Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
14. Walt Whitman
I
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
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.
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;
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;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
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.
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
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.
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always a breed of life.
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery, here we stand.
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn.
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
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,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?
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,
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,
But they are not the Me myself.
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;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait.
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.
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.
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,
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.
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;
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.
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.
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, Whose?
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
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.
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
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.
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
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.
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good;
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
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.)
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;
For me children, and the begetters of children.
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no;
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.
The little one sleeps in its cradle;
I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
I peeringly view them from the top.
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair—I note where the pistol has fallen.
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;
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;
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.
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon;
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged;
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.
I felt its soft jolts—one leg reclined on the other;
I jump from the cross-beams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.
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;
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves, with my dog and gun by my side.
My eyes settle the land—I bend at her prow, or shout joyously from the deck.
I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots, and went and had a good time:
(You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.)
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.
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,
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.)
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.
She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds of the window.
Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
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.
Each has his main-sledge—they are all out—(there is a great heat in the fire.)
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:
They do not hasten—each man hits in his place.
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;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache—falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.
I go with the team also.
To niches aside and junior bending.
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
They rise together—they slowly circle around.
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.
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.)
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.
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
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.
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.
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft;
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;
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;)
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;
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;)
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;
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;
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;
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;
And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am.
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;
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;
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;
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.
I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.)
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.
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
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.
I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
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.
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;
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 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.
Well, I have—for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Does the daylight astonish? Does the early redstart, twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
Else it were time lost listening to me.
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.
I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.
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 this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter’s compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
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.)
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content;
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.
I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time.
I am the poet of the Body;
And I am the poet of the Soul.
The first I graft and increase upon myself—the latter I translate into a new tongue.
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man;
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough;
I show that size is only development.
It is a trifle—they will more than arrive there, every one, and still pass on.
I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night.
Night of south winds! night of the large few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.
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!
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!
O unspeakable, passionate love!
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;
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse;
Dash me with amorous wet—I can repay you.
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell’d yet always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you—I too am of one phase, and of all phases.
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others’ arms.
(Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip the house that supports them?)
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me—I stand indifferent;
My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait;
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work’d over and rectified?
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine;
Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and early start.
There is no better than it and now.
The wonder is, always and always, how there can be a mean man or an infidel.
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern—the word En-Masse.
Here or henceforward, it is all the same to me—I accept Time, absolutely.
That mystic, baffling wonder I love, alone completes all.
Materialism first and last imbuing.
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.
Your facts are useful and real—and yet they are not my dwelling;
(I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.)
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,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives, and them that plot and conspire.
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.
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves;
Voices of prostitutes, and of deform’d persons;
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,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Voice of sexes and lusts—voices veil’d, and I remove the veil;
Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur’d.
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart;
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strippings of my life.
My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.
Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple! fibre of manly wheat! it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you!
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.
Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with joy.
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.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows;
The air tastes good to my palate.
Scooting obliquely high and low.
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head;
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!
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 found our own, O my Soul, in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and volumes of worlds.
It provokes me forever;
It says sarcastically, Walt, you contain enough—why don’t you let it out, then?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost;
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams;
I underlying causes, to balance them at last;
My knowledge my live parts—it keeping tally with the meaning of things,
H
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me;
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in my face;
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
I think I will do nothing now but listen,
To accrue what I hear into myself—to let sounds contribute toward me.
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice;
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following;
Talkative young ones to those that like them—the loud laugh of work-people at their meals;
The angry base of disjointed friendship—the faint tones of the sick;
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence;
The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves—the refrain of the anchor-lifters;
The ring of alarm-bells—the cry of fire—the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts, with premonitory tinkles, and color’d lights;
The steam-whistle—the solid roll of the train of approaching cars;
The slow-march play’d at the head of the association, marching two and two,
(They go to guard some corpse—the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)
I hear the key’d cornet—it glides quickly in through my ears;
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
Ah, this indeed is music! This suits me.
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies;
It wrenches such ardors from me, I did not know I possess’d them;
It sails me—I dab with bare feet—they are lick’d by the indolent waves;
I am exposed, cut by bitter and angry hail—I lose my breath,
Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death;
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call B
To be, in any form—what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither😉
If nothing lay more develop’d, the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass or stop;
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself;
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me;
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger;
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
They have left me helpless to a red marauder;
They all come to the headland, to witness and assist against me.
I talk wildly—I have lost my wits—I and nobody else am the greatest traitor;
I went myself first to the headland—my own hands carried me there.
