital doors!)
The
crushed head I dress (poor crazed hand, tear not the bandage away;)
The
neck of the cavalry-man, with the bullet through and through, I
examine;
Hard
the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life
struggles
hard;
Come, sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death!
In mercy
come quickly.
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted
lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his
pillow the soldier bends, with curved neck, and side-falling
head;
His
eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody
stump,
And
has not yet looked on it.
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep;
But a day or two more—for
see, the frame all wasted and sinking,
And the yellow-blue
countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,
Cleanse
the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so
offensive,
While
the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out;
The fractured thigh, the knee, the
wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand—yet
deep in my breast a fire, a
burning flame.
3.
Thus in silence, in dreams' projections,
Returning, resuming, I
thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and the wounded I
pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark
night—some are so young,
Some suffer so much—I recall the
experience sweet and sad.
Many a soldier's loving arms about this
neck have crossed and rested,
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these
bearded lips.
1.
"Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And
come to the front door, mother—here's a letter from thy dear son."
2.
Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and
redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in
the moderate
wind;
Where
apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellised vines;
Smell
you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat,
where the bees were lately buzzing?
Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds; Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful—and the farm prospers well.
3.
Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come,
father—come at the daughter's call;
And come to the entry,
mother—to the front door come, right away.
Fast as she can she hurries—something ominous—her steps trembling;
She
does not tarry to smooth her white hair, nor adjust her cap.
4.
Open the envelope quickly;
O this is not our son's writing, yet his
name is signed;
O a strange hand writes for our dear son—O stricken
mother's soul!
All swims before her eyes—flashes with black—she
catches the main words
only;
Sentences
broken—"gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,
taken
to hospital,
At
present low, but will soon be better."
5.
Ah, now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio,
with all its cities and farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in
the head, very faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
6.
"Grieve not so, dear mother," the just-grown daughter speaks through her
sobs;
The
little sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed;
"See, dearest
mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better."
7.
Alas! poor boy, he will never be better, (nor maybe needs to be better,
that
brave and simple soul;)
While they stand at home at the door, he is
dead already;
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better;
She, with thin form, presently
dressed in black;
By day her meals untouched—then at night fitfully
sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with
one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed—silent from
life escape and withdraw,
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear
dead son!
1.
In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face in battle,
Of
the look at first of the mortally wounded, of that indescribable look,
Of
the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide—
I dream,
I dream, I dream.
2.
Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains, Of the skies so beauteous after the storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright, Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches, and gather the heaps— I dream, I dream, I dream.
3.
Long have they passed, long lapsed—faces, and trenches, and fields:
Long
through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the
fallen
Onward
I sped at the time. But now of their faces and forms, at night,
I
dream, I dream, I dream.
While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And
my head on the pillow rests at home, and the mystic midnight passes,
And
through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath
of
my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision
presses upon me.
The engagement opens there and then, in my busy
brain unreal;
The skirmishers begin—they crawl cautiously ahead—I
hear the irregular
snap! snap!
I
hear the sound of the different missiles—the short t-h-t! t-h-t!
of
the rifle-balls;
I
see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds—I hear the great
shells
shrieking as they pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind
through the trees, (quick,
tumultuous, now the contest rages!)
All
the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again;
The
crashing and smoking—the pride of the men in their pieces;
The
chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the
right
time;
After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to
note the
effect;
—Elsewhere
I hear the cry of a regiment charging—the young colonel leads
himself
this time, with brandished sword;
I see the gaps cut by the enemy's
volleys, quickly filled up—no delay;
I breathe the suffocating
smoke—then the flat clouds hover low, concealing
all;
Now
a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either
side;
Then
resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of
officers;
While
from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout
of
applause, (some special success;)
And ever the sound of the cannon,
far or near, rousing, even in dreams, a
devilish exultation,
and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my
soul;
And
ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions—batteries, cavalry,
moving
hither and thither;
The falling, dying, I heed not—the wounded,
dripping and red, I heed not—
some to the rear are
hobbling;
Grime, heat, rush—aides-de-camp galloping by, or on a full
run:
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the
rifles, (these in
my vision I hear or see,)
And
bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-coloured rockets.
O tan-faced prairie boy!
Before you came to camp came many a welcome
gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food—till at last,
among the
recruits,
You
came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but looked on each other,
When
lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.
1.
Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give
me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;
Give me a
field where the unmowed grass grows;
Give me an arbour, give me the
trellised grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving
animals, teaching
content;
Give
me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi,
and I looking up at the stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of
beautiful flowers, where I can walk
undisturbed;
Give
me for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom I should never tire;
Give
me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world,
a
rural domestic life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved,
recluse by myself, for my
own ears only;
Give
me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal
sanities!
—These,
demanding to have them, tired with ceaseless excitement, and
racked
by the war-strife,
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in
cries from my heart,
While yet incessantly asking, still I adhere to
my city;
Day upon day, and year upon year, O city, walking your
streets,
Where you hold me enchained a certain time, refusing to give
me up,
Yet giving to make me glutted, enriched of soul—you give me
for ever
faces;
O
I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;
I see
my own soul trampling down what it asked for.
2.
Keep your splendid silent sun;
Keep your woods, O Nature, and the
quiet places by the woods;
Keep your fields of clover and timothy,
and your cornfields and orchards;
Keep the blossoming buckwheat
fields, where the ninth-month bees hum.
Give me faces and streets!
give me these phantoms incessant and endless
along the trottoirs!
Give
me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by
the
thousand!
Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the
hand every day!
Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give
me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the sound of the
trumpets
and drums!
The soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away,
flushed and
reckless;
Some,
their time up, returning, with thinned ranks—young, yet very old,
worn,
marching, noticing nothing;
—Give me the shores and the wharves
heavy-fringed with the black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life!
O full to repletion, and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room,
huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer, the crowded excursion,
for me! the torchlight
procession!
The
dense brigade, bound for the war, with high-piled military waggons
following;
People,
endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;
Manhattan
streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as
now;
The
endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, even the
sight
of the wounded;
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical
chorus—with varied chorus
and light of the sparkling
eyes;
Manhattan faces and eyes for ever for me!
1.
Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice,—
Be not
disheartened—Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;
Those
who love each other shall become invincible—they shall yet make
Columbia
victorious.
Sons of the Mother of all! you shall yet be victorious!
You shall yet
laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.
No danger shall baulk Columbia's lovers;
If need be, a thousand shall
sternly immolate themselves for one.
One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade;
From Maine
and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese, shall be
friends
triune,
More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.
To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come;
Not the perfumes
of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.
It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection;
The
most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly;
The
dependence of Liberty shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality
shall be comrades.
These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron;
I,
ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.
2.
Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
Or by an
agreement on a paper? or by arms?
—Nay—nor the world nor any living
thing will so cohere.
Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of all,
Desperate, on
the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battlefields,
gazing;
As
she called to her earth with mournful voice while she stalked.
"Absorb
them well, O my earth!" she cried—"I charge you, lose not my sons!
lose
not an atom;
And you, streams, absorb them well, taking their dear
blood;
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly,
And
all you essences of soil and growth—and you, O my rivers' depths;
And
you mountain-sides—and the woods where my dear children's blood,
trickling,
reddened;
And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all
future trees,
My dead absorb—my young men's beautiful bodies
absorb—and their precious,
precious, precious blood;
Which,
holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year
hence,
In
unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries hence;
In
blowing airs from the fields, back again give me my darlings—give my
immortal
heroes;
Exhale me them centuries hence—breathe me their breath—let
not an atom be
lost.
O
years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!
Exhale
them, perennial, sweet death, years, centuries hence."
1.
Not alone our camps of white, O soldiers,
When, as ordered forward,
after a long march,
Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessens, we
halt for the night;
Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and
knapsack, dropping asleep in
our tracks;
Others
pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin to sparkle;
Outposts
of pickets posted, surrounding, alert through the dark,
And a word
provided for countersign, careful for safety;
Till to the call of the
drummers at daybreak loudly beating the drums,
We rise up refreshed,
the night and sleep passed over, and resume our
journey,
Or
proceed to battle.
2.
Lo! the camps of the tents of green,
Which the days of peace keep
filling, and the days of war keep filling,
With a mystic army, (is it
too ordered forward? is it too only halting a
while,
Till
night and sleep pass over?)
Now in those camps of green—in their tents dotting the world;
In
the parents, children, husbands, wives, in them—in the old and young,
Sleeping
under the sunlight, sleeping under the moonlight, content and
silent
there at last;
Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of us
and ours and all,
Of our corps and generals all, and the President
over the corps and
generals all,
And
of each of us, O soldiers, and of each and all in the ranks we fight,
There
without hatred we shall all meet.
For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the bivouac-camps
of
green;
But we
need not provide for outposts, nor word for the countersign,
Nor
drummer to beat the morning drum.
1.
The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath
On
the pavement here—and, there beyond, it is looking
Down a
new-made double grave.
2.
Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the east, the silvery
round moon;
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon;
Immense
and silent moon.
3.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming
full-keyed bugles;
All the channels of the city streets they're
flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
4.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums
steady whirring;
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes
me through and through.
5.
For the son is brought with the father;
In the foremost
ranks of the fierce assault they fell;
Two veterans, son and father,
dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.
6.
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more
convulsive;
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And
the strong dead-march enwraps me.
7.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom
moves illumined,
'Tis some mother's large, transparent face,
In
heaven brighter growing.
8.
O strong dead-march, you please me!
O moon immense, with
your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans,
passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
9.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and
the drums give you music;
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My
heart gives you love.
How solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning, all worn and
sweaty—as the men file by where I
stand;
As
the faces, the masks appear—as I glance at the faces, studying the
masks;
As
I glance upward out of this page, studying you, dear friend, whoever you
are;—
How
solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to each in the ranks, and to
you!
I
see, behind each mask, that wonder, a kindred soul.
O the bullet
could never kill what you really are, dear friend,
Nor the bayonet
stab what you really are.
—The soul, yourself, I see, great as any,
good as the best,
Waiting secure and content,—which the bullet could
never kill,
Nor the bayonet stab, O friend!
1.
One breath, O my silent soul!
A perfumed thought—no more I ask, for
the sake of all dead soldiers.
2.
Buglers off in my armies! At present I ask not you to sound; Not at the head of my cavalry, all on their spirited horses, With their sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines clanking by their thighs—(ah, my brave horsemen! My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride, With all the perils, were yours!)
Nor you drummers—neither at reveillé, at dawn,
Nor
the long roll alarming the camp—nor even the muffled beat for a
burial;
Nothing
from you, this time, O drummers, bearing my warlike drums.
