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Leaves
of
Grass.

Boston,
Thayer and Eldridge,
year 85 of The States,(1860-61)

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860,
BY WALT WHITMAN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

ELECTROTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

PRINTED BY
GEORGE C. RAND & AVERY.

PROTO-LEAF	......	5 to 22
WALT WHITMAN	......	23 104
CHANTS DEMOCRATIC and Native American Numbers 1 to 21	......	105 194
LEAVES OF GRASS Numbers 1 to 24	......	195 to 242
SALUT AU MONDE	......	243 258
POEM OF JOYS	......	259 268
A WORD OUT OF THE SEA	......	269 277
A Leaf of Faces	......	278 282
Europe, the 72d and 73d Years T. S.	......	283
ENFANS D'ADAM Numbers 1 to 15	......	287 to 314
POEM OF THE ROAD	......	315 328
TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS	......	329 336
A Boston Ballad, the 78th Year T. S.	......	337
CALAMUS Numbers 1 to 45	......	341 to 378
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY	......	379 388
Longings for Home	......	389
MESSENGER LEAVES.
To You, Whoever You Are	......	391
To a foiled Revolter or Revoltress	......	394
To Him That was Crucified	......	397
To One Shortly To Die	......	398
To a Common Prostitute	......	399
To Rich Givers	......	399
To a Pupil	......	400
To The States, to Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad	......	400
To a Cantatrice	......	401
Walt Whitman's Caution	......	401
To a President	......	402
To Other Lands	......	402
To Old Age	......	402
To You	......	403
To You	......	403

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Contents.
Mannahatta	......	404
France, the 18th Year T. S.	......	406
THOUGHTS Numbers 1 to 7	......	408 to 411
Unnamed Lands	......	412
Kosmos	......	414
A Hand Mirror	......	415
Beginners Tests	......	416
Savantism Perfections	......	417
Says	......	418
Debris	......	421
SLEEP-CHASINGS	......	426 to 439
BURIAL	......	440 448
To My Soul	......	449
So long	......	451

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PROTO-LEAF.

¹ FREE, fresh, savage,

Fluent, luxuriant, self-content, fond of persons and
places,

Fond of fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,

Fond of the sea—lusty-begotten and various,

Boy of the Mannahatta, the city of ships, my city,

Or raised inland, or of the south savannas,

Or full-breath'd on Californian air, or Texan or
Cuban air,

Tallying, vocalizing all—resounding Niagara—
resounding Missouri,

Or rude in my home in Kanuck woods,

Or wandering and hunting, my drink water, my diet
meat,

Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep
recess,

Far from the clank of crowds, an interval passing,
rapt and happy,

Stars, vapor, snow, the hills, rocks, the Fifth Month
flowers, my amaze, my love,

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Aware of the buffalo, the peace-herds, the bull,
strong-breasted and hairy,

Aware of the mocking-bird of the wilds at day-
break,

Solitary, singing in the west, I strike up for a new
world.

² Victory, union, faith, identity, time, the Soul, your-
         self, the present and future lands, the indisso-
         luble compacts, riches, mystery, eternal progress,
         the kosmos, and the modern reports.

³ This then is life,

Here is what has come to the surface after so many
throes and convulsions.

⁴ How curious! How real!

Underfoot the divine soil—Overhead the sun.

⁵ See, revolving,

The globe—the ancestor-continents, away, grouped
together,

The present and future continents, north and south,
with the isthmus between.

⁶ See, vast, trackless spaces,

As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill,

Countless masses debouch upon them,

They are now covered with the foremost people, arts,
institutions known.

⁷ See projected, through time,

For me, an audience interminable.

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⁸ With firm and regular step they wend—they never
stop,

Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,

One generation playing its part and passing on,

And another generation playing its part and passing
on in its turn,

With faces turned sideways or backward toward me
to listen,

With eyes retrospective toward me.

⁹ Americanos! Masters!

Marches humanitarian! Foremost!

Century marches! Libertad! Masses!

For you a programme of chants.

¹⁰ Chants of the prairies,

Chants of the long-running Mississippi,

Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa,
and Minnesota,

Inland chants—chants of Kanzas,

Chants away down to Mexico, and up north to
Oregon—Kanadian chants,

Chants of teeming and turbulent cities—chants of
mechanics,

Yankee chants—Pennsylvanian chants—chants of
Kentucky and Tennessee,

Chants of dim-lit mines—chants of mountain-tops,

Chants of sailors—chants of the Eastern Sea and the
Western Sea,

Chants of the Mannahatta, the place of my dearest
love, the place surrounded by hurried and
sparkling currents,

Health chants—joy chants—robust chants of young
men,

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Chants inclusive—wide reverberating chants,

Chants of the Many In One.