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.
Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheath’d, hooded, sharp-tooth’d touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized and golden.
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it;
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon;
The insignificant is as big to me as any;
(What is less or more than a touch?)
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Only what nobody denies is so.
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it.
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach;
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones;
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes;
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low;
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky;
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs;
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods;
In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador;
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
They bring me tokens of myself—they evince them plainly in their possession.
Did I pass that way huge times ago, and negligently drop them?
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them;
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers;
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness—ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure, as we race around and return.
Why do I need your paces, when I myself out-gallop them?
Even, as I stand or sit, passing faster than you.
O swift wind! O space and time! now I see it is true, what I guessed at;
What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass;
What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,
And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning.
I skirt the sierras—my palms cover continents;
I am afoot with my vision.
Along the ruts of the turnpike—along the dry gulch and rivulet bed;
Weeding my onion-patch, or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips—crossing savannas—trailing in forests;
Prospecting—gold-digging—girdling the trees of a new purchase;
Scorch’d ankle-deep by the hot sand—hauling my boat down the shallow river;
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead—where the buck turns furiously at the hunter;
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock—where the otter is feeding on fish;
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou;
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey—where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;
Over the growing sugar—over the yellow-flower’d cotton plant—over the rice in its low moist field;
Over the sharp-peak’d farm house, with its scallop’d scum and slender shoots from the gutters;
Over the western persimmon—over the long-leav’d corn—over the delicate blue-flower flax;
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest;
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs;
Walking the path worn in the grass, and beat through the leaves of the brush;
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot;
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve—where the great gold-bug drops through the dark;
Where flails keep time on the barn floor;
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow;
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides;
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen—where andirons straddle the hearth-slab—where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
Where trip-hammers crash—where the press is whirling its cylinders;
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs;
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it myself, and looking composedly down;)
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose—where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand;
Where the she-whale swims with her calf, and never forsakes it;
Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke;
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water;
Where the half-burn’d brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck—where the dead are corrupting below;
Where the dense-starr’d flag is borne at the head of the regiments;
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island;
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;
Upon a door-step—upon the horse-block of hard wood outside;
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs, or a good game of base-ball;
At he-festivals, with blackguard jibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter;
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw;
At apple-peelings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find;
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings:
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps;
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard—where the dry-stalks are scattered—where the brood-cow waits in the hovel;
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work—where the stud to the mare—where the cock is treading the hen;
Where the heifers browse—where geese nip their food with short jerks;
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie;
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near;
Where the humming-bird shimmers—where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding;
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh;
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden, half hid by the high weeds;
Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out;
Where burial coaches enter the arch’d gates of a cemetery;
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees;
Where the yellow-crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs;
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon;
Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well;
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves;
Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs;
Through the gymnasium—through the curtain’d saloon—through the office or public hall;
Pleas’d with the native, and pleas’d with the foreign—pleas’d with the new and old;
Pleas’d with women, the homely as well as the handsome;
Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously;
Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the white-wash’d church;
Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any preacher—impress’d seriously at the camp-meeting:
Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon—flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate-glass;
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn’d up to the clouds,
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle:
Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy—(behind me he rides at the drape of the day;)
Far from the settlements, studying the print of animals’ feet, or the moccasin print;
By the cot in the hospital, reaching lemonade to a feverish patient;
Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle:
Voyaging to every port, to dicker and adventure;
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any;
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him;
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while;
Walking the old hills of Judea, with the beautiful gentle God by my side;
Speeding through space—speeding through heaven and the stars;
Speeding amid the seven satellites, and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles;
Speeding with tail’d meteors—throwing fire-balls like the rest;
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly;
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing;
I tread day and night such roads.
And look at quintillions ripen’d, and look at quintillions green.
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
No guard can shut me off, nor law prevent me.
My messengers continually cruise away, or bring their returns to me.
I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest;
We sail the arctic sea—it is plenty light enough;
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty;
The enormous masses of ice pass me, and I pass them—the scenery is plain in all directions;
The white-topt mountains show in the distance—I fling out my fancies toward them;
(We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged;
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment—we pass with still feet and caution;
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city;
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.)
I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
They fetch my man’s body up, dripping and drown’d.
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm;
How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,
And chalk’d in large letters, on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you:
How he follow’d with them, and tack’d with them—and would not give it up;
How he saved the drifting company at last:
How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves;
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men:
All this I swallow—it tastes good—I like it well—it becomes mine;
I am the man—I suffer’d—I was there.