3.
But aside from these, and the crowd's hurrahs, and the land's
congratulations,
Admitting
around me comrades close, unseen by the rest, and voiceless,
I chant
this chant of my silent soul, in the name of all dead soldiers.
4.
Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet;
Draw
close, but speak not.
Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender!
Invisible
to the rest, henceforth become my companions;
Follow me ever! desert
me not, while I live!
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living, sweet are the musical voices
sounding;
But
sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades! all now is over;
But love is not over—and what
love, O comrades!
Perfume from battlefields rising—up from foetor
arising.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal love!
Give me to bathe
the memories of all dead soldiers.
Perfume all! make all wholesome!
O love! O chant! solve all with the
last chemistry.
Give me exhaustless—make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from
me wherever I go,
For the sake of all dead soldiers.
Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
Ere, departing,
fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets—
Spirit of gloomiest
fears and doubts, yet onward ever unfaltering pressing!
Spirit of
many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit!
That
with muttering voice, through the years now closed, like a tireless
phantom
flitted,
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and
beat the drum;
—Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to
the last, reverberates
round me;
As
your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles;
While
the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders;
While I
look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders;
While those
slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the
distance,
approach and pass on, returning homeward,
Moving with steady motion,
swaying to and fro, to the right and left,
Evenly, lightly, rising
and falling, as the steps keep time:
—Spirit of hours I knew, all
hectic red one day, but pale as death next
day;
Touch
my mouth, ere you depart—press my lips close!
Leave me your
pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill me with currents
convulsive!
Let
them scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are gone;
Let them
identify you to the future in these songs!
Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its
deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly
lost;
That
the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly, softly wash
again,
and ever again, this soiled world.
For my enemy is dead—a man divine
as myself is dead.
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in
the coffin—I draw near;
I bend down and touch lightly with my
lips the white face in the coffin.
To the leavened soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last;
Not
cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead:
But forth from my tent
emerging for good—loosing, untying the tent-ropes;
In the
freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and
vistas,
again to peace restored;
To the fiery fields emanative, and the
endless vistas beyond—to the south
and the north;
To
the leavened soil of the general Western World, to attest my songs,
To
the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace,
To
the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi,
To the rocks I,
calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods,
To the plain of the
poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide,
To the far-off sea,
and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable air.
And responding
they answer all, (but not in words,)
The average earth, the witness
of war and peace, acknowledges mutely;
The prairie draws me close, as
the father, to bosom broad, the son:—
The Northern ice and
rain, that began me, nourish me to the end;
But the hot sun of the
South is to ripen my songs.
1.
There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he
looked upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of
him for the day, or a certain part of the
day, or for many
years, or tretching cycles of years.
2.
The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass, and white and red morning-glories,[1] and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,[2] And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side, And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful, curious liquid, And the water-plants with their graceful fiat heads—all became part of him. The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part or him;
3. Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden, And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road; And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern, whence he had lately risen, And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school, And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys, And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl, And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.
His own parents;
He that had fathered him, and she that had conceived
him in her womb, and
birthed him,
They
gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward
every day—they became part of him.
The mother at home, quietly
placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild
words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odour
falling
off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong,
self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust;
The blow, the quick
loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the
language, the company, the furniture—the yearning
and
swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsaid—the sense of what
is real—the thought
if after all it should prove unreal,
The
doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether
and
how—
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes
and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are
not flashes and
specks, what are they?
The
streets themselves, and the façades of houses, and goods in the
windows,
Vehicles,
teams, the heavy-planked wharves—the huge crossing at the
ferries,
The
village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between;
Shadows,
aureola and mist, light falling on roofs and gables of white or
brown,
three miles off;
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the
tide—the little boat
slack-towed astern,
The
hurrying tumbling waves quick-broken crests slapping,
The strata of
coloured clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary
by
itself-the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's
edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and
shore
mud;—
These became part of that child who went forth every day,
and who now goes,
and will always go forth every day.
[Footnote 1: The name of "morning-glory" is given to the bindweed, or a sort of bindweed, in America. I am not certain whether this expressive name is used in England also.]
[Footnote 2: A dun-coloured little bird with a cheerful note, sounding like the word Phoebe.]
1.
Out of the rocked cradle,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the
musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile
sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his
bed,
wandered alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the showered halo,
Up
from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting; as if they were
alive,
Out
from the patches of briars and blackberries,
From the memories of the
birds that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother—from the
fitful risings and fallings I
heard,
From
under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From
those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent
mist,
From
the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad
thence-aroused words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than
any,—
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As
a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither—ere
all eludes me, hurriedly,—
A man—yet by these tears a little
boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I,
chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all
hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond
them,
A
reminiscence sing.
2.
Once, Paumanok,
When the snows had melted, and the Fifth-month grass
was
growing,
Up this sea-shore, in some briars,
Two guests from
Alabama—two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs
spotted with brown;
And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at
hand,
And every day the she-bird, crouched on her nest, silent,
with
bright eyes;
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never
disturbing
them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
3.
_Shine! shine! shine! Pour down your warmth, great Sun! While we bask—we two together.
Two together!
Winds blow South, or winds blow North,
Day come
white or night come black,
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing
all time, minding no time,
If we two but keep together_.
4.
Till of a sudden,
Maybe killed, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon
the she-bird crouched not on the nest,
Nor returned that afternoon,
nor the next,
Nor ever appeared again.
And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the sea,
And at night,
under the full of the moon, in calmer weather,
Over the hoarse
surging of the sea,
Or flitting from briar to briar by day,
I saw,
I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-bird,
The solitary
guest from Alabama.
5.
Blow! blow! blow! Blow up, sea-winds, along Paumanok's shore! I wait and I wait, till you blow my mate to me.
6.
Yes, when the stars glistened.
All night long, on the prong of a
moss-scalloped stake,
Down, almost amid the slapping waves,
Sat
the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears.
He called on his mate;
He poured forth the meanings which I, of all
men, know.
Yes, my brother, I know;
The rest might not—but I have
treasured every note;
For once, and more than once, dimly, down to
the beach gliding,
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself
with the shadows,
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the
sounds and sights after
their sorts,
The
white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with bare feet,
a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listened long and long.
Listened, to keep, to sing—now translating the notes,
Following
you, my brother.
7.
_Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And
again another behind, embracing and lapping, every one close,—
But
my love soothes not me, not me.
Low hangs the moon—it rose late;
O it is lagging—O I think it
is heavy with love, with love.
O madly the sea pushes, pushes upon the land,
With love—with love.
O
night! do I not see my love fluttering out there among the breakers?
What
is that little black thing I see there in the white?
Loud! loud! loud!
Loud. I call to you, my love!
High and clear I
shoot my voice over the waves;
Surely you must know who is here, is
here;
You must know who I am, my love.
Low-hanging moon!
What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
O
it is the shape, the shape of my mate!
O moon, do not keep her from
me any longer!
Land! land! O land!
Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me
my mate back again, if
you only would;
For
I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
O rising stars!
Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise
with some of you.
O throat! O trembling throat!
Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
Pierce
the woods, the earth;
Somewhere, listening to catch you, must be the
one I want.
Shake out, carols!
Solitary here—the night's carols!
Carols
of lonesome love! Death's carols!
Carols under that lagging, yellow,
waning moon!
O, under that moon, where she droops almost down into
the sea!
O reckless, despairing carols!
But soft! sink low;
Soft! let me just murmur;
And do you wait a
moment, you husky-noised sea;
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate
responding to me,
So faint—I must be still, be still to listen;
But
not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.
Hither, my love!
Here I am! Here!
With this just-sustained note I
announce myself to you;
This gentle call is for you, my love, for you!
Do not be decoyed elsewhere!
That is the whistle of the wind—it is
not my voice;
That is the fluttering, the flattering of the spray;
Those
are the shadows of leaves.
O darkness! O in vain!
O I am very sick and sorrowful!
O brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
O
troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O throbbing heart!
O
all!—and I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.!
Yet I murmur, murmur on!
O murmurs—you yourselves make me continue to
sing, I know not why.
O past! O life! O songs of joy!
In the air—in the woods—over fields;
Loved!
loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my love no more, no more with me!
We
two together no more_!
8.
The aria sinking;
All else continuing—the stars shining,
The
winds blowing—the notes of the bird continuous echoing,
With
angry moans the fierce old Mother incessantly moaning,
On the sands
of Paumanok's shore, grey and rustling;
The yellow half-moon
enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea
almost
touching;
The boy ecstatic—with his bare feet the waves, with his
hair the
atmosphere, dallying,
The
love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously
bursting;
The
aria's meaning the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,
The strange
tears down the cheeks coursing;
The colloquy there—the trio—each
uttering;
The undertone—the savage old Mother, incessantly crying,
To
the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing—some drowned secret hissing
To
the outsetting bard of love.
9.
Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate
you sing? or is it mostly to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's
use sleeping,
Now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I
am for—I awake;
And already a thousand singers—a thousand
songs, clearer, louder, and more
sorrowful than yours,
A
thousand warbling echoes, have started to life within me,
Never to
die.
O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting me;
O
solitary me, listening—never more shall I cease perpetuating you;
Never
more shall I escape, never more, the reverberations,
Never more the
cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to
be the peaceful child I was before what there, in
the night,
By
the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there
aroused—the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the
destiny of me.
O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here somewhere;)
O if I am
to have so much, let me have more!
O a word! O what is my
destination? I fear it is henceforth chaos;—
O how joys,
dreads, convolutions, human shapes and all shapes, spring as
from
graves around me!
O phantoms! you cover all the land, and all the sea!
O I cannot see
in the dimness whether you smile or frown upon me;
O vapour, a look,
a word! O well-beloved!
O you dear women's and men's phantoms!
A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
The word final, superior to all,
Subtle,
sent up—what is it?—I listen;
Are you whispering it, and
have been all the time, you sea-waves?
Is that it from your liquid
rims and wet sands?
10.
Whereto answering, the Sea,
Delaying not, hurrying not,
Whispered
me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,
Lisped to me
the low and delicious word DEATH;
And again Death—ever Death, Death,
Death,
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my aroused
child's heart,
But edging near, as privately for me, rustling at my
feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears, and laving me softly
all over,
Death, Death, Death, Death, Death.
Which I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky demon and
brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's grey beach,
With
the thousand responsive songs, at random,
My own songs, awaked from
that hour;
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The
word of the sweetest song, and all songs,
That strong and delicious
word which, creeping to my feet,
The Sea whispered me.
1.
Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face; Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.
2.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you
are
to me!