¹¹ In the Year 80 of The States,

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from
this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here,

From parents the same, and their parents' parents
the same,

I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health,
begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

¹² Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but
never forgotten,

With accumulations, now coming forward in front,

Arrived again, I harbor, for good or bad—I permit
to speak,

Nature, without check, with original energy.

¹³ Take my leaves, America!

Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are
your own offspring;

Surround them, East and West! for they would
surround you,

And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for
they connect lovingly with you.

¹⁴ I conned old times,

I sat studying at the feet of the great masters;

Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might
return and study me!

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¹⁵ In the name of These States, shall I scorn the
antique?

Why These are the children of the antique, to
justify it.

¹⁶ Dead poets, philosophs, priests,

Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,

Language-shapers, on other shores,

Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or
desolate,

I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you
have left, wafted hither,

I have perused it—I own it is admirable,

I think nothing can ever be greater—Nothing can
ever deserve more than it deserves;

I regard it all intently a long while,

Then take my place for good with my own day and
race here.

¹⁷ Here lands female and male,

Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world—
Here the flame of materials,

Here Spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,

The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,

The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,

Yes, here comes the mistress, the Soul.

¹⁸ The SOUL!

Forever and forever—Longer than soil is brown and
solid—Longer than water ebbs and flows.

¹⁹ I will make the poems of materials, for I think they
are to be the most spiritual poems,

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And I will make the poems of my body and of
mortality,

For I think I shall then supply myself with the
poems of my Soul and of immortality.

²⁰ I will make a song for These States, that no one
State may under any circumstances be subjected
to another State,

And I will make a song that there shall be comity by
day and by night between all The States, and
between any two of them,

And I will make a song of the organic bargains of
These States—And a shrill song of curses on
him who would dissever the Union;

And I will make a song for the ears of the President,
full of weapons with menacing points,

And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces.

²¹ I will acknowledge contemporary lands,

I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and
salute courteously every city large and small;

And employments! I will put in my poems, that
         with you is heroism, upon land and sea—And I
         will report all heroism from an American point
         of view;

And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in
me—For I am determined to tell you with
courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.

²² I will sing the song of companionship,

I will show what alone must compact These,

I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly
love, indicating it in me;

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I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires
that were threatening to consume me,

I will lift what has too long kept down those smoul-
dering fires,

I will give them complete abandonment,

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and
of love,

(For who but I should understand love, with all its
sorrow and joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

²³ I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,

I advance from the people en-masse in their own
spirit,

Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

²⁴ Omnes! Omnes!

Let others ignore what they may,

I make the poem of evil also—I commemorate that
part also,

I am myself just as much evil as good—And I say
there is in fact no evil,

Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to
the earth, or to me, as anything else.

²⁵ I too, following many, and followed by many, inau-
gurate a Religion—I too go to the wars,

It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries
thereof, the conqueror's shouts,

They may rise from me yet, and soar above every
thing.

²⁶ Each is not for its own sake,

I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are
for Religion's sake.

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²⁷ I say no man has ever been half devout enough,

None has ever adored or worship'd half enough,

None has begun to think how divine he himself is,
and how certain the future is.

²⁸ I specifically announce that the real and perma-
nent grandeur of These States must be their
Religion,

Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur.

²⁹ What are you doing, young man?

Are you so earnest—so given up to literature,
science, art, amours?

These ostensible realities, materials, points?

Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?

³⁰ It is well—Against such I say not a word—I am
their poet also;

But behold! such swiftly subside—burnt up for
Religion's sake,

For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame,
the essential life of the earth,

Any more than such are to Religion.

³¹ What do you seek, so pensive and silent?

What do you need, comrade?

Mon cher! do you think it is love?

³² Proceed, comrade,

It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to
excess—yet it satisfies—it is great,

But there is something else very great—it makes the
whole coincide,

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It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous
hands, sweeps and provides for all.

³³ O I see the following poems are indeed to drop in the
earth the germs of a greater Religion.

³⁴ My comrade!

For you, to share with me, two greatnesses—And a
third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent,

The greatness of Love and Democracy—and the
greatness of Religion.

³⁵ Melange mine!

Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,

Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering
around me,

Wondrous interplay between the seen and unseen,

Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us, in
the air, that we know not of,

Extasy everywhere touching and thrilling me,

Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,

These selecting—These, in hints, demanded of me.

³⁶ Not he, adhesive, kissing me so long with his daily
kiss,

Has winded and twisted around me that which holds
me to him,

Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the
spiritual world,

And to the identities of the Gods, my unknown
lovers,

After what they have done to me, suggesting
such themes.

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³⁷ O such themes! Equalities!

O amazement of things! O divine average!

O warblings under the sun—ushered, as now, or at
noon, or setting!

O strain, musical, flowing through ages—now
reaching hither,

I take to your reckless and composite chords—I
add to them, and cheerfully pass them forward.

³⁸ As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk,

I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat
on her nest in the briers, hatching her brood.