The mother, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on;
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover’d with sweat;
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck—the murderous buckshot and the bullets;
All these I feel, or am.
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen;
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my skin;
I fall on the weeds and stones;
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels—I myself become the wounded person;
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris;
Heat and smoke I inspired—I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades;
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
They have clear’d the beams away—they tenderly lift me forth.
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy;
White and beautiful are the faces around me—the heads are bared of their fire-caps;
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me—I am the clock myself.
I am there again.
Again the attacking cannon, mortars;
Again, to my listening ears, the cannon responsive.
The cries, curses, roar—the plaudits for well-aim’d shots;
The ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip;
Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs;
The fall of grenades through the rent roof—the fan-shaped explosion;
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.
He gasps through the clot, Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments.
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth;
(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo😉
’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy’s, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance;
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone;
They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing and seal, gave up their arms, and march’d back prisoners of war.
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,
Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,
Not a single one over thirty years of age.
The work commenced about five o’clock, and was over by eight.
Some made a mad and helpless rush—some stood stark and straight;
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart—the living and dead lay together;
The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt—the newcomers saw them there;
Some, half-kill’d, attempted to crawl away;
These were despatch’d with bayonets, or batter’d with the blunts of muskets;
A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more came to release him;
The three were all torn, and cover’d with the boy’s blood.
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.
Would you hear of an old-fashion’d sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
List to the story as my grandmother’s father, the sailor, told it to me.
His was the surly English pluck—and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be;
Along the lower’d eve he came, horribly raking us.
My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around, and blowing up overhead.
Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported;
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the afterhold, to give them a chance for themselves.
They see so many strange faces, they do not know whom to trust.
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck, and the fighting is done?
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s mainmast;
Two, well served with grape and canister, silence his musketry and clear his decks.
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.
The leaks gain fast on the pumps—the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.
He is not hurried—his voice is neither high nor low;
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Stretch’d and still lies the midnight;
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness;
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking—preparations to pass to the one we have conquer’d;
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet;
Near by, the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin;
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl’d whiskers;
The flames, spite of all that can be done, flickering aloft and below;
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty;
Formless stacks of bodies, and bodies by themselves—dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,
The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan;
These so—these irretrievable.
O Christ! This is mastering me!
In at the conquer’d doors they crowd. I am possess’d.
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
It is I let out in the morning, and barr’d at night.
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one, with sweat on my twitching lips.)
My face is ash-color’d—my sinews gnarl—away from me people retreat.
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.
Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping;
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
That I could forget the trickling tears, and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning.
I resume the overstaid fraction;
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves;
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.
Inland and sea-coast we go, and we pass all boundary lines;
Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth;
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.
The friendly and flowing savage, Who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it, and mastering it?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California? the mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or from the sea?
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations;
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers;
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath—they fly out of the glance of his eyes.
Flaunt of the sunshine, I need not your bask,—lie over!
You light surfaces only—I force surfaces and depths also.
Say, old Top-knot! what do you want?
And might tell what it is in me, and what it is in you, but cannot;
And might tell that pining I have—that pulse of my nights and days.
When I give, I give myself.
Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you;
Spread your palms, and lift the flaps of your pockets;
I am not to be denied—I compel—I have stores plenty and to spare;
And anything I have I bestow.
You can do nothing, and be nothing, but what I will infold you.
On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear, I never will deny him.
(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed;
Let the physician and the priest go home.
By God! you shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me.
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
Not doubt—not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you;
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself;
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs;
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years:
It is middling well as far as it goes,—But is that all?
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson;
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved,
With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and every idol and image;
Taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more;
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days;
(They bore mites, as for unfledg’d birds, who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves;)
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself— bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see;
Discovering as much, or more, in a framer framing a house;
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves, driving the mallet and chisel;
Not objecting to special revelations—considering a curl of smoke, or a hair on the back of my hand, just as curious as any revelation;
Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the Gods of the antique wars;
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths—their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames:
By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born;
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg’d out at their waists;
The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother, and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;
What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then;
The bull and the bug never worship’d half enough;
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d;
The supernatural of no account—myself waiting my time to be one of the Supremes;
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious:
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator;
Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the shadows.
A call in the midst of the crowd;
My own voice, orotund, sweeping, and final.
Come my boys and girls, my women, household, and intimates;
Now the performer launches his nerve—he has pass’d his prelude on the reeds within.
Music rolls, but not from the organ;
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
Ever the eaters and drinkers—ever the upward and downward sun—ever the air and the ceaseless tides;
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real;
Ever the old inexplicable query—ever that thorn’d thumb—that breath of itches and thirsts;
Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides, and bring him forth;
Ever love—ever the sobbing liquid of life;
Ever the bandage under the chin—ever the tressels of death.
To feed the greed of the belly, the brains liberally spooning;
Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going;
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving;
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.
Whatever interests the rest interests me—politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools,
Benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate, and personal estate.
I am aware who they are—(they are positively not worms or fleas.)
What I do and say, the same waits for them;
Every thought that flounders in me, the same flounders in them.
I know my omnivorous lines, and will not write any less;
And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself.
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond, yet nearer bring:
This printed and bound book—but the printer, and the printing-office boy?
The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?
The black ship, mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers?
In the houses, the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
The sky up there—yet here, or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
I do not despise you, priests;
My faith is the greatest of faiths, and the least of faiths,
Enclosing worship ancient and modern, and all between ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the Gods, saluting the sun,
Making a fetish of the first rock or stump, powwowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession—rapt and austere in the woods, a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cup—to Shastas and Vedas admirant—minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels—accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling, or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical;
I know every one of you—I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.
How they contort, rapid as lightning, with spasms, and spouts of blood!
I take my place among you as much as among any;
The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same.
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back, and was never seen again,
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,
Nor him in the poor house, tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d—nor the brutish koboo call’d the ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
Nor anything in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
Nor anything in the myriads of spheres—nor one of the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present—nor the least wisp that is known.
It is time to explain myself—Let us stand up.
I launch all men and women forward with me into
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
And other births will bring us richness and variety.
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
I am sorry for you—they are not murderous or jealous upon me;
All has been gentle with me—I keep no account with lamentation;
(What have I to do with lamentation?)
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps;
All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing—I know I was even there;
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings;
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could overlay it.
The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care.
Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul.
O span of youth! Ever-push’d elasticity!
O manhood, balanced, florid, and full.
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls—coming naked to me at night,
Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river—swinging and chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts, and giving them to be mine.
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems.
Outward and outward, and forever outward.
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run;
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And as surely go as much farther—and then farther and farther.
They are but parts—anything is but a part.
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
The Lord will be there, and wait till I come, on perfect terms;
(The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine, will be there.)
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured, and never will be measured.
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods;
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair;
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy;
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, or exchange;
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.
You must travel it for yourself.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know;
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me;
For after we start, we never lie by again.
And I said to my Spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?
And my Spirit said, No, we but level that life, to pass and continue beyond.
I answer that I cannot answer—you must find out for yourself.
Here are biscuits to eat, and here is milk to drink;
But as soon as you sleep, and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-bye kiss, and open the gate for your egress hence.
Now I wash the gum from your eyes;
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light, and of every moment of your life.
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.
I am the teacher of athletes;
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own, proves the width of my own;
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
Unrequited love, or a slight, cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts,
First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull’s eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song, or play on the banjo,
Preferring scars, and the beard, and faces pitted with small-pox, over all latherers,
And those well tann’d to those that keep out of the sun.
I follow you, whoever you are, from the present hour;
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
It is you talking just as much as myself—I act as the tongue of you;
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.
And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key;
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
But roughs and little children better than they.
The woodman, that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with him all day;
The farm-boy, ploughing in the field, feels good at the sound of my voice;
In vessels that sail, my words sail—I go with fishermen and seamen, and love them.
On the night ere the pending battle, many seek me, and I do not fail them;
On the solemn night (it may be their last,) those that know me, seek me.
The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon;
The young mother and old mother comprehend me;
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where they are;
They and all would resume what I have told them.
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul;
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his own funeral, drest in his shroud,
And I or you, pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye, or show a bean in its pod, confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God;
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God, and about death.)
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then;
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropt in the street—and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come forever and ever.
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.
I see the elder-hand, pressing, receiving, supporting;
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,
And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips—I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons.
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)
O suns! O grass of graves! O perpetual transfers and promotions!
If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk! toss on the black stems that decay in the muck!
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected;
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.
There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.
I sleep—I sleep long.
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is H
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Look in my face, while I snuff the sidle of evening;
Talk honestly—no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am large—I contain multitudes.)
Who wishes to walk with me?
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds;
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.