On the
ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home,
are
more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from
shore to shore years hence are more to me,
and more in my
meditations, than you might suppose.
3.
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The
simple, compact, well-joined scheme—myself disintegrated, every one
disintegrated,
yet part of the scheme;
The similitudes of the past, and those of the
future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and
hearings—on the
walk in the street, and the passage
over the river;
The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me
far away;
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and
them;
The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing, of
others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;
Others
will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of
Manhattan north and west, and the heights
of Brooklyn to the
south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty
years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour
high;
A
hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see
them,
Will
enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back
to
the sea of the ebb-tide.
It avails not, neither time nor
place—distance avails not;
I am with you—you men and women of a
generation, or ever so many
generations hence;
I
project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just
as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as
you are refreshed by the gladness of the river and the bright flow,
I
was refreshed;
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with
the swift current, I
stood, yet was hurried;
Just
as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the
thick-stemmed
pipes of steamboats, I looked.
I too many and many a time crossed the river, the sun half an hour high; I watched the twelfth-month sea-gulls—I saw them high in the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong shadow, I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south.
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes
dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Looked at the fine
centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head
in the
sun-lit water,
Looked on the haze on the hills southward and
southwestward,
Looked on the vapour as it flew in fleeces tinged with
violet,
Looked toward the lower bay to notice the arriving ships,
Saw
their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white
sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors
at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars.
The round masts,
the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine
pennants,
The
large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their
pilot-houses,
The
white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the
wheels,
The
flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The
scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome
crests
and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey
walls of the granite
store-houses by the docks,
On
the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flanked on each
side
by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the
neighbouring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high
and
glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black, contrasted
with wild red and yellow light,
over the tops of houses and
down into the clefts of streets.
These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;
I
project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.
I loved well those cities;
I loved well the stately and rapid river;
The
men and women I saw were all near to me;
Others the same—others who
look back on me because I looked forward to
them;
The
time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.
What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or
hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.
I too lived—Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;
I too walked
the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters
around
it;
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me;
In
the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,
In my
walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.
I too had been struck from the float for ever held in solution, I too had
received
identity by my Body;
That I was, I knew, was of my body—and what I
should be, I knew, I should
be of my body.
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw
patches down upon me also;
The best I had done seemed to me blank and
suspicious;
My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in
reality meagre?
would not people laugh at me?
It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;
I am he who knew
what it was to be evil;
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabbed,
blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged;
Had guile, anger, lust, hot
wishes I dared not speak;
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly,
cowardly, malignant;
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me;
The
cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting;
Refusals,
hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.
But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!
I was called by my
nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they
saw me
approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the
negligent leaning of their
flesh against me as I sat;
Saw
many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet
never
told them a word;
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old
laughing, gnawing,
sleeping;
Played
the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old
rôle, the rôle that is what we make it,—as great as we like,
Or
as small as we like, or both great and small.
Closer yet I approach you:
What thought you have of me, I had as much
of you—
I laid in my stores in advance;
I considered long
and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am
enjoying this?
Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for
all you cannot see
me?
It is not you alone, nor I alone;
Not a few races, nor a few
generations, nor a few centuries;
It is that each came or comes or
shall come from its due
emission, without fail, either now or then or
henceforth.
Everything indicates—the smallest does, and the largest does;
A
necessary film envelops all, and envelops the Soul for a proper time.
Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and admirable to me than my mast-hemmed Manhatta, My river and sunset, and my scallop-edged waves of flood-tide; The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter; Curious what Gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach; Curious what is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face, Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you.
We understand, then, do we not? What I promised without mentioning it have you not accepted? What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish, is accomplished, is it not? What the push of reading could not start, is started by me personally, is it not?
4.
Flow on river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic
on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset,
drench with your splendour me, or the men
and women
generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of
passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!-stand up, beautiful
hills of Brooklyn!
Bully for you! you proud, friendly, free
Manhattanese!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions
and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Blab, blush, lie, steal, you or I or any one after us!
Gaze, loving
and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public
assembly!
Sound
out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest
name!
Live,
old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play
the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes
it!
Consider,
you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking
upon
you:
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly,
yet haste
with the hasting current;
Fly
on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive
the summer sky, you water! and faithfully hold it, till all
downcast
eyes have time to take it from you;
Diverge, fine spokes of light,
from the shape of my head, or any one's
head, in the sun-lit
water;
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down,
white-sailed schooners,
sloops, lighters!
Flaunt
away, flags of all nations! be duly lowered at sunset;
Burn high your
fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall;
cast
red and yellow light over the tops of the houses;
Appearances, now or
henceforth, indicate what you are;
You necessary film, continue to
envelop the soul;
About my body for me, and your body for you, be
hung our divinest aromas;
Thrive, cities! bring your freight, bring
your shows, ample and sufficient
rivers!
Expand,
being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual!
Keep your
places, objects than which none else is more lasting!
We descend upon you and all things—we arrest you all;
We
realise the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;
Through
you colour, form, location, sublimity, ideality;
Through you every
proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and
determinations
of ourselves.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you
novices!
We
receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward;
Not
you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us;
We
use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us;
We
fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also;
You
furnish your parts toward eternity;
Great or small, you furnish your
parts toward the soul.
1.
Night on the prairies.
The supper is over—the fire on the ground
burns low;
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapped in their blankets;
I
walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never
realised
before.
Now I absorb immortality and peace,
I admire death, and test
propositions.
How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé!
The same Old
Man and Soul—the same old aspirations, and the same content.
2.
I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not day
exhibited,
I
was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around
me
myriads of other globes.
Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me, I will
measure
myself by them:
And
now, touched with the lives of other globes, arrived as far along as
those
of the earth,
Or waiting to arrive, or passed on farther than those
of the earth,
I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own
life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to
arrive.
3.
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me-as the day cannot,
I
see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
1.
Elemental drifts! O I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me.
As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I
know,
As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok,
Where
they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old Mother
endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day,
gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal self of me, out of
the pride of which I have
uttered my poems,
Was
seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim,
the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of
the
globe.
Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those
slender
winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum,
scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide;
Miles
walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
Paumanok,
there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses.
These you
presented to me, you fish-shaped Island,
As I wended the shores I
know,
As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types.
2.
As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge, the
voices of men and women wrecked,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes
that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me
closer and closer,
I too but signify, at the utmost, a little
washed-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather,
and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth,
Oppressed with myself
that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that, amid all the blab
whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not
once had the least
idea who or what I am,
But that before all my insolent poems, the
real ME stands yet untouched,
untold, altogether unreached,
Withdrawn
far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals
of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing
in silence to all these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
Now I perceive I have not understood anything—not a single object—and
that
no man ever can.
I perceive Nature, here in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me, to dart upon me, and sting me, Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
3.
You oceans both! I close with you;
These little shreds shall indeed
stand for all.
You friable shore, with trails of debris!
You fish-shaped Island! I
take what is underfoot;
What is yours is mine, my father.
I too, Paumanok,
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless
float, and been washed on
your shores;
I
too am but a trail of drift and debris,
I too leave little wrecks
upon you, you fish-shaped Island.
I throw myself upon your breast, my father,
I cling to you so that
you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm till you answer me
something.
Kiss me, my father,
Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love,
Breathe
to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring
I
envy.
4.
Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return.)
Cease not your moaning,
you fierce old Mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways—but fear not,
deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I
touch you, or
gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you, I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine.
Me and mine!
We, loose winrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy
white, and bubbles,
(See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
See—the
prismatic colours, glistening and rolling!)
Tufts of straw, sands,
fragments,
Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
From
the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell;
Musing, pondering,
a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil;
Up just as much out
of fathomless workings fermented and thrown;
A limp blossom or two,
torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at
random;
Just
as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature;
Just as much, whence we
come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets;
We, capricious, brought
hither, we know not whence, spread out before you,
You, up there,
walking or sitting,
Whoever you are—we too lie in drifts at your feet.
1.
Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice—churchman
and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker—parents and
offspring—merchant, clerk,
porter, and customer,
Editor,
author, artist; and schoolboy—Draw nigh and commence;
It is no
lesson—it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to
another, and every one to another still.
2.
The great laws take and effuse without argument;
I am of the same
style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits—I do not
halt and make salaams.
I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of
things;
They
are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
I cannot say to any person
what I hear—I cannot say it to myself—it is
very
wonderful.
It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly
in
its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt, or the
untruth of a
single second;
I
do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten
billions
of years,
Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an
architect plans and
builds a house.
I
do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that
seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that
years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
3.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful—but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful; And passed from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters, to articulate and walk—All this is equally wonderful.
And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful.
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful;
And
that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is
just
as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with
the earth, is equally
wonderful;
And
that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
wonderful.
1.
What shall I give? and which are my miracles?
2.
Realism is mine—my miracles—Take freely, Take without end—I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you or your eyes reach.
3.
Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else
but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my
sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked
feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under
trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in
the bed at night with any
one I love,
Or
sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers
opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the
hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or
birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the
wonderfulness of the sundown—or of stars shining so quiet and
bright,
Or
the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or
whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best—mechanics,
boatmen,
farmers,
Or among the savans—or to the soirée—or to
the opera.
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of
machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable
sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,
Or the sick
in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and
figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me
miracles,
The whole referring—yet each distinct and in its place.
4.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every inch of
space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is
spread with the same,
Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with
the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and
women, and all
that concerns them,
All
these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim—the
rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with
men
in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
Of the visages of things—And of piercing through to the accepted hells
beneath.
Of
ugliness—To me there is just as much in it as there is in
beauty—And
now the ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me.
Of detected
persons—To me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse
than
undetected persons—and are not in any respect worse than I am
myself.
Of
criminals—To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally criminal—and any
reputable
person is also—and the President is also.
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression
and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish
with themselves,
remorseful after deeds done;
I
see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
gaunt,
desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the
treacherous seducer of
young women;
I
mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—
I
see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle,
pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I
observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be
killed,
to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and
degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
labourers, the
poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—all the meanness and
agony without end, I, sitting, look out
upon;
See,
hear, and am silent.
I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I
passed
the church;
Winds
of autumn!—as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your
long-stretched
sighs, up above, so mournful;
I heard the perfect Italian tenor,
singing at the opera—I heard the
soprano in the midst
of the quartette singing.
—Heart of my love! you too I heard,
murmuring low, through one of the
wrists around my head;
Heard
the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night
under
my ear.
O me! O life!—of the questions of these recurring;
Of the
endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled with the foolish;
Of
myself for ever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and
who
more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects
mean—of the struggle
ever renewed;
Of
the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around
me;
Of
the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The
question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the
powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,
The confession I made I
resume—what I said to you and the open air I
resume.
I
know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons,
full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It
is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped
artilleryman;)
For
I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I
am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been
had
all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either
experience, cautions, majorities,
nor ridicule;
And
the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me;
And the
lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me.
—Dear
camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge
you,
without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall
be victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated.
1.
Splendour of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic—hour
resuming the past:
Inflating my throat—you, divine Average!
You,
Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.
2.
Open mouth of my soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my soul, seeing
perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;
Corroborating
for ever the triumph of things.
3.
Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name space—sphere of
unnumbered spirits;
Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings,
even the tiniest insect;
Illustrious the attribute of speech—the
senses—the body;
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the
pale reflection on the new
moon in the western sky!
Illustrious
whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.
Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In
the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the
strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of
old age,
In the superb vistas of Death.
Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the
all-alike and innocent blood,
To breathe the air, how delicious!
To
speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep,
for bed—to look on my rose-coloured flesh,
To be conscious of
my body, so happy, so large,
To be this incredible God I am,
To
have gone forth among other Gods—those men and women I love.
Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly
at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and
on!
How
the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise
and stand up—with strong trunks—with branches and
leaves!
Surely
there is something more in each of the trees—some living soul.
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of
things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents—now
reaching me and
America!
I
take your strong chords—I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them
forward.
I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too
throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of
the
earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I sailed down the Mississippi,
As I wandered over the prairies,
As
I have lived—As I have looked through my windows, my eyes,
As I
went forth in the morning—As I beheld the light breaking in the east;
As
I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the
Western
Sea;
As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago-whatever streets I
have roamed;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with
contentment and triumph.
I sing the Equalities;
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say
Nature continues—Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice:
For
I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one
cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you
unmitigated adoration.
O Magnet South! O glistening, perfumed South! my South! O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! good and evil! O all dear to me! O dear to me my birth-things—all moving things, and the trees where I was born,[1] the grains, plants, rivers; Dear to me my own slow, sluggish rivers, where they flow distant over flats of silvery sands or through swamps; Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine— O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their banks again. Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on Okeechobee—I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings or dense forests. I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree, and the blossoming titi. Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast up the Carolinas; I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto. I pass rude sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp! The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his concealed hut; O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake; The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the raccoon, the opossum; A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leaved corn—slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels—with beautiful ears, each well-sheathed in its husk; An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou. O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart! O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian! O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!
[Footnote 1: These expressions cannot be understood in a literal sense, for Whitman was born, not in the South, but in the State of New York. The precise sense to be attached to them may be open to some difference of opinion.]
Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after
all—that we may be deluded,
That maybe reliance and hope are
but speculations after all,
That maybe identity beyond the grave is a
beautiful fable only,
Maybe the things I perceive—the animals,
plants, men, hills, shining and
flowing waters,
The
skies of day and night—colours, densities, forms—Maybe these are (as
doubtless
they are) only apparitions, and the real something has
yet to
be known;
(How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound
me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows,
aught of them!)
Maybe seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they
indeed but seem) as
from my present point of view—And might
prove (as of course they
would) naught of what they appear,
or naught anyhow, from entirely
changed points of view;
—To
me, these, and the like of these, are curiously answered by my lovers,
my
dear friends.
When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long
while holding me by the
hand,
When
the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold
not,
surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and
untellable wisdom—I am silent—I require
nothing
further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of
identity beyond the
grave;
But
I walk or sit indifferent—I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand
has completely satisfied me.
Recorders ages hence! Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior—I will tell you what to say of me; Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend, the lover's portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him—and freely poured it forth, Who often walked lonesome walks, thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive, away from one he loved, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he loved might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose happiest days were far away, through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand, they twain, apart from other men, Who oft, as he sauntered the streets, curved with his arm the shoulder of his friend—while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.
When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been received with
plaudits
in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that
followed;
And
else, when I caroused, or when my plans were accomplished, still I was
not
happy.
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect
health, refreshed,
singing, inhaling the ripe breath of
autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear
in the morning
light,
When
I wandered alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with
the
cool waters, and saw the sunrise,
And when I thought how my dear
friend, my lover, was on his way coming, O
then I was happy;
O
then each breath tasted sweeter—and all that day my food nourished me
more—and
the beautiful day passed well,
And the next came with equal joy—and
with the next, at evening, came my
friend;
And
that night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll slowly
continually
up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as
directed to me,
whispering, to congratulate me;
For
the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool
night,
In
the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me,
And
his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I was happy.
Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he was dead;
And I
dreamed I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in
that
place;
And I dreamed I wandered, searching among burial-places, to
find him;
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The
houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now;)
The
streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia,
the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living,
And
fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living.
—And what I
dreamed I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand
henceforth bound to what I dreamed;
And now I am willing to disregard
burial-places, and dispense with them;
And if the memorials of the
dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even
in the room
where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied;
And if the corpse of any
one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly rendered
to powder,
and poured in the sea, I shall be satisfied;
Or if it be distributed
to the winds, I shall be satisfied.
What think you I take my pen in hand to record?
The battle-ship,
perfect-modelled, majestic, that I saw pass the offing to-
day
under full sail?
The splendours of the past day? Or the splendour of
the night that envelops
me?
Or
the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me?—No;
But
I record of two simple men I saw to-day, on the pier, in the midst of
the
crowd, parting the parting of dear friends;
The one to remain hung on
the other's neck, and passionately kissed him,
While the one to
depart tightly pressed the one to remain in his arms.
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you;
You
must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me, as of a
dream).
I
have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you.
All is recalled
as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste,
matured;
You
grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me;
I ate with
you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only,
nor
left my body mine only;
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face,
flesh, as we pass—you take of
my beard, breast, hands
in return;
I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit
alone, or wake at
night alone;
I
am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again;
I am to see
to it that I do not lose you.
This moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me
there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;
It seems
to me I can look over and behold them in Prussia, Italy, France,
Spain—or
far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India—talking
other
dialects;
And it seems to me, if I could know those men, I should
become attached to
them, as I do to men in my own lands.
O
I know we should be brethren and lovers;
I know I should be happy
with them.
When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house.
But when I read of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them; How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long, Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were, Then I am pensive—I hastily put down the book, and walk away, filled with the bitterest envy.
I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole
of
the rest of the earth;
I
dreamed that it was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater
there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest;
It was
seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all
their looks and words.
1.
Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering,
I love you; before long I die:
I have travelled a long way, merely
to look on you, to touch you:
For I could not die till I once looked
on you,
For I feared I might afterward lose you.
2.
Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe;
Return in peace to the
ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so
much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all,
how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to
separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us
diverse for ever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know you, I salute
the air, the ocean,
and the land,
Every
day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.
Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out
by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else—not parent, wife,
husband, brother, child, any
nearer than I am;
Some
are baffled—But that one is not—that one knows me.
Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so,
by my faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover
you by the like in you.
1.
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star[1]
early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned,…and yet
shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming
perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2.
O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful
night!
O great star disappeared! O the black murk that hides the star!
O
cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh
surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!
3.
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed
palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped
leaves of rich
green,
With
many a pointed blossom, rising delicate, with the perfume strong I
love,
With
every leaf a miracle: and from this bush in the dooryard,
With
delicate-coloured blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A
sprig, with its flower, I break.
4.
In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling
a song.
Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the
settlements,
Sings by himself a song:
Song of the bleeding throat!
Death's outlet song of life—for well,
dear brother, I know,
If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou wouldst
surely die.
5.
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes, and
through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the
ground,
spotting the greydebris;
Amid the grass in the fields each side of
the lanes—passing the endless
grass;
Passing
the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown
fields uprising;
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in
the orchards;
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night
and day journeys a coffin.
6.
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night,
with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the
inlooped flags, with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the
States themselves as of crape-veiled women standing,
With processions
long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless
torches lit—with the silent sea of faces,
and the
unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the
sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices
rising strong and
solemn;
With
all the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around the coffin,
The
dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—Where amid these you
journey,
With
the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
Here! coffin that slowly
passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7.
Nor for you, for one, alone;
Blossoms and branches green to coffins
all I bring:
For fresh as the morning—thus would I chant a song for
you, O sane and
sacred Death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O Death! I cover you over with roses and
early lilies;
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious,
I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes!
With loaded arms I come,
pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, O Death.
8.
O western orb, sailing the heaven!
Now I know what you must have
meant, as a month since we walked,
As we walked up and down in the
dark blue so mystic,
As we walked in silence the transparent shadowy
night,
As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night
after night,
As you drooped from the sky low down, as if to my side,
while the other
stars all looked on;
As
we wandered together the solemn night, for something, I know not what,
kept
me from sleep;
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the
west, ere you went, how
full you were of woe;
As
I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the cool transparent
night,
As
I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black of the
night,
As
my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded,
dropped in the night, and was gone.
9.
Sing on, there in the swamp!
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your
notes—I hear your call;
I hear—I come presently—I understand
you;
But a moment I linger—for the lustrous star has detained me;
The
star, my comrade departing, holds and detains me.
10.
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how
shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what
shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern Sea, and
blown from the Western Sea, till there on
the prairies
meeting:
These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
I
perfume the grave of him I love.
11.
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures
be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,
With the
Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey smoke lucid and bright,
With
floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent sinking sun,
burning,
expanding the air;
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the
pale green leaves of the
trees prolific;
In
the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river,
with
a wind-dapple here and there;
With ranging hills on the banks, with
many a line against the sky, and
shadows;
And
the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And
all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward
returning.
12.
Lo! body and soul! this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the
sparkling and hurrying tides, and
the ships;
The
varied and ample land—the South and the North in the
light—Ohio's
shores, and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies,
covered with grass and corn.
Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty;
The violet and
purple morn, with just-felt breezes;
The gentle, soft-born,
measureless light;
The miracle, spreading, bathing all—the fulfilled
noon;
The coming eve, delicious—the welcome night, and the stars,
Over
my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13.
Sing on! sing on, you grey-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the
recesses—pour your chant from the bushes;
Limitless out of the
dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother—warble your reedy song,
Loud human
song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid, and free, and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul! O
wondrous singer!
You only I hear,… yet the star holds me, (but will
soon depart;)
Yet the lilac, with mastering odour, holds me.
14.
Now while I sat in the day, and looked forth,
In the close of the
day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the
farmer
preparing his crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land,
with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the
perturbed winds and the storms;
Under the arching heavens of the
afternoon swift passing, and the voices of
children and women,
The
many-moving sea-tides,—and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And
the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with
labour,
And
the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals
and
minutiae of daily usages;
And the streets, how their throbbings
throbbed, and the cities
pent—lo! then and there,
Falling
upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appeared
the cloud, appeared the long black trail;
And I knew Death, its
thought, and the sacred knowledge of Death.