³⁹ I have seen the he-bird also,

I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his
throat, and joyfully singing.

⁴⁰ And while I paused, it came to me that what he
really sang for was not there only,

Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back
by the echoes,

But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,

A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those
being born.

⁴¹ Democracy!

Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself
and joyfully singing.

⁴² Ma femme!

For the brood beyond us and of us,

For those who belong here, and those to come,

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I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out
carols stronger and haughtier than have ever yet
been heard upon the earth.

⁴³ I will make the songs of passions, to give them
their way,

And your songs, offenders—for I scan you with
kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same
as any.

⁴⁴ I will make the true poem of riches,

Namely, to earn for the body and the mind, what
adheres, and goes forward, and is not dropt by
death.

⁴⁵ I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all—
And I will be the bard of Personality;

And I will show of male and female that either is but
the equal of the other,

And I will show that there is no imperfection in male
or female, or in the earth, or in the present—
and can be none in the future,

And I will show that whatever happens to anybody, it
         may be turned to beautiful results—And I will
         show that nothing can happen more beautiful
         than death;

And I will thread a thread through my poems that no
one thing in the universe is inferior to another
thing,

And that all the things of the universe are perfect
miracles, each as profound as any.

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⁴⁶ I will not make poems with reference to parts,

But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says,
thoughts, with reference to ensemble;

And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with
reference to all days,

And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of
a poem, but has reference to the Soul,

Because, having looked at the objects of the universe,
I find there is no one, nor any particle of one,
but has reference to the Soul.

⁴⁷ Was somebody asking to see the Soul?

See! your own shape and countenance—persons,
substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers,
the rocks and sands.

⁴⁸ All hold spiritual joys, and afterward loosen them,

How can the real body ever die, and be buried?

⁴⁹ Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real
         body, item for item, it will elude the hands of
         the corpse-cleaners, and pass to fitting spheres,
         carrying what has accrued to it from the moment
         of birth to the moment of death.

⁵⁰ Not the types set up by the printer return their im-
         pression, the meaning, the main concern, any
         more than a man's substance and life, or a
         woman's substance and life, return in the body
         and the Soul, indifferently before death and
         after death.

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⁵¹ Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the
main concern—and includes and is the Soul;

Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your
body, or any part of it.

⁵² Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.

⁵³ Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?

Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and
indicative hand?

⁵⁴ Toward the male of The States, and toward the
female of The States,

Toward the President, the Congress, the diverse Gov-
ernors, the new Judiciary,

Live words—words to the lands.

⁵⁵ O the lands!

Lands scorning invaders! Interlinked, food-yielding
lands!

Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of
cotton, sugar, rice!

Odorous and sunny land! Floridian land!

Land of the spinal river, the Mississippi! Land of
the Alleghanies! Ohio's land!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp!
Land of the potato, the apple, and the grape!

Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the
         world! Land of those sweet-aired interminable
         plateaus! Land there of the herd, the garden,
         the healthy house of adobie! Land there of rapt
         thought, and of the realization of the stars!
         Land of simple, holy, untamed lives!

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Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and
where the southwest Colorado winds!

Land of the Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land!
Land of Vermont and Connecticut!

Land of many oceans! Land of sierras and peaks!

Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!

Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the
passionate lovers!

The side by side! the elder and younger brothers!
the bony-limbed!

The great women's land! the feminine! the ex-
perienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters!

Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breezed!
the diverse! the compact!

The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double
Carolinian!

O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations!
O I cannot be discharged from you!

O Death! O for all that, I am yet of you, unseen,
this hour, with irrepressible love,

Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,

Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer
ripples, on Paumanok's sands,

Crossing the prairies—dwelling again in Chicago—
dwelling in many towns,

Observing shows, births, improvements, structures,
arts,

Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public
halls,

Of and through The States, as during life—each
man and woman my neighbor,

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The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I
as near to him and her,

The Mississippian and Arkansian—the woman and
man of Utah, Dakotah, Nebraska, yet with me
—and I yet with any of them,

Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river—yet
in my house of adobie,

Yet returning eastward—yet in the Sea-Side State,
or in Maryland,

Yet a child of the North—yet Kanadian, cheerily
braving the winter—the snow and ice welcome
to me,

Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite
State, or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of
the Empire State,

Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same—yet
welcoming every new brother,

Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from
the hour they unite with the old ones,

Coming among the new ones myself, to be their
companion—coming personally to you now,

Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with
me.

⁵⁶ With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on.

⁵⁷ For your life, adhere to me,

Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you
and toughen you,

I may have to be persuaded many times before I
consent to give myself to you—but what of
that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?

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⁵⁸ No dainty dolce affettuoso I;

Bearded, sunburnt, gray-necked, forbidding, I have
arrived,

To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes
of the universe,

For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.

⁵⁹ On my way a moment I pause,

Here for you! And here for America!

Still the Present I raise aloft—Still the Future of
The States I harbinge, glad and sublime,

And for the Past I pronounce what the air holds of
the red aborigines.

⁶⁰ The red aborigines!

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds,
calls as of birds and animals in the woods,
syllabled to us for names,

Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez,
Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco.

Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-
Walla,

Leaving such to The States, they melt, they depart,
charging the water and the land with names.

⁶¹ O expanding and swift! O henceforth,

Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and
audacious,

A world primal again—Vistas of glory, incessant
and branching,

A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander
far,

New politics—New literatures and religions—New
inventions and arts.

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⁶² These! These, my voice announcing—I will sleep
no more, but arise;

You oceans that have been calm within me! how
I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing
unprecedented waves and storms.

⁶³ See! steamers steaming through my poems!

See, in my poems immigrants continually coming
and landing;

See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's
hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the
rude fence, and the backwoods village;

See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the
         other side the Eastern Sea, how they advance
         and retreat upon my poems, as upon their own
         shores;

See, pastures and forests in my poems—See, animals,
         wild and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas, count-
         less herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly
         grass;

See, in my poems, old and new cities, solid, vast,
inland, with paved streets, with iron and stone
edifices, and ceaseless vehicles, and commerce;

See the populace, millions upon millions, handsome,
         tall, muscular, both sexes, clothed in easy and
         dignified clothes—teaching, commanding, mar-
         rying, generating, equally electing and elective;

See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press—See,
         the electric telegraph—See, the strong and
         quick locomotive, as it departs, panting, blowing
         the steam-whistle;

See, ploughmen, ploughing farms—See, miners,
digging mines—See, the numberless factories;

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See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools—
         See from among them, superior judges, philo-
         sophs, Presidents, emerge, dressed in working
         dresses;

See, lounging through the shops and fields of The
States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and
night,

Hear the loud echo of my songs there! Read the
hints come at last.

⁶⁴ O my comrade!

O you and me at last—and us two only;

O power, liberty, eternity at last!

O to be relieved of distinctions! to make as much
of vices as virtues!

O to level occupations and the sexes! O to bring
all to common ground! O adhesiveness!

O the pensive aching to be together—you know not
why, and I know not why.

⁶⁵ O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!

O something extatic and undemonstrable! O music
wild!

O now I triumph—and you shall also;

O hand in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one
more desirer and lover,

O haste, firm holding—haste, haste on, with me.

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WALT WHITMAN.

¹ I CELEBRATE myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs
to you.

² I loafe and invite my Soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of
summer grass.

³ 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.

⁴ 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,

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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⁵ The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzzed 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-colored sea-rocks, and of hay in
the barn,

The sound of the belched words of my voice, words
loosed 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.

⁶ Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have
you reckoned the earth much?

Have you practised so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of
poems?

⁷ Stop this day and night with me, and you shall pos-
sess the origin of all 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.

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You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
things from me,

You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from
yourself.

⁸ 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.

⁹ 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.

¹⁰ Urge, and urge, and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

¹¹ 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.

¹² To elaborate is no avail—learned and unlearned
feel that it is so.

¹³ 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.

¹⁴ Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is
all that is not my Soul.

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¹⁵ Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the
seen,

Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its
turn.

¹⁶ 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.

¹⁷ 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.

¹⁸ 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,

And leaves for me baskets covered 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 to a cent,

Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents
of two, and which is ahead?

¹⁹ 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,

View Page 27

The latest news, discoveries, inventions, societies,
authors old and new,

My dinner, dress, associates, looks, work, 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,

These come to me days and nights, and go from me
again,

But they are not the Me myself.

²⁰ 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,

Both in and out of the game, and watching and
wondering at it.

²¹ 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.

²² 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.

²³ Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from
your throat,

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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.

²⁴ I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer
morning,

How you settled your head athwart my hips, and
gently turned over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and
plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,

And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till
you held my feet.

²⁵ Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and
joy and knowledge that pass all the art and
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,

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 heaped
stones, elder, mullen, and pokeweed.

²⁶ 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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²⁷ I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of
hopeful green stuff woven.

²⁸ Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropped,

Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

²⁹ Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced
babe of the vegetation.

³⁰ 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,

Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them
the same, I receive them the same.

³¹ And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves.

³² 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,

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.

³³ This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of
old mothers,

Darker than the colorless beards of old men,

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Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of
mouths.

³⁴ O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!

And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of
mouths for nothing.

³⁵ 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.

³⁶ What do you think has become of the young and
old men?

And what do you think has become of the women
and children?

³⁷ 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 ceased the moment life appeared.

³⁸ All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed,
and luckier.

³⁹ 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.

⁴⁰ I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-
washed babe, and am not contained between my
hat and boots,

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And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every
one good,

The earth good, and the stars good, and their
adjuncts all good.

⁴¹ 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.

⁴² 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 sweetheart 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.

⁴³ Who need be afraid of the merge?

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
can never be shaken away.

⁴⁴ The little one sleeps in its cradle,

I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently
brush away flies with my hand.

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⁴⁵ The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up
the bushy hill,

I peeringly view them from the top.

⁴⁶ The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the
bedroom;

It is so—I witnessed the corpse—there the pistol
had fallen.

⁴⁷ 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
snow-balls,

The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of roused
mobs,

The flap of the curtained 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,

The Souls moving along—(are they invisible, while
the least of the stones is visible?)

What groans of over-fed or half-starved who fall sun-
struck, or in fits,

What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who
hurry home and give birth to babes,

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What living and buried speech is always vibrating
here—what howls restrained 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.

⁴⁸ 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 packed to the sagging mow.

⁴⁹ I am there—I help—I came stretched 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,

And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of
wisps.

⁵⁰ 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-killed game,

Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, with
my dog and gun by my side.

⁵¹ The Yankee clipper is under her three sky-sails—
she cuts the sparkle and scud,

View Page 34

My eyes settle the land—I bend at her prow, or shout
joyously from the deck.

⁵² The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and
stopped for me,

I tucked 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.

⁵³ 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 moccasons to their
         feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
         shoulders;

On a bank lounged the trapper—he was dressed
mostly in skins—his luxuriant beard and curls
protected his neck,

One hand rested on his rifle—the other hand held
firmly the wrist of the red girl,

She had long eyelashes—her head was bare—her
coarse straight locks descended upon her volup-
tuous limbs and reached to her feet.

⁵⁴ The runaway slave came to my house and stopped
outside,

I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood-
pile,

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,

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And brought water, and filled a tub for his sweated
body and bruised feet,

And gave him a room that entered 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 passed north,

I had him sit next me at table—my fire-lock leaned
in the corner.

⁵⁵ 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.

⁵⁶ She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,

She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds
of the window.

⁵⁷ Which of the young men does she like the best?

Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

⁵⁸ Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in
your room.

⁵⁹ Dancing and laughing along the beach came the
twenty-ninth bather,

The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved
them.

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⁶⁰ The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it
ran from their long hair,

Little streams passed all over their bodies.

⁶¹ An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,

It descended tremblingly from their temples and
ribs.

⁶² 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.

⁶³ The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharp-
ens his knife at the stall in the market,

I loiter, enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and
break-down.

⁶⁴ 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.

⁶⁵ From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their
movements,

The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their
massive arms,

Overhand the hammers roll—overhand so slow—
overhand so sure,

They do not hasten—each man hits in his place.

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⁶⁶ The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses
—the blocks swags underneath on its tied-over
chain,

The negro that drives the huge dray of the stone-yard
—steady and tall he stands, poised 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 polished and perfect
limbs.

⁶⁷ I behold the picturesque giant and love him—and
I do not stop there,

I go with the team also.

⁶⁸ In me the caresser of life wherever moving—back-
ward as well as forward slueing,

To niches aside and junior bending.

⁶⁹ Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade! what
is that you express in your eyes?

It seems to me more than all the print I have read in
my life.

⁷⁰ My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on
my distant and day-long ramble,

They rise together—they slowly circle around.

⁷¹ I believe in those winged purposes,

And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within
me,

View Page 38

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 mocking-bird in the swamp never studied the
gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out
of me.

⁷² 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.

⁷³ The sharp-hoofed moose of the north, the cat on the
house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,

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.

⁷⁴ The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred
affections,

They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

⁷⁵ I am enamoured of growing outdoors.

Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean
or woods,

View Page 39

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.

⁷⁶ What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,

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.

⁷⁷ 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 ordained with crossed 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 con-
firmed case,

He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in
his mother's bedroom;

View Page 40

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 malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's
table,

What is removed drops horribly in a pail;

The quadroon girl is sold at the 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 compete
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 emigrants cover the wharf
or levee,

As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the over-
seer 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-roofed garret, and
harks to the musical rain,

The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill
the Huron,

The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with
his mouth and nose,

View Page 41

The company returns from its excursion, the darkey
brings up the rear and bears the well-riddled
target,

The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth, is
offering moccasons and bead-bags for sale,

The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery
with half-shut eyes bent side-ways,

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-haired 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 bookkeeper
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—how the white
sails sparkle!

The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that
would stray,

View Page 42

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-
opened 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 sur-
rounded by the Great Secretaries,

On the piazza walk five friendly matrons 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 gathered—it is the Fourth of Seventh Month
—What salutes of cannon and small arms!

View Page 43

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 cotton-
wood or pekan-trees,

Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river,
or through those drained by the Tennessee, or
through those of the Arkansaw,

Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chatta-
hooche 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.

⁷⁸ 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,

Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with
the stuff that is fine,

View Page 44

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 non-
chalant and hospitable,

A Yankee, bound 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 boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts—a
Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye,

A Louisianian or Georgian—a Poke-easy from sand-
hills and pines,

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, and 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 thought-
fullest,

A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of
seasons,

Of every hue, trade, rank, caste and religion,

Not merely of the New World, but of Africa, Europe,
Asia—a wandering savage,

A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, lover,
quaker,

View Page 45

A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician,
priest.

⁷⁹ I resist anything better than my own diversity,

And breathe the air, and leave plenty after me,

And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

⁸⁰ The moth and the fish-eggs are in their 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.

⁸¹ 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 do not enclose everything, they are 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.

⁸² This is the grass that grows wherever the land is
and the water is,

This is the common air that bathes the globe.

⁸³ This is the breath for America, because it is my
breath,

This is for laws, songs, behavior,

This is the tasteless water of Souls—this is the true
sustenance.

View Page 46

⁸⁴ This is for the illiterate, and for the judges of the
Supreme Court, and for the Federal capitol and
the State capitols,

And for the admirable communes of literats, com-
posers, singers, lecturers, engineers, and savans,

And for the endless races of work-people, farmers,
and seamen.

⁸⁵ This is the trilling of thousands of clear cornets,
screaming of octave flutes, striking of triangles.

⁸⁶ I play not here marches for victors only—I play
great marches for conquered and slain persons.

⁸⁷ Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?

I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the
same spirit in which they are won.

⁸⁸ I beat triumphal drums for the dead,

I blow through my embouchures my loudest and
gayest music to them.

⁸⁹ Vivas to those who have failed!

And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!

And 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.

⁹⁰ This is the meal pleasantly set—this is the meat and
drink for natural hunger,

It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous—I
make appointments with all,

View Page 47

I will not have a single person slighted or left away,

The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,

The heavy-lipped slave is invited—the venerealee is
invited,

There shall be no difference between them and the
rest.

⁹¹ This is the press of a bashful hand—this is the float
and odor of hair,

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.

⁹² 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.

⁹³ 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?

⁹⁴ This hour I tell things in confidence,

I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

⁹⁵ Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, nude?

How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

⁹⁶ What is a man anyhow? What am I? What are
you?

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⁹⁷ All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your
own,

Else it were time lost listening to me.

⁹⁸ 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.

⁹⁹ Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for
invalids—conformity goes to the fourth-removed,

I cock my hat as I please, indoors or out.

¹⁰⁰ Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be
ceremonious?

¹⁰¹ 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.

¹⁰² 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.

¹⁰³ And I know I am solid and sound,

To me the converging objects of the universe per-
petually flow,

All are written to me, and I must get what the
writing means.

¹⁰⁴ I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a
carpenter's compass,

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I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut
with a burnt stick at night.

¹⁰⁵ 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.

¹⁰⁶ 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.

¹⁰⁷ 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,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerful-
ness I can wait

¹⁰⁸ My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,

I laugh at what you call dissolution,

And I know the amplitude of time.

¹⁰⁹ I am the poet of the body,

And I am the poet of the Soul.

¹¹⁰ 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.

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¹¹¹ 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,

And I say there is nothing greater than the mother
of men.

¹¹² I chant the chant of dilation or pride,

We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,

I show that size is only development.

¹¹³ Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?

It is a trifle—they will more than arrive there every
one, and still pass on.

¹¹⁴ I am He that walks with the tender and growing
Night,

I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the Night.

¹¹⁵ Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, mag-
netic, nourishing Night!

Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!

Still, nodding night! Mad, naked, summer night.

¹¹⁶ Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breathed 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!

Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the
river!

Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and
clearer for my sake!

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Far-swooping elbowed Earth! Rich, apple-blossomed
Earth!

Smile, for YOUR LOVER comes!

¹¹⁷ Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to
you give love!

O unspeakable passionate love!

¹¹⁸ Thruster holding me tight, and that I hold tight!

We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride
hurt each other.

¹¹⁹ 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.

¹²⁰ Sea of stretched ground-swells!

Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!

Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and
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.

¹²¹ Partaker of influx and efflux—extoller of hate and
conciliation,

Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others'
arms.

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¹²² I am he attesting sympathy,

Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip
the house that supports them?

¹²³ I am the poet of common sense, and of the demon-
strable, and of immortality,

And am not the poet of goodness only—I do not
decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

¹²⁴ Washes and razors for foofoos—for me freckles and
a bristling beard.

¹²⁵ What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?

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.

¹²⁶ Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging
pregnancy?

Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked
over and rectified?

¹²⁷ I step up to say that what we do is right, and what
we affirm is right—and some is only the ore of
right,

Witnesses of us—one side a balance, and the antip-
odal side a balance,

Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,

Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and
early start.

¹²⁸ This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

There is no better than it and now.

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¹²⁹ What behaved well in the past, or behaves well
to-day, is not such a wonder,

The wonder is, always and always, how can there be
a mean man or an infidel.

¹³⁰ Endless unfolding of words of ages!

And mine a word of the modern—a word en-masse.

¹³¹ A word of the faith that never balks,

One time as good as another time—here or hence-
forward, it is all the same to me.

¹³² A word of reality—materialism first and last im-
buing.

¹³³ Hurrah for positive Science! long live exact demon-
stration!

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 un-
known seas,

This is the geologist—this works with the scalpel—
and this is a mathematician.

¹³⁴ Gentlemen! I receive you, and attach and clasp
hands with you,

The facts are useful and real—they are not my
dwelling—I enter by them to an area of the
dwelling.

¹³⁵ I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and
more the reminder of life,

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And go on the square for my own sake and for others'
sakes,

And make short account of neuters and geldings, and
favor men and women fully equipped,

And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives,
and them that plot and conspire.

¹³⁶ Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a
kosmos,

Disorderly, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, breeding,

No sentimentalist—no stander above men and wo-
men, or apart from them,

No more modest than immodest.

¹³⁷ Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

¹³⁸ Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me,

And whatever I do or say, I also return.

¹³⁹ Through me the afflatus surging and surging—
through me the current and index.

¹⁴⁰ 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.

¹⁴¹ Through me many long dumb voices,

Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,

Voices of prostitutes, and of deformed persons,

Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves
and dwarfs,

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Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,

And of the threads that connect the stars—and of
wombs, and of the fatherstuff,

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.

¹⁴² Through me forbidden voices,

Voices of sexes and lusts—voices veiled, and I
remove the veil,

Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigured.

¹⁴³ I do not press my finger across my mouth,

I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the
head and heart,

Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

¹⁴⁴ I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part
and tag of me is a miracle.

¹⁴⁵ Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy what-
ever I touch or am touched from,

The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the
creeds.

¹⁴⁶ If I worship any particular thing, it shall be some of
the spread of my own body.

¹⁴⁷ Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!

Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!

Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.

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¹⁴⁸ Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you!

You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strip-
pings of my life.

¹⁴⁹ Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be
you!

My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.

¹⁵⁰ Root of washed sweet-flag! Timorous pond-snipe!
Nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be
you!

Mixed tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall
be you!

Trickling sap of maple! Fibre of manly wheat! it
shall be you!

¹⁵¹ Sun so generous, 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! Lov-
ing lounger in my winding paths! it shall be
you!

Hands I have taken—face I have kissed—mortal I
have ever touched! it shall be you.

¹⁵² I dote on myself—there is that lot of me, and all so
luscious,

Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with
joy.

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¹⁵³ O I am so 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.

¹⁵⁴ That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it
really be,

That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great
authors and schools,

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than
the metaphysics of books.

¹⁵⁵ To behold the day-break!

The little light fades the immense and diaphanous
shadows,

The air tastes good to my palate.

¹⁵⁶ Hefts of the moving world, at innocent gambols,
silently rising, freshly exuding,

Scooting obliquely high and low.

¹⁵⁷ Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous
prongs,

Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

¹⁵⁸ The earth by the sky staid with—the daily close of
their junction,

The heaved challenge from the east that moment over
my head,

The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be
master!

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¹⁵⁹ Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise
would kill me,

If I could not now and always send sun-rise out
of me.

¹⁶⁰ We also ascend, dazzling and tremendous as the sun,

We found our own, O my Soul, in the calm and cool
of the day-break.

¹⁶¹ My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,

With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and
volumes of worlds.

¹⁶² Speech is the twin of my vision—it is unequal to
measure itself;

It provokes me forever,

It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough —
why don't you let it out then?

¹⁶³ Come now, I will not be tantalized—you conceive
too much of articulation.

¹⁶⁴ Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?

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,

Happiness—which, whoever hears me, let him or her
set out in search of this day.

¹⁶⁵ My final merit I refuse you—I refuse putting from
me the best I am.

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¹⁶⁶ Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,

I crowd your sleekest talk by simply looking toward
you.

¹⁶⁷ 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 confound the topmost
skeptic.

¹⁶⁸ I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,

To accrue what I hear into myself—to let sounds
contribute toward me.

¹⁶⁹ I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat,
gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my
meals.

¹⁷⁰ 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,

Talkative young ones to those that like them—the
recitative of fish-pedlers and fruit-pedlers—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 shaky lips
pronouncing a death-sentence,

The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the
wharves—the refrain of the anchor-lifters,

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The ring of alarm-bells—the cry of fire—the whirr
of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts, with
premonitory tinkles, and colored lights,

The steam-whistle—the solid roll of the train of
approaching cars,

The slow-march played at night at the head of the
association, marching two and two,

(They go to guard some corpse—the flag-tops are
draped with black muslin.)

¹⁷¹ I hear the violoncello, or man's heart's complaint;

I hear the keyed cornet—it glides quickly in through
my ears,

It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and
breast.

¹⁷² I hear the chorus—it is a grand-opera,

Ah, this indeed is music! This suits me.

¹⁷³ A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,

The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling
me full.

¹⁷⁴ I hear the trained soprano—she convulses me like
the climax of my love-grip,

The orchestra wrenches such ardors from me, I did
not know I possessed them,

It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,

It sails me—I dab with bare feet—they are licked
by the indolent waves,

I am exposed, cut by bitter and poisoned hail,

Steeped amid honeyed morphine, my windpipe throt-
tled in fakes of death,

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At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,

And that we call BEING.

¹⁷⁵ 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 developed, the quahaug in its
callous shell were enough.

¹⁷⁶ Mine is no callous shell,

I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass
or stop,

They seize every object, and lead it harmlessly
through me.

¹⁷⁷ I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am
happy,

To touch my person to some one else's is about as
much as I can stand.

¹⁷⁸ 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,

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Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sun-light
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.

¹⁷⁹ The sentries desert every other part of me,

They have left me helpless to a red marauder,

They all come to the headland, to witness and assist
against me.

¹⁸⁰ I am given up by traitors,

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.

¹⁸¹ You villain touch! what are you doing? My breath
is tight in its throat,

Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

¹⁸² Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheathed, hooded,
sharp-toothed touch!

Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

¹⁸³ Parting, tracked by arriving—perpetual payment of
perpetual loan,

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Rich showering rain, and recompense richer after-
ward.

¹⁸⁴ Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb
prolific and vital,

Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized, and
golden.

¹⁸⁵ 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?

¹⁸⁶ Logic and sermons never convince,

The damp of the night drives deeper into my Soul.

¹⁸⁷ Only what proves itself to every man and woman
is so,

Only what nobody denies is so.

¹⁸⁸ A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,

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.

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¹⁸⁹ 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 depressed 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 short-cake.

¹⁹⁰ I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss,
fruits, grains, esculent roots,

And am stuccoed 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.

¹⁹¹ In vain the speeding or shyness,

In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against
my approach,

In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own pow-
dered bones,

In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold
shapes,

In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great
monsters lying low,

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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-billed auk sails far north to
Labrador,

I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure
of the cliff.

¹⁹² I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
so placid and self-contained,

I stand and look at them sometimes an hour at a
stretch.

¹⁹³ They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their
sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to
God,

No 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.

¹⁹⁴ So they show their relations to me, and I accept
them,

They bring me tokens of myself—they evince them
plainly in their possession.

¹⁹⁵ I do not know where they get those tokens,

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I may have passed that way untold times ago, and
negligently dropt them,

Myself moving forward then and now 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 remem-
brancers,

Picking out here one that I love, to go with on
brotherly terms.

¹⁹⁶ A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive
to my caresses,

Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,

Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,

Eyes well apart, full of sparkling wickedness—ears
finely cut, flexibly moving.

¹⁹⁷ His nostrils dilate, as my heels embrace him,

His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure, as we
speed around and return.

¹⁹⁸ I but use you a moment, then I resign you stallion,

Why do I need your paces, when I myself out-gallop
them?

Even, as I stand or sit, passing faster than you.

¹⁹⁹ O swift wind! Space! my Soul! now I know it is
true, what I guessed at,

What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,

What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed,

And again as I walked the beach under the paling
stars of the morning.

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²⁰⁰ My ties and ballasts leave me—I travel—I sail—
my elbows rest in the sea-gaps,

I skirt the sierras—my palms cover continents,

I am afoot with my vision.

²⁰¹ By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts—
camping with lumbermen,

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,

Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand—hauling my
boat down the shallow river,

Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb over-
head—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-tail,

Over the growing sugar—over the cotton plant—
over the rice in its low moist field,

Over the sharp-peaked farm house, with its scalloped
scum and slender shoots from the gutters,

Over the western persimmon—over the long-leaved
corn—over the delicate blue-flowered flax,

Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer
and buzzer there with the rest,

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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 the 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 cob-
webs 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
out of its ribs,

Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, float-
ing 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 pen-
nant of smoke,

Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out
of the water,

View Page 69

Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown
currents,

Where shells grow to her slimy deck—Where the
dead are corrupting below,

Where the striped and starred 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 gibes, ironical license,
bull-dances, drinking, laughter,

At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown
sqush, 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 gur-
gles, 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 heifers browse—Where geese nip their food
with short jerks,

Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless
and lonesome prairie,

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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-necked partridges roost in a ring on the
ground with their heads out,

Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a
cemetery,

Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and
icicled trees,

Where the yellow-crowned 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 con-
ical firs,

Through the gymnasium—through the curtained
saloon—through the office or public hall,

Pleased with the native, and pleased with the foreign
—pleased with the new and old,

Pleased with women, the homely as well as the
handsome,

Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet
and talks melodiously,

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Pleased with the tunes of the choir of the white-
washed church,

Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating
Methodist preacher, or any preacher—Impressed
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 turned
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-cheeked
bush-boy—riding behind him at the drape of
the day,

Far from the settlements, