1
I CELEBRATE myself; | |
| And what I assume you shall assume; | |
| For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you. | |
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| I loafe and invite my Soul; | |
| I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass. | 5 |
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| Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes; | |
| I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it; | |
| The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. | |
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| The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless; | |
| It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it; | 10 |
| I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; | |
| I am mad for it to be in contact with me. | |
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2
The smoke of my own breath; | |
| Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine; | |
| My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs; | 15 |
| The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn; | |
| The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind; | |
| A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms; | |
| The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag; | |
| The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides; | 20 |
| The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. | |
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| Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? | |
| Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? | |
| Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? | |
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| Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems; | 25 |
| You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;) | |
| You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books; | |
| You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me: | |
| You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself. | |
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3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end; | 30 |
| But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. | |
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| There was never any more inception than there is now, | |
| Nor any more youth or age than there is now; | |
| And will never be any more perfection than there is now, | |
| Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. | 35 |
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| Urge, and urge, and urge; | |
| Always the procreant urge of the world. | |
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| Out of the dimness opposite equals advance—always substance and increase, always sex; | |
| Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always a breed of life. | |
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| To elaborate is no avail—learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so. | 40 |
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| Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, | |
| Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, | |
| I and this mystery, here we stand. | |
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| Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my Soul. | |
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| Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, | 45 |
| Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn. | |
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| Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age; | |
| Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself. | |
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| Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean; | |
| Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest. | 50 |
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| I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing: | |
| As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day, with stealthy tread, | |
| Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels, swelling the house with their plenty, | |
| Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and scream at my eyes, | |
| That they turn from gazing after and down the road, | 55 |
| And forthwith cipher and show me a cent, | |
| Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead? | |
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4
Trippers and askers surround me; | |
| People I meet—the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, | |
| The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new, | 60 |
| My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, | |
| The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, | |
| The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations; | |
| Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; | |
| These come to me days and nights, and go from me again, | 65 |
| But they are not the Me myself. | |
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| Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am; | |
| Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary; | |
| Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, | |
| Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come next; | 70 |
| Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it. | |
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| Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders; | |
| I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait. | |
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5
I believe in you, my Soul—the other I am must not abase itself to you; | |
| And you must not be abased to the other. | 75 |
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| Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat; | |
| Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best; | |
| Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. | |
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| I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning; | |
| How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me, | 80 |
| And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, | |
| And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet. | |
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| Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth; | |
| And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, | |
| And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own; | 85 |
| And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers; | |
| And that a kelson of the creation is love; | |
| And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields; | |
| And brown ants in the little wells beneath them; | |
| And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and poke-weed. | 90 |
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6
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; | |
| How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he. | |
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| I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. | |
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| Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, | |
| A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt, | 95 |
| Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, Whose? | |
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| Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. | |
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| Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic; | |
| And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, | |
| Growing among black folks as among white; | 100 |
| Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. | |
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| And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. | |
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| Tenderly will I use you, curling grass; | |
| It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men; | |
| It may be if I had known them I would have loved them; | 105 |
| It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps; | |
| And here you are the mothers’ laps. | |
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| This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers; | |
| Darker than the colorless beards of old men; | |
| Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. | 110 |
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| O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues! | |
| And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. | |
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| I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, | |
| And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. | |
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| What do you think has become of the young and old men? | 115 |
| And what do you think has become of the women and children? | |
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| They are alive and well somewhere; | |
| The smallest sprout shows there is really no death; | |
| And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, | |
| And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. | 120 |
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| All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses; | |
| And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. | |
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7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? | |
| I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. | |
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| I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots; | 125 |
| And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good; | |
| The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. | |
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| I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth; | |
| I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself; | |
| (They do not know how immortal, but I know.) | 130 |
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| Every kind for itself and its own—for me mine, male and female; | |
| For me those that have been boys, and that love women; | |
| For me the man that is proud, and feels how it stings to be slighted; | |
| For me the sweet-heart and the old maid—for me mothers, and the mothers of mothers; | |
| For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears; | 135 |
| For me children, and the begetters of children. | |
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| Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded; | |
| I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no; | |
| And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away. | |
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8
The little one sleeps in its cradle; | 140 |
| I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. | |
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| The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill; | |
| I peeringly view them from the top. | |
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| The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bed-room; | |
| I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair—I note where the pistol has fallen. | 145 |
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| The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders; | |
| The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor; | |
| The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs; | |
| The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs; | |
| The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside, borne to the hospital; | 150 |
| The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall; | |
| The excited crowd, the policeman with his star, quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd; | |
| The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes; | |
| What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sun-struck, or in fits; | |
| What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to babes; | 155 |
| What living and buried speech is always vibrating here—what howls restrain’d by decorum; | |
| Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips; | |
| I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come, and I depart. | |
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9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready; | |
| The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon; | 160 |
| The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged; | |
| The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow. | |
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| I am there—I help—I came stretch’d atop of the load; | |
| I felt its soft jolts—one leg reclined on the other; | |
| I jump from the cross-beams, and seize the clover and timothy, | 165 |
| And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps. | |
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10
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt, | |
| Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee; | |
| In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, | |
| Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game; | 170 |
| Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves, with my dog and gun by my side. | |
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| The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails—she cuts the sparkle and scud; | |
| My eyes settle the land—I bend at her prow, or shout joyously from the deck. | |
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| The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me; | |
| I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots, and went and had a good time: | 175 |
| (You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.) | |
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| I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west—the bride was a red girl; | |
| Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they had moccasins to their feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders; | |
| On a bank lounged the trapper—he was drest mostly in skins—his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck—he held his bride by the hand; | |
| She had long eyelashes—her head was bare—her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet. | 180 |
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| The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside; | |
| I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile; | |
| Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, | |
| And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him, | |
| And brought water, and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet, | 185 |
| And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes, | |
| And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, | |
| And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; | |
| He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north; | |
| (I had him sit next me at table—my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.) | 190 |
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11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore; | |
| Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly: | |
| Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome. | |
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| She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank; | |
| She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds of the window. | 195 |
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| Which of the young men does she like the best? | |
| Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. | |
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| Where are you off to, lady? for I see you; | |
| You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. | |
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| Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather; | 200 |
| The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. | |
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| The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair: | |
| Little streams pass’d all over their bodies. | |
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| An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies; | |
| It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. | 205 |
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| The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the sun—they do not ask who seizes fast to them; | |
| They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch; | |
| They do not think whom they souse with spray. | |
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12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market; | |
| I loiter, enjoying his repartee, and his shuffle and break-down. | 210 |
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| Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil; | |
| Each has his main-sledge—they are all out—(there is a great heat in the fire.) | |
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| From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements; | |
| The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms; | |
| Over-hand the hammers swing—over-hand so slow—over-hand so sure: | 215 |
| They do not hasten—each man hits in his place. | |
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13
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses—the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain; | |
| The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard—steady and tall he stands, pois’d on one leg on the string-piece; | |
| His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band; | |
| His glance is calm and commanding—he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead; | 220 |
| The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache—falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs. | |
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| I behold the picturesque giant, and love him—and I do not stop there; | |
| I go with the team also. | |
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| In me the caresser of life wherever moving—backward as well as forward slueing; | |
| To niches aside and junior bending. | 225 |
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| Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy shade! what is that you express in your eyes? | |
| It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life. | |
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| My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on my distant and day-long ramble; | |
| They rise together—they slowly circle around. | |
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| I believe in those wing’d purposes, | 230 |
| And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, | |
| And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional; | |
| And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else; | |
| And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me; | |
| And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me. | 235 |
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14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night; | |
| Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation; | |
| (The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close; | |
| I find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.) | |
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| The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, | 240 |
| The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, | |
| The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread wings; | |
| I see in them and myself the same old law. | |
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| The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections; | |
| They scorn the best I can do to relate them. | 245 |
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| I am enamour’d of growing out-doors, | |
| Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods, | |
| Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses; | |
| I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. | |
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| What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me; | 250 |
| Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns; | |
| Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me; | |
| Not asking the sky to come down to my good will; | |
| Scattering it freely forever. | |
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15
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft; | 255 |
| The carpenter dresses his plank—the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp; | |
| The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner; | |
| The pilot seizes the king-pin—he heaves down with a strong arm; | |
| The mate stands braced in the whale-boat—lance and harpoon are ready; | |
| The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches; | 260 |
| The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar; | |
| The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel; | |
| The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-day loafe, and looks at the oats and rye; | |
| The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm’d case, | |
| (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bed-room;) | 265 |
| The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, | |
| He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; | |
| The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table, | |
| What is removed drops horribly in a pail; | |
| The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand—the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove; | 270 |
| The machinist rolls up his sleeves—the policeman travels his beat—the gate-keeper marks who pass; | |
| The young fellow drives the express-wagon—(I love him, though I do not know him;) | |
| The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race; | |
| The western turkey-shooting draws old and young—some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, | |
| Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; | 275 |
| The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee; | |
| As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle; | |
| The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other; | |
| The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret, and harks to the musical rain; | |
| The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron; | 280 |
| The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth, is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale; | |
| The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways; | |
| As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers; | |
| The young sister holds out the skein, while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots; | |
| The one-year wife is recovering and happy, having a week ago borne her first child; | 285 |
| The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine, or in the factory or mill; | |
| The nine months’ gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing; | |
| The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer—the reporter’s lead flies swiftly over the note-book—the sign-painter is lettering with red and gold; | |
| The canal boy trots on the tow-path—the book-keeper counts at his desk—the shoemaker waxes his thread; | |
| The conductor beats time for the band, and all the performers follow him; | 290 |
| The child is baptized—the convert is making his first professions; | |
| The regatta is spread on the bay—the race is begun—how the white sails sparkle! | |
| The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that would stray; | |
| The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent;) | |
| The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype; | 295 |
| The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly; | |
| The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips; | |
| The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck; | |
| The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other; | |
| (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;) | 300 |
| The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded by the Great Secretaries; | |
| On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms; | |
| The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold; | |
| The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle; | |
| As the fare-collector goes through the train, he gives notice by the jingling of loose change; | 305 |
| The floor-men are laying the floor—the tinners are tinning the roof—the masons are calling for mortar; | |
| In single file, each shouldering his hod, pass onward the laborers; | |
| Seasons pursuing each other, the indescribable crowd is gather’d—it is the Fourth of Seventh-month—(What salutes of cannon and small arms!) | |
| Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground; | |
| Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface; | 310 |
| The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe; | |
| Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cottonwood or pekan-trees; | |
| Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river, or through those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansaw; | |
| Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or Altamahaw; | |
| Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them; | 315 |
| In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day’s sport; | |
| The city sleeps, and the country sleeps; | |
| The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time; | |
| The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife; | |
| And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them; | 320 |
| And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am. | |
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16
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise; | |
| Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, | |
| Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, | |
| Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse, and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine; | 325 |
| One of the Great Nation, the nation of many nations, the smallest the same, and the largest the same; | |
| A southerner soon as a northerner—a planter nonchalant and hospitable, down by the Oconee I live; | |
| A Yankee, bound by my own way, ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth, and the sternest joints on earth; | |
| A Kentuckian, walking the vale of the Elkhorn, in my deer-skin leggings—a Louisianian or Georgian; | |
| A boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts—a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye; | 330 |
| At home on Kanadian snow-shoes, or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland; | |
| At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking; | |
| At home on the hills of Vermont, or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch; | |
| Comrade of Californians—comrade of free north-westerners, (loving their big proportions;) | |
| Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen—comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat; | 335 |
| A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest; | |
| A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons; | |
| Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion; | |
| A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker; | |
| A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. | 340 |
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| I resist anything better than my own diversity; | |
| I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me, | |
| And am not stuck up, and am in my place. | |
| |
| (The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place; | |
| The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place; | 345 |
| The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.) | |
| |
17
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands—they are not original with me; | |
| If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing; | |
| If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing; | |
| If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing. | 350 |
| |
| This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is; | |
| This is the common air that bathes the globe. | |
| |
18
With music strong I come—with my cornets and my drums, | |
| I play not marches for accepted victors only—I play great marches for conquer’d and slain persons. | |
| |
| Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? | 355 |
| I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. | |
| |
| I beat and pound for the dead; | |
| I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. | |
| |
| Vivas to those who have fail’d! | |
| And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! | 360 |
| And to those themselves who sank in the sea! | |
| And to all generals that lost engagements! and all overcome heroes! | |
| And the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the greatest heroes known. | |
| |
19
This is the meal equally set—this is the meat for natural hunger; | |
| It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous—I make appointments with all; | 365 |
| I will not have a single person slighted or left away; | |
| The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited; | |
| The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited—the venerealee is invited: | |
| There shall be no difference between them and the rest. | |
| |
| This is the press of a bashful hand—this is the float and odor of hair; | 370 |
| This is the touch of my lips to yours—this is the murmur of yearning; | |
| This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face; | |
| This is the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. | |
| |
| Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? | |
| Well, I have—for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. | 375 |
| |
| Do you take it I would astonish? | |
| Does the daylight astonish? Does the early redstart, twittering through the woods? | |
| Do I astonish more than they? | |
| |
| This hour I tell things in confidence; | |
| I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. | 380 |
| |
20
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; | |
| How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? | |
| |
| What is a man, anyhow? What am I? What are you? | |
| |
| All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your own; | |
| Else it were time lost listening to me. | 385 |
| |
| I do not snivel that snivel the world over, | |
| That months are vacuums, and the ground but wallow and filth; | |
| That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape, and tears. | |
| |
| Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids—conformity goes to the fourth-remov’d; | |
| I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. | 390 |
| |
| Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious? | |
| |
| Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsell’d with doctors, and calculated close, | |
| I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. | |
| |
| In all people I see myself—none more, and not one a barleycorn less; | |
| And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them. | 395 |
| |
| And I know I am solid and sound; | |
| To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow; | |
| All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. | |
| |
| I know I am deathless; | |
| I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter’s compass; | 400 |
| I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. | |
| |
| I know I am august; | |
| I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood; | |
| I see that the elementary laws never apologize; | |
| (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.) | 405 |
| |
| I exist as I am—that is enough; | |
| If no other in the world be aware, I sit content; | |
| And if each and all be aware, I sit content. | |
| |
| One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself; | |
| And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million years, | 410 |
| I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. | |
| |
| My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite; | |
| I laugh at what you call dissolution; | |
| And I know the amplitude of time. | |
| |
21
I am the poet of the Body; | 415 |
| And I am the poet of the Soul. | |
| |
| The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me; | |
| The first I graft and increase upon myself—the latter I translate into a new tongue. | |
| |
| I am the poet of the woman the same as the man; | |
| And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man; | 420 |
| And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. | |
| |
| I chant the chant of dilation or pride; | |
| We have had ducking and deprecating about enough; | |
| I show that size is only development. | |
| |
| Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President? | 425 |
| It is a trifle—they will more than arrive there, every one, and still pass on. | |
| |
| I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; | |
| I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night. | |
| |
| Press close, bare-bosom’d night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night! | |
| Night of south winds! night of the large few stars! | 430 |
| Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night. | |
| |
| Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath’d earth! | |
| Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees; | |
| Earth of departed sunset! earth of the mountains, misty-topt! | |
| Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue! | 435 |
| Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! | |
| Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake! | |
| Far-swooping elbow’d earth! rich, apple-blossom’d earth! | |
| Smile, for your lover comes! | |
| |
| Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to you give love! | 440 |
| O unspeakable, passionate love! | |
| |
22
You sea! I resign myself to you also—I guess what you mean; | |
| I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers; | |
| I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me; | |
| We must have a turn together—I undress—hurry me out of sight of the land; | 445 |
| Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse; | |
| Dash me with amorous wet—I can repay you. | |
| |
| Sea of stretch’d ground-swells! | |
| Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths! | |
| Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell’d yet always-ready graves! | 450 |
| Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea! | |
| I am integral with you—I too am of one phase, and of all phases. | |
| |
| Partaker of influx and efflux I—extoller of hate and conciliation; | |
| Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others’ arms. | |
| |
| I am he attesting sympathy; | 455 |
| (Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip the house that supports them?) | |
| |
| I am not the poet of goodness only—I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. | |
| |
| Washes and razors for foofoos—for me freckles and a bristling beard. | |
| |
| What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? | |
| Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me—I stand indifferent; | 460 |
| My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait; | |
| I moisten the roots of all that has grown. | |
| |
| Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy? | |
| Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work’d over and rectified? | |
| |
| I find one side a balance, and the antipodal side a balance; | 465 |
| Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine; | |
| Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and early start. | |
| |
| This minute that comes to me over the past decillions, | |
| There is no better than it and now. | |
| |
| What behaved well in the past, or behaves well to-day, is not such a wonder; | 470 |
| The wonder is, always and always, how there can be a mean man or an infidel. | |
| |
23
Endless unfolding of words of ages! | |
| And mine a word of the modern—the word En-Masse. | |
| |
| A word of the faith that never balks; | |
| Here or henceforward, it is all the same to me—I accept Time, absolutely. | 475 |
| |
| It alone is without flaw—it rounds and completes all; | |
| That mystic, baffling wonder I love, alone completes all. | |
| |
| I accept reality, and dare not question it; | |
| Materialism first and last imbuing. | |
| |
| Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration! | 480 |
| Fetch stonecrop, mixt with cedar and branches of lilac; | |
| This is the lexicographer—this the chemist—this made a grammar of the old cartouches; | |
| These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas; | |
| This is the geologist—this works with the scalpel—and this is a mathematician. | |
| |
| Gentlemen! to you the first honors always: | 485 |
| Your facts are useful and real—and yet they are not my dwelling; | |
| (I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.) | |
| |
| Less the reminders of properties told, my words; | |
| And more the reminders, they, of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, | |
| And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, | 490 |
| And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives, and them that plot and conspire. | |
| |
24
Walt Whitman am I, a Kosmos, of mighty Manhattan the son, | |
| Turbulent, fleshy and sensual, eating, drinking and breeding; | |
| No sentimentalist—no stander above men and women, or apart from them; | |
| No more modest than immodest. | 495 |
| |
| Unscrew the locks from the doors! | |
| Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! | |
| |
| Whoever degrades another degrades me; | |
| And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. | |
| |
| Through me the afflatus surging and surging—through me the current and index. | 500 |
| |
| I speak the pass-word primeval—I give the sign of democracy; | |
| By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. | |
| |
| Through me many long dumb voices; | |
| Voices of the interminable generations of slaves; | |
| Voices of prostitutes, and of deform’d persons; | 505 |
| Voices of the diseas’d and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs; | |
| Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, | |
| And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the father-stuff, | |
| And of the rights of them the others are down upon; | |
| Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised, | 510 |
| Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. | |
| |
| Through me forbidden voices; | |
| Voice of sexes and lusts—voices veil’d, and I remove the veil; | |
| Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur’d. | |
| |
| I do not press my fingers across my mouth; | 515 |
| I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart; | |
| Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. | |
| |
| I believe in the flesh and the appetites; | |
| Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. | |
| |
| Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from; | 520 |
| The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer; | |
| This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. | |
| |
| If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it. | |
| |
| Translucent mould of me, it shall be you! | |
| Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you! | 525 |
| Firm masculine colter, it shall be you. | |
| |
| Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you! | |
| You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strippings of my life. | |
| |
| Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be you! | |
| My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions. | 530 |
| |
| Root of wash’d sweet flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! | |
| Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! | |
| Trickling sap of maple! fibre of manly wheat! it shall be you! | |
| |
| Sun so generous, it shall be you! | |
| Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you! | 535 |
| You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you! | |
| Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me, it shall be you! | |
| Broad, muscular fields! branches of live oak! loving lounger in my winding paths! it shall be you! | |
| Hands I have taken—face I have kiss’d—mortal I have ever touch’d! it shall be you. | |
| |
| I dote on myself—there is that lot of me, and all so luscious; | 540 |
| Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with joy. | |
| |
| O I am wonderful! | |
| I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish; | |
| Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again. | |
| |
| That I walk up my stoop! I pause to consider if it really be; | 545 |
| A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. | |
| |
| To behold the day-break! | |
| The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows; | |
| The air tastes good to my palate. | |
| |
| Hefts of the moving world, at innocent gambols, silently rising, freshly exuding, | 550 |
| Scooting obliquely high and low. | |
| |
| Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs; | |
| Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. | |
| |
| The earth by the sky staid with—the daily close of their junction; | |
| The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head; | 555 |
| The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master! | |
| |
25
Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill me, | |
| If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. | |
| |
| We also ascend, dazzling and tremendous as the sun; | |
| We found our own, O my Soul, in the calm and cool of the daybreak. | 560 |
| |
| My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach; | |
| With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and volumes of worlds. | |
| |
| Speech is the twin of my vision—it is unequal to measure itself; | |
| It provokes me forever; | |
| It says sarcastically, Walt, you contain enough—why don’t you let it out, then? | 565 |
| |
| Come now, I will not be tantalized—you conceive too much of articulation. | |
| |
| Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded? | |
| Waiting in gloom, protected by frost; | |
| The dirt receding before my prophetical screams; | |
| I underlying causes, to balance them at last; | 570 |
| My knowledge my live parts—it keeping tally with the meaning of things, | |
| HAPPINESS—which, whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this day. | |
| |
| My final merit I refuse you—I refuse putting from me what I really am; | |
| Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me; | |
| I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. | 575 |
| |
| Writing and talk do not prove me; | |
| I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in my face; | |
| With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. | |
| |
26
I think I will do nothing now but listen, | |
| To accrue what I hear into myself—to let sounds contribute toward me. | 580 |
| |
| I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals; | |
| I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice; | |
| I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following; | |
| |
| Sounds of the city, and sounds out of the city—sounds of the day and night; | |
|