15.
And the Thought of Death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in
the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of
companions,
I
fled forth to the hiding receiving night, that talks not,
Down to the
shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the
solemn shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me;
The grey-brown bird I
know received us Comrades three;
And he sang what seemed the song of
Death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars, and the
ghostly pines so still,
Came the singing of the bird.
And the charm of the singing rapt me,
As I held, as if by their
hands, my Comrades in the night;
And the voice of my spirit tallied
the song of the bird.
16.
Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely
arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner
or later, delicate Death.
Praised be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects
and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise
and praise,
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
Have none chanted
for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee—I
glorify thee above all;
I bring thee a song that, when thou must
indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, encompassing Death-strong deliveress!
When it is so—when
thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving,
floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose, saluting
thee—adornments and feastings for
thee;
And
the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky, are fitting,
And
life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night, in silence, under many a star;
The ocean shore, and the
husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
And the soul turning to
thee, O vast and well-veiled Death,
And the body gratefully nestling
close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song!
Over the rising and sinking
waves—over the myriad fields, and the prairies
wide;
Over
the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways,
I
float this carol with joy, with joy, to thee, O Death!
17.
To the tally of my soul
Loud and strong kept up the grey-brown bird,
With
pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist, and
the swamp-perfume,
And I with my Comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long
panoramas of visions.
18.
I saw the vision of armies;
And I saw, as in noiseless dreams,
hundreds of battle-flags;
Borne through the smoke of the battles, and
pierced with missiles, I saw
them,
And
carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody;
And at
last but a few shreds of the flags left on the staffs, (and all in
silence,)
And
the staffs all splintered and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of
young men—I saw them;
I saw the debris and debris of all dead
soldiers.
But I saw they were not as was thought;
They themselves
were fully at rest—they suffered not;
The living remained and
suffered—the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child, and
the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
19.
Passing the visions, passing the night;
Passing, unloosing the hold
of my Comrades' hands;
Passing the song of the hermit bird, and the
tallying song of my soul;
Victorious song, Death's outlet song, yet
varying, ever-altering song;
As low and wailing, yet clear, the
notes, rising and falling, flooding the
night,
Sadly
sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting
with
joy.
Covering the earth, and filling the spread of the heaven,
As
that powerful psalm in the night, I heard from recesses.
20.
Must I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves?
Must I leave thee
there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring?
Must I pass from my song for thee—
From my gaze on thee in the
west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous,
with silver face in the night?
21.
Yet each I keep, and all;
The song, the wondrous chant of the
grey-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With
the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe;
With
the lilac tali, and its blossoms of mastering odour;
Comrades mine,
and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep—for the
dead
I loved so well;
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands—and this for his
dear sake;
Lilac
and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul,
With the holders
holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird,
There in the fragrant
pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.
[Footnote 1: "The evening star, which, as many may remember night after night, in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in the west with unusual and tender brightness."—JOHN BURROUGHS.]
1.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!
The ship has
weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won.
The port is near,
the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the
steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But, O heart!
heart! heart!
Leave you not the little spot
Where
on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells!
Rise up! for you
the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:
For you bouquets and
ribboned wreaths; for you the shores a-crowding:
For you they call,
the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
O Captain! dear father!
This
arm I push beneath you.
It is some dream that on the deck
You've
fallen cold and dead!
3.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still:
My father
does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
But the ship, the
ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed and done:
From fearful trip
the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O
shores! and ring, O bells!
But I, with silent tread,
Walk
the spot my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
1.
Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get
your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged
axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
2.
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march, my darlings, we
must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the
rest on us depend.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
3.
O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of
action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, Western
youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
4.
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their
lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task
eternal, and the burden, and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
5.
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer,
mightier world, varied world;
Fresh and strong the world we seize,
world of labour and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
6.
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through
the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring,
venturing, as we go, the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
7.
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming,
vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;
We the surface broad
surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
8.
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the
great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the
gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
9.
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we,
from Missouri, with the continental blood
interveined;
All the
hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
10.
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my
breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult—I am
rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers;
11.
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the
delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your
heads
all,)
Raise the fanged and warlike mistress, stern, impassive,
weaponed mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
12.
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon
our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly
millions, frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
13.
On and on, the compact ranks,
With accessions ever
waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filled,
Through the
battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
14.
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and
die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and
sure the gap is filled,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
15.
All the pulses of the world,
Falling in, they beat for
us, with the Western movement beat;
Holding single or together,
steady moving, to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
16.
Life's involved and varied pageants,
All the forms and
shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the
landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers, O
pioneers!
17.
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the
prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the
sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
18.
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking,
wandering on our way,
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with
the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
19.
Lo! the darting, bowling orb!
Lo! the brother orbs
around! all the clustering suns and planets;
All the dazzling days,
all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
20.
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed
work, while the followers there in embryo wait
behind,
We to-day's
procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
21.
O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder
daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in
our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
22.
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of
other lands! you may sleep—you have done your work;)
Soon I
hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
23.
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the
slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;
Not the riches safe and
palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
24.
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent
sleepers sleep? have they locked and bolted doors?
Still be ours the
diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
25.
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so
toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our
way?
Yet a
passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
26.
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak
call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the
head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers!
O pioneers!
1.
Earth, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words
to
be said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions,
lispings of
the future,
Behold!
these are vast words to be said.
Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those
curves,
angles, dots?
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are
in the ground and
sea,
They
are in the air—they are in you.
Were you thinking that those were the words—those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths? No; the real words are more delicious than they.
Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
In the best poems reappears
the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped,
natural, gay;
Every
part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.
Air, soil, water, fire—these are words; I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs—my name is nothing to them; Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?
A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings,
meanings;
The
charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings
and
meanings also.
2.
The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth; The great masters know the earth's words, and use them more than the audible words.
Amelioration is one of the earth's words;
The earth neither lags nor
hastens;
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself
from the jump;
It is not half beautiful only—defects and excrescences
show just as much
as perfections show.
The earth does not withhold—it is generous enough;
The truths
of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either;
They
are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print;
They are imbued through
all things, conveying themselves willingly,
Conveying a sentiment and
invitation of the earth. I utter and utter:
I speak not; yet, if you
hear me not, of what avail am I to you?
To bear—to better; lacking
these, of what avail am I?
Accouche! Accouchez! Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? Will you squat and stifle there?
The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does
not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no
discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses
nothing, shuts none out;
Of all the powers, objects, states, it
notifies, shuts none out.
The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself—possesses still underneath; Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail.
To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great Mother never fail;
The
true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does
not
fail;
Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue
does not fail.
3.
Of the interminable sisters,
Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,
Of
the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,
The
beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.
With her ample back towards every beholder,
With the fascinations of
youth, and the equal fascinations of age,
Sits she whom I too love
like the rest—sits undisturbed,
Holding up in her hand what has
the character of a mirror, while her eyes
glance back from it,
Glance
as she sits, inviting none, denying none,
Holding a mirror day and
night tirelessly before her own face.
Seen at hand, or seen at a distance,
Duly the twenty-four appear in
public every day,
Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a
companion,
Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the
countenances of
those who are with them,
From
the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance,
From
the open countenances of animals, or from inanimate things,
From the
landscape or waters, or from the exquisite apparition of the sky,
From
our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,
Every
day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same
companions.
Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and
sixty-five
resistlessly round the sun;
Embracing all, soothing, supporting,
follow close three hundred and sixty-
five offsets of the
first, sure and necessary as they.
Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading,
Sunshine, storm, cold, heat,
for ever withstanding, passing, carrying,
The Soul's realisation and determination still inheriting;
The fluid
vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
No baulk
retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking,
Swift, glad,
content, unbereaved, nothing losing,
Of all able and ready at any
time to give strict account,
The divine ship sails the divine sea.
4.
Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you;
The
divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and
liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky;
For
none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than
you is immortality.
Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, such as the word of the
past
and present, and the word of immortality;
No one can acquire for
another—not one!
Not one can grow for another—not one!
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him;
The teaching
is to the teacher, and comes back most to him;
The murder is to the
murderer, and comes back most to him;
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him;
The love is to
the lover, and conies back most to him;
The gift is to the giver, and
comes back most to him—it cannot fail;
The oration is to the
orator, the acting is to the actor and actress, not
to the
audience;
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his
own, or the
indication of his own.
5.
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be
complete!
I
swear the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains
broken
and jagged!
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the
earth!
I
swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the
theory
of the earth!
No politics, art, religion, behaviour, or what not, is
of account, unless
it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless
it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
earth.
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds
love!
It
is that which contains itself—which never invites, and never refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!
I swear I
think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings
of
the earth;
Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the
truths of the earth;
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words
that print cannot touch.
I swear I see what is better than to tell the best;
It is always to
leave the best untold.
When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot,
My tongue is
ineffectual on its pivots,
My breath will not be obedient to its
organs,
I become a dumb man.
The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow—all or any is best;
It
is not what you anticipated—it is cheaper, easier, nearer;
Things
are not dismissed from the places they held before;
The earth is just
as positive and direct as it was before;
Facts, religions,
improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before;
But the Soul
is also real,—it too is positive and direct;
No reasoning, no
proof has established it,
Undeniable growth has established it.
6.
This is a poem for the sayers of words—these are hints of meanings,
These
are they that echo the tones of souls, and the phrases of souls;
If
they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then?
If they
had not reference to you in especial, what were they then?
I swear I
will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the
best!
I
will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
7.
Say on, sayers!
Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
Work
on—it is materials you bring, not breaths;
Work on, age after
age! nothing is to be lost!
It may have to wait long, but it will
certainly come in use;
When the materials are all prepared, the
architects shall appear.
I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them
and
lead them;
I swear to you they will understand you and justify you;
I
swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and
encloses
all, and is faithful to all;
I swear to you, he and the rest shall
not forget you—they shall perceive
that you are not an
iota less than they;
I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them.
1.
Now I make a leaf of Voices—for I have found nothing mightier than they
are,
And
I have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place.
2.
O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely,
whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
As
the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around
the
globe.
All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practised and perfect
organ? Where is the developed Soul?
For I see every word uttered
thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,
impossible on less
terms.
I see brains and lips closed—tympans and temples unstruck,
Until
that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,
Until that
comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering,
for
ever ready, in all words.
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear those supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs-out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I
whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and
men, but I love none better than you.
Oh! I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight
to you long ago;
I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have
chanted nothing but
you.
I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have
understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to
you—you have not done justice to yourself;
None but have found
you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you;
None but
would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to
subordinate
you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
beyond what
waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all, From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold- coloured light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it streams, effulgently flowing for ever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not
known what you are—you have slumbered upon yourself all your
life;
Your
eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have
done returns already in mockeries;
Your thrift, knowledge, prayers,
if they do not return in mockeries, what
is their return?
The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk others, they do not baulk me. The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There
is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you;
No
pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;
No pleasure
waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
As for me, I
give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to
you;
I
sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the
songs
of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the
east and west are tame compared to you;
These immense meadows—these
interminable rivers—you are immense and
interminable as
they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of
apparent
dissolution—you are he or she who is master or
mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature,
elements, pain, passion,
dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulgates itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.
How they are provided for upon the earth, appearing at intervals;
How
dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves
as much as to any—What a paradox appears
their age;
How
people respond to them, yet know them not;
How there is something
relentless in their fate, all times;
How all times mischoose the
objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable
price must still be paid for the same great
purchase.
1.
Is reform needed? Is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you need to accomplish it.
You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion,
clean
and sweet?
Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and
Soul that, when
you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire
and command enters
with you, and every one is impressed with
your personality?
2.
O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
Go, dear friend! if need be,
give up all else, and commence to-day to inure
yourself to
pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
elevatedness;
Rest
not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
1.
Think of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives
proportions to your Soul somehow to
live in other spheres;
I
do not know how, but I know it is so.
2.
Think of loving and being loved; I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you.
3.
Think of the past; I warn you that, in a little while, others will find their past in you and your times.
The race is never separated—nor man nor woman escapes; All is inextricable—things, spirits, nature, nations, you too—from precedents you come.
Recall the ever-welcome defiers (the mothers precede them);
Recall
the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall
Christ, brother of rejected persons—brother of slaves, felons,
idiots,
and of insane and diseased persons.
4.
Think of the time when you was not yet born;
Think of times you stood
at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will
be dying.
Think of spiritual results: Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results.
Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
Do you count manhood, and the
sweet of manhood, nothing?
Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;
The creation is
womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not
told how the universe has nothing better than the best
womanhood?
The world below the brine. Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold—the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom: The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray. Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes—sight in those ocean-depths— breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do. The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who walk this sphere: The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.
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 a while 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.
[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor, succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;—1845 to 1857.]
Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears;
On
the white shore dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand;
Tears—not
a star shining—all dark and desolate;
Moist tears from the eyes
of a muffled head:
—O who is that ghost?—that form in the dark, with
tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand?
Streaming
tears—sobbing tears—throes, choked with wild cries;
O
storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach;
O
wild and dismal night-storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!
O
shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated
pace;
But
away, at night, as you fly, none looking—O then the unloosened ocean
Of
tears! tears! tears!
1.
Aboard, at the ship's helm,
A young steersman, steering with care.
A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell—O
a warning bell, rocked by the waves.
O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing,
ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
For, as on the alert,
O steersman, you mind the bell's admonition,
The bows turn,—the
freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her grey
sails;
The
beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away
gaily
and safe.
2.
But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!
O ship of
the body—ship of the soul—voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.
1.
Great are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and
Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen
nations, and their poets, women, sages,
inventors, rulers,
warriors, and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of
nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out
with you, or sink with you.
Great is Youth—equally great is Old Age—great are the Day and Night;
Great
is Wealth—great is Poverty—great is Expression—great is Silence.
2.
Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination! Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?
Day, full-blown and splendid—Day of the immense sun, action, ambition,
laughter,
The
Night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and restoring
darkness.
Wealth, with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospitality;
But then the
soul's wealth, which is candour, knowledge, pride, enfolding
love;
Who
goes for men and women showing Poverty richer than wealth?
Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that Silence
is
also expressive;
That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as
cold as the coldest,
may be without words.
3.
Great is the Earth, and the way it became what it is: Do you imagine it has stopped at this? the increase abandoned? Understand then that it goes as far onward from this as this is from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases, before man had appeared.
4.
Great is the quality of Truth in man;
The quality of truth in man
supports itself through all changes;
It is inevitably in the man—he
and it are in love, and never leave each
other.
The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight; If there be any Soul, there is truth—if there be man or woman, there is truth—if there be physical or moral, there is truth; If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth—if there be things at all upon the earth, there is truth.
O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press my way
toward
you;
Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea, after
you.
5.
Great is Language—it is the mightiest of the sciences, It is the fulness, colour, form, diversity of the earth, and of men and women, and of all qualities and processes; It is greater than wealth, it is greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings, music.
Great is the English speech—what speech is so great as the English?
Great
is the English brood—what brood has so vast a destiny as the
English?
It
is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule;
The
new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice,
equality
in the Soul rule.
6.
Great is Law—great are the old few landmarks of the law,
They
are the same in all times, and shall not be disturbed.
Great is Justice!
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws—it
is in the Soul;
It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love,
pride, the attraction
of gravity, can;
It
is immutable—it does not depend on majorities—majorities or what not
come
at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal.
For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges—it is in
their
souls;
It is well assorted—they have not studied for nothing—the
great includes
the less;
They
rule on the highest grounds—they oversee all eras, states,
administrations.
The perfect judge fears nothing—he could go front to front before God; Before the perfect judge all shall stand back—life and death shall stand back—heaven and hell shall stand back.
7.
Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever; Great is Death—sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together.
Has Life much purport?—Ah! Death has the greatest purport.
1.
Now list to my morning's romanza;
To the cities and farms I sing, as
they spread in the sunshine before me.
2.
A young man came to me bearing a message from his brother;
How should
the young man know the whether and when of his brother?
Tell him to
send me the signs.
And I stood before the young man face to face, and took his right hand in
my
left hand, and his left hand in my right hand,
And I answered for his
brother, and for men, and I answered for THE POET,
and sent
these signs.
Him all wait for—him all yield up to—his word is decisive and final,
Him
they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light,
Him
they immerse, and he immerses them.
Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people,
animals,
The
profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean (so tell I my
morning's
romanza),
All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever
money will buy,
The best farms—others toiling and planting, and he
unavoidably reaps,
The noblest and costliest cities—others grading
and building, and he
domiciles there,
Nothing
for any one but what is for him—near and far are for him,—the
ships
in the offing,
The perpetual shows and marches on land, are for him,
if they are for
anybody.
He puts things in their attitudes; He puts to-day out of himself, with plasticity and love; He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.
He is the answerer; What can be answered he answers—and what cannot be answered, he shows how it cannot be answered.
3.
A man is a summons and challenge; (It is vain to skulk—Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical echoes?)
Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat
up
and down, seeking to give satisfaction;
He
indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down
also.
Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and
gently
and safely, by day or by night;
He has the pass-key of hearts—to him
the response of the prying of hands
on the knobs.
His welcome is universal—the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is; The person he favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.
Every existence has its idiom—everything has an idiom and tongue; He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also; One part does not counteract another part—he is the joiner—he sees how they join.
He says indifferently and alike, "How are you, friend?" to
the President
at his levee,
And
he says, "Good-day, my brother!" to Cudge that hoes in the
sugar-
field,
And
both understand him, and know that his speech is right.
He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol, He walks among the Congress, and one representative says to another, "Here is our equal, appearing and new."
4.
Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose
him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has
followed the
sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an
artist,
And the labourers perceive he could labour with them and love
them;
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or
has
followed it,
No
matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters
there.
The English believe he comes of their English stock, A Jew to the Jew he seems—a Russ to the Russ—usual and near, removed from none.
Whoever he looks at in the travellers' coffee-house claims him;
The
Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard
is
sure, and the island Cuban is sure;
The engineer, the deck-hand on
the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or
St. Lawrence, or
Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him.
The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood;
The
insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves
in
the ways of him—he strangely transmutes them,
They are not vile
any more—they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.
1.
To think of it!
To think of time—of all that retrospection!
To
think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!
Have you
guessed you yourself would not continue?
Have you dreaded these
earth-beetles?
Have you feared the future would be nothing to you?
Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?
If the future
is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.
To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible,
real,
alive! that everything was alive!
To think that you and I did not
see, feel, think, nor bear our part!
To think that we are now here,
and bear our part!
2.
Not a day passes—not a minute or second, without an accouchement!
Not
a day passes-not a minute or second, without a corpse!
The dull nights go over, and the dull days also,
The soreness of
lying so much in bed goes over,
The physician, after long putting
off, gives the silent and terrible look
for an answer,
The
children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are
sent
for;
Medicines stand unused on the shelf—(the camphor-smell has long
pervaded
the rooms,)
The
faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,
The
twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,
The breath
ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases,
The corpse stretches on
the bed, and the living look upon it,
It is palpable as the living
are palpable.
The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight, But without eyesight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse.
3.
To think that the rivers will flow, and the snow fall, and the fruits
ripen,
and act upon others as upon us now—yet not act upon us!
To
think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great
interest
in them—and we taking—no interest in them!
To think how eager we are in building our houses!
To think others
shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent!
I see one building
the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or
eighty
years at most,
I see one building the house that serves him longer
than that.
Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth—they never cease—
they
are the burial lines;
He that was President was buried, and he that
is now President shall surely
be buried.
4.
Gold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf—posh and ice in the river, half- frozen mud in the streets, a grey discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of Twelfth-month, A hearse and stages—other vehicles give place—the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.
Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is
passed,
the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the
hearse
uncloses,
The coffin is passed out, lowered, and settled, the whip is
laid on the
coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled in,
The
mound above is flattened with the spades—silence,
A minute, no
one moves or speaks—it is done,
He is decently put away—is
there anything more?
He was a good fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, died, aged forty- one years—and that was his funeral.
Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather
clothes,
whip carefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler,
somebody
loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, headway, man
before
and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock,
mean
stock, first out, last out, turning-in at night;
To think that these
are so much and so nigh to other drivers—and he there
takes
no interest in them!
5.
The markets, the government, the working-man's wages—to think what
account
they are through our nights and days!
To
think that other working-men will make just as great account of them—
yet
we make little or no account!
The vulgar and the refined—what you call sin, and what you call goodness—
to
think how wide a difference!
To think the difference will still
continue to others, yet we lie beyond
the difference.
To think how much pleasure there is!
Have you pleasure from looking
at the sky? have you pleasure from poems?
Do you enjoy yourself in
the city? or engaged in business? or planning a
nomination
and election? or with your wife and family?
Or with your mother and
sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful
maternal
cares?
These also flow onward to others—you and I fly onward,
But
in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.
Your farm, profits, crops,—to think how engrossed you are! To think there will still be farms, profits, crops—yet for you, of what avail?
6.
What will be will be well—for what is is well;
To take interest
is well, and not to take interest shall be well.
The sky continues beautiful, The pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of women with men, nor the pleasure from poems; The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses—these are not phantasms—they have weight, form, location; Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms; The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, The earth is not an echo—man and his life, and all the things of his life, are well-considered.
You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely around
yourself;
Yourself!
Yourself! Yourself, for ever and ever!
7.
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father—it
is
to identify you;
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you
should
be decided;
Something
long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you,
You are
henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the
pattern
is systematic.
The preparations have every one been justified, The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments—the baton has given the signal.
The guest that was coming—he waited long, for reasons—he is now housed; He is one of those who are beautiful and happy—he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough.
The law of the past cannot be eluded,
The law of the present and
future cannot be eluded,
The law of the living cannot be eluded—it is
eternal;
The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,
The
law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
The law of drunkards,
informers, mean persons—not one iota thereof can be
eluded.
8.
Slow-moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
Northerner
goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the
Atlantic
side, and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all
through
the Mississippi country, and all over the earth.
The great masters and kosmos are well as they go—the heroes and
good-doers
are well,
The
known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and
distinguished,
may be well,
But there is more account than that—there is strict
account of all.
The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
The
barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
The common people of
Europe are not nothing—the American aborigines are
not
nothing,
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing—the
murderer or
mean person is not nothing,
The
perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go,
The
lowest prostitute is not nothing—the mocker of religion is not nothing
as
he goes.
9.
I shall go with the rest—we have satisfaction,
I have dreamed
that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us
changed,
I
have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and
past
law,
And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present
and past
law,
For
I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough.
And I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed, and that there is no life without satisfaction; What is the earth? what are Body and Soul without satisfaction?
I shall go with the rest,
We cannot be stopped at a given point—that
is no satisfaction,
To show us a good thing, or a few good things,
for a space of time—that is
no satisfaction,
We
must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time.
If
otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung,
If maggots and
rats ended us, then alarum! for we are betrayed!
Then indeed
suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now:
Do
you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?
10.
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk:
Whither I walk I cannot define,
but I know it is good;
The whole universe indicates that it is good,
The
past and the present indicate that it is good.
How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my Soul!
How
perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!
What is called
good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,
The
vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids
are
perfect;
Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly
and surely they
yet pass on.
My Soul! if I realise you, I have satisfaction;
Animals and
vegetables! if I realise you, I have satisfaction;
Laws of the earth
and air! if I realise you, I have satisfaction.
I cannot define my satisfaction, yet it is so;
I cannot define my
life, yet it is so.
11.
It comes to me now!
I swear I think now that everything without
exception has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground!
the weeds of the sea have! the
animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it; And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and death are altogether for it!
1.
Something startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from
the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I
will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I
will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
2.
O how can the ground not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of
spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots,
orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distempered corpses
in you?
Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and
gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the
foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or
perhaps I am deceived;
I will run a furrow with my plough—I will
press my spade through the sod,
and turn it up underneath;
I
am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
3.
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once
formed part of a sick person—Yet behold!
The grass covers the
prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The
delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster
together on the apple branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears
with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the
willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and
evenings, while the she-birds sit on their
nests,
The
young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,
The new-born of
animals appear—the calf is dropped from the cow, the colt
from
the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's
dark-green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;
The
summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour
dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That
this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so
amorous
after me;
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over
with its
tongues,
That
it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves
in
it,
That all is clean for ever and for ever,
That the cool drink
from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and
juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the
orange-orchard—that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums,
will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do
not catch any disease,
Though probably every sphere of grass rises
out of what was once a catching
disease.
4.
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
It
grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless
and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions
of
diseased corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused
fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual,
sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts
such leavings from them
at last.
1.
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, The sad voice of Death—the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain, "The Sea I am quickly to sail: come tell me, Come tell me where I am speeding—tell me my destination."
2.
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you;
I approach, hear,
behold—the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your
mute
inquiry,
"Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me."
Old
age, alarmed, uncertain—A young woman's voice, appealing to me for
comfort;
A
young man's voice, "Shall I not escape?"
By the City Dead-House, by the gate,
As idly sauntering, wending my
way from the clangour,
I curious pause—for lo! an outcast form, a
poor dead prostitute brought;
Her corpse they deposit unclaimed, it
lies on the damp brick pavement.
The divine woman, her body—I see the
body—I look on it alone,
That house once full of passion and
beauty—all else I notice not;
Nor stillness so cold, nor
running water from faucet, nor odours morbific
impress me;
But
the house alone—that wondrous house—that delicate fair house—that
ruin!
That
immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built,
Or
white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted—or all the
old
high-spired cathedrals,
That little house alone, more than them
all—poor, desperate house!
Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a
Soul! itself a Soul!
Unclaimed, avoided house! take one breath from
my tremulous lips;
Take one tear, dropped aside as I go, for thought
of you,
Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled!
crushed!
House of life—erewhile talking and laughing—but ah, poor
house! dead even
then;
Months,
years, an echoing, garnished house-but dead, dead, dead!
1.
From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you:
You are
to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
I
am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you.
2.
Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it;
I do not
argue—I bend my head close, and half envelop it,
I sit quietly
by—I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or
neighbour,
I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual,
bodily—that is
eternal,—
The
corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.
The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions!
Strong thoughts
fill you, and confidence—you smile!
You forget you are sick, as
I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines—you do not mind
the weeping friends—I am
with you,
I
exclude others from you—there is nothing to be commiserated,
I
do not commiserate—I congratulate you.
1.
Nations, ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten
thousand
years before these States;
Garnered clusters of ages, that men and
women like us grew up and travelled
their course, and passed
on;
What vast-built cities—what orderly republics—what pastoral
tribes and
nomads;
What
histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others;
What
laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;
What sort of marriage—what
costumes—what physiology and phrenology;
What of liberty and
slavery among them—what they thought of death and the
soul;
Who
were witty and wise—who beautiful and poetic—who brutish and
undeveloped;
Not
a mark, not a record remains,—And yet all remains.
2.
O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more than we
are
for nothing;
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every
bit as much as we
now belong to it, and as all will
henceforth belong to it.
Afar they stand—yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval
countenances, learned and calm,
Some naked and savage—Some like huge
collections of insects,
Some in tents—herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes,
horsemen,
Some prowling through woods—Some living peaceably on farms,
labouring,
reaping, filling barns,
Some
traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories, libraries,
shows,
courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old
experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only
with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good, for themselves?
3.
I believe, of all those billions of men and women that filled the unnamed lands, every one exists this hour, here or elsewhere, invisible to us, in exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinned, in life.
I believe that was not the end of those nations, or any person of them,
any
more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;
Of
their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products, games,
wars,
manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets, I suspect
their
results curiously await in the yet unseen world—counterparts
of
what accrued to them in the seen world;
I suspect I shall meet them
there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those
unnamed lands.
1.
On the beach at night alone,
As the old Mother sways her to and fro,
singing her savage and husky song,
As I watch the bright stars
shining—I think a thought of the clef of the
universes,
and of the future.
2.
A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small,
large, suns, moons, planets, comets,
asteroids,
All
the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
All
distances of place, however wide,
All distances of time—all inanimate
forms,
All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different,
or in
different worlds,
All
gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes,
All
men and women—me also;
All nations, colours, barbarisms,
civilisations, languages;
All identities that have existed, or may
exist, on this globe, or any
globe;
All
lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future;
This vast
similitude spans them, and always has spanned, and shall for ever
span
them, and compactly hold them.
Chanting the Square Deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides;
Out
of the old and new—out of the square entirely divine,
Solid,
four-sided, (all the sides needed)—From this side JEHOVAH am I,
Old
Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;
Not Time affects me—I am Time, modern as
any;
Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments;
As
the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,
Aged beyond
computation—yet ever new—ever with those mighty laws rolling,
Relentless,
I forgive no man—whoever sins dies—I will have that man's
life;
Therefore
let none expect mercy—Have the seasons, gravitation, the
appointed
days, mercy?—No more have I;
But as the seasons, and
gravitation—and as all the appointed days, that
forgive
not,
I dispense from this side judgments inexorable, without the
least remorse.
Consolator most mild, the promised one advancing,
With gentle hand
extended, the mightier God am I,
Foretold by prophets and poets, in
their most wrapt prophecies and poems;
From this side, lo! the Lord
CHRIST gazes—lo! Hermes I—lo! mine is
Hercules'
face;
All sorrow, labour, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself;
Many
times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, and crucified—and
many
times shall be again;
All the world have I given up for my dear
brothers' and sisters' sake—for
the soul's sake;
Wending
my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kiss of
affection;
For
I am affection—I am the cheer-bringing God, with hope, and all-
enclosing
charity;
Conqueror yet—for before me all the armies and soldiers of
the earth shall
yet bow—and all the weapons of war become
impotent:
With indulgent words, as to children—with fresh and sane
words, mine only;
Young and strong I pass, knowing well I am destined
myself to an early
death:
But
my Charity has no death—my Wisdom dies not, neither early nor late,
And
my sweet Love, bequeathed here and elsewhere, never dies.
Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,
Comrade of criminals, brother
of slaves,
Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,
With sudra face
and worn brow—black, but in the depths of my heart proud
as
any;
Lifted, now and always, against whoever, scorning, assumes to
rule me;
Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with
many wiles,
Though it was thought I was baffled and dispelled, and my
wiles done—but
that will never be;
Defiant
I SATAN still live—still utter words—in new lands duly appearing,
and
old ones also;
Permanent here, from my side, warlike, equal with any,
real as any,
Nor time, nor change, shall ever change me or my words.
Santa SPIRITA,[1] breather, life,
Beyond the light, lighter than
light,
Beyond the flames of hell—joyous, leaping easily above hell;
Beyond
Paradise—perfumed solely with mine own perfume;
Including all
life on earth—touching, including God—including Saviour and
Satan;
Ethereal,
pervading all—for, without me, what were all? what were God?
Essence
of forms—life of the real identities, permanent, positive, namely
the
unseen,
Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of
man—I, the
General Soul,
Here
the Square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,
Breathe my breath
also through these little songs.
[Footnote 1: The reader will share my wish that Whitman had written sanctus spiritus, which is right, instead of santa spirita, which is methodically wrong.]
1.
The indications and tally of time;
Perfect sanity shows the master
among philosophs;
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in
parts;
What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant
company of
singers, and their words;
The
words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark—but
the
words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark;
The maker
of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power
encircle things and the human race,
He is the glory and extract, thus
far, of things and of the human race.
2.
The singers do not beget—only the POET begets; The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often enough—but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems; Not every century, or every five centuries, has contained such a day, for all its names. The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers; The name of each is eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-singer, echo-singer, parlour-singer, love-singer, or something else.
3.
All this time, and at all times, wait the words of poems;
The
greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and
fathers;
The
words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness—such are some of the words of poems.
4.
The sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems, The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist—all these underlie the maker of poems.
5.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you,
to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics, war,
peace,
behaviour, histories, essays, romances, and everything else,
They
balance ranks, colours, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not
seek beauty—they are sought,
For ever touching them, or close
upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain,
love-sick.
They
prepare for death—yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
They
bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full;
Whom
they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to
learn
one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith—to sweep
through the ceaseless rings,
and never be quiet again.
You who celebrate bygones:
Who have explored the outward, the
surfaces of the races—the life that has
exhibited
itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics,
aggregates, rulers,
and priests.
I,
habitué of the Alleghanies, treating man as he is in himself, in his own
rights,
Pressing
the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, the great
pride
of man in himself;
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to
be;
I project the history of the future.
1.
Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will
be useless:
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I
am not what you supposed, but far different.
2.
Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a
candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive;
You
would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to be your God,
sole
and exclusive;
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The
whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around
you,
would have to be abandoned;
Therefore release me now, before
troubling yourself any further—Let go
your hand from my
shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.
Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial,
Or back of a rock, in
the open air,
(For in any roofed room of a house I emerge not—nor in
company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or
dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill—first watching lest
any person,
for miles around, approach unawares—
Or
possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some
quiet
island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the
comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss,
For I am the
new husband, and I am the comrade.
Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel
the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go
forth over land or sea;
For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is
best,
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep, and be carried
eternally.
3.
But these leaves conning, you con at peril,
For these leaves, and me,
you will not understand,
They will elude you at first, and still more
afterward—I will certainly
elude you,
Even
while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already
you see I have escaped from you.
For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor
is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best
who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for
my love (unless at most a very few) prove
victorious,
Nor
will my poems do good only—they will do just as much evil, perhaps
more;
For
all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not
hit—that
which I hinted at;
Therefore release me, and depart on your way.
These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers:
For who but I should
understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should
be the poet of comrades?
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the
world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now
wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail
fences, where the old stones thrown there, picked
from the
fields, have accumulated,
Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up
through the stones, and partly
cover them—Beyond these I pass,
Far,
far in the forest, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the
earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence;
Alone, I had
thought—yet soon a silent troop gathers around me;
Some walk by
my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They, the
spirits of friends, dead or alive—thicker they come, a great
crowd,
and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there
I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens—tossing toward
whoever is near me.
Here lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out
of my pocket, some moss which I pulled off a live-oak in Florida,
as
it hung trailing down,
Here some pinks and laurel leaves, and a
handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in
the pond-side,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me—and
returns again, never to
separate from me,
And
this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades—this Calamus-
root[1]
shall,
Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it
back!)
And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
And
stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
These I,
compassed around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to, or
touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each
one what he shall have—giving something to each.
But what I
drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve;
I will give of
it—but only to them that love as I myself am capable of
loving.
[Footnote 1: I am favoured with the following indication, from Mr Whitman himself, of the relation in which this word Calamus is to be understood:—"Calamus is the very large and aromatic grass or rush growing about water-ponds in the valleys—spears about three feet high; often called Sweet Flag; grows all over the Northern and Middle States. The recherché or ethereal sense of the term, as used in my book, arises probably from the actual Calamus presenting the biggest and hardiest kind of spears of grass, and their fresh, aquatic, pungent bouquet."]
1.
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most
splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon!
I will make divine
magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With
the life-long love of comrades.
2.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of
America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all
over the prairies;
I will make inseparable cities, with their arms
about each other's necks;
By the love of comrades,
By
the manly love of comrades.
3.
For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!
For
you! for you, I am trilling these songs,
In the love of
comrades,
In the high-towering love of comrades.
Not heaving from my ribbed breast only;
Not in sighs at night, in
rage, dissatisfied with myself;
Not in those long-drawn,
ill-suppressed sighs;
Not in many an oath and promise broken;
Not
in my wilful and savage soul's volition;
Not in the subtle
nourishment of the air;
Not in this beating and pounding at my
temples and wrists;
Not in the curious systole and diastole within,
which will one day cease;
Not in many a hungry wish, told to the
skies only;
Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when
alone, far in the
wilds;
Not
in husky pantings through clenched teeth;
Not in sounded and
resounded words—chattering words, echoes, dead words;
Not in
the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
Nor the other murmurs of
these incredible dreams of every day;
Nor in the limbs and senses of
my body, that take you and dismiss you
continually—Not there;
Not
in any or all of them, O Adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
Need I
that you exist and show yourself, any more than in these songs.
WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
Lo! I
send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal;
And with him
horse and foot, and parks of artillery,
And artillerymen, the
deadliest that ever fired gun.
1.
As I walk, solitary, unattended,
Around me I hear that éclat
of the world—politics, produce,
The announcements of recognised
things—science,
The approved growth of cities, and the spread
of inventions.
I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories,
with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the endorsement of all, and
do not object to it.
2.
But I too announce solid things;
Science, ships, politics, cities,
factories, are not nothing—they serve,
They stand for
realities—all is as it should be.
3.
Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad, and the
divine Average-Freedom to every slave on the face of the
earth,
The
rapt promises and luminé[1] of seers—the spiritual
world—these
centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the
most solid announcements of any.
For we support all,
After the rest is done and gone, we remain,
There
is no final reliance but upon us;
Democracy rests finally upon us,
(I, my brethren, begin it,)
And our visions sweep through eternity.
[Footnote 1: I suppose Whitman gets this odd word luminé, by a process of his own, out of illuminati, and intends it to stand for what would be called clairvoyance, intuition.]
1.
As nearing departure,
As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,
A
dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.
2.
I shall go forth,
I shall traverse the States—but I cannot
tell whither or how long;
Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am
singing, my voice will suddenly
cease.
3.
O book and chant! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely
arrive at this beginning of me?…
And yet it is enough, O soul!
O
soul! we have positively appeared—that is enough.
1.
Poets to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and Democracy, and what
we are for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental,
greater than before
known,
You
must justify me.
2.
I but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance
a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual
look
upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and
define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the
eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence, or any
number of centuries hence,
To you, yet unborn, these seeking you.
When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible;
Now it
is you, compact, visible, realising my poems, seeking me;
Fancying
how happy you were, if I could be with you, and become your loving
comrade;
Be
it as if I were with you. Be not too certain but I am now with you.
1.
To conclude—I announce what comes after me;
I announce mightier
offspring, orators, days, and then depart,
I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all,
I would raise my
voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations.
When America does what was promised,
When there are plentiful
athletic bards, inland and sea-board,
When through these States walk
a hundred millions of superb persons,
When the rest part away for
superb persons, and contribute to them,
When breeds of the most
perfect mothers denote America,
Then to me my due fruition.
I have pressed through in my own right,
I have offered my style to
every one—I have journeyed with confident step.
While my
pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, So long!
And take the
young woman's hand, and the young man's hand for the last
time.
2.
I announce natural persons to arise,
I announce justice triumphant,
I
announce uncompromising liberty and equality,
I announce the
justification of candour, and the justification of pride.
I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only,
I
announce the Union, out of all its struggles and wars, more and more
compact,
I
announce splendours and majesties to make all the previous politics of
the
earth insignificant.
I announce a man or woman coming—perhaps you are the one (So long!) I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed. I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an old age that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.
3.
O thicker and faster! (So long!)
O crowding too close upon me;
I
foresee too much—it means more than I thought,
It appears to me
I am dying.
Hasten throat, and sound your last!
Salute me—salute the days once
more. Peal the old cry once more.
Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,
At random glancing, each as
I notice absorbing,
Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
Curious
enveloped messages delivering,
Sparkles hot, seed ethereal, down in
the dirt dropping,
Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to
question it never daring,
To ages, and ages yet, the growth of the
seed leaving,
To troops out of me rising—they the tasks I have set
promulging,
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing—their
affection me more
clearly explaining,
To young men my problems
offering—no dallier I—I the muscle of their
brains
trying,
So I pass—a little time vocal, visible, contrary,
Afterward,
a melodious echo, passionately bent for—death making me really
undying,—
The
best of me then when no longer visible—for toward that I have been
incessantly
preparing.
What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut
mouth?
Is
there a single final farewell?
4.
My songs cease—I abandon them,
From behind the screen where I
hid, I advance personally, solely to you.
Camerado! This is no book;
Who touches this touches a man.
(Is it
night? Are we here alone?)
It is I you hold, and who holds you,
I
spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.
O how your fingers drowse me!
Your breath falls around me like
dew—your pulse lulls the tympans of my
ears,
I
feel immerged from head to foot,
Delicious—enough.
Enough, O deed impromptu and secret!
Enough, O gliding present!
Enough, O summed-up past!
5.
Dear friend, whoever you are, here, take this kiss,
I give it
especially to you—Do not forget me,
I feel like one who has done his work—I progress on,—(long enough have I dallied with Life,) The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more direct, awakening rays about me—So long! Remember my words—I love you—I depart from materials, I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
While this Selection was passing through the press, it has been my privilege to receive two letters from Mr. Whitman, besides another communicated to me through a friend. I find my experience to be the same as that of some previous writers: that, if one admires Whitman in reading his books, one loves him on coming into any personal relation with him—even the comparatively distant relation of letter-writing.
The more I have to thank the poet for the substance and tone of his letters, and some particular expressions in them, the more does it become incumbent upon me to guard against any misapprehension. He has had nothing whatever to do with this Selection, as to either prompting, guiding, or even ratifying it: except only that he did not prohibit my making two or three verbal omissions in the Prose Preface to the Leaves of Grass, and he has supplied his own title, President Lincoln's Funeral Hymn, to a poem which, in my Prefatory Notice, is named (by myself) Nocturn for the Death of Lincoln. All admirers of his poetry will rejoice to learn that there is no longer any doubt of his adding to his next edition "a brief cluster of pieces born of thoughts on the deep themes of Death and Immortality." A new American edition will be dear to many: a complete English edition ought to be an early demand of English poetic readers, and would be the right and crowning result of the present Selection.
W. M. R. 1868.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, POEMS BY WALT WHITMAN ***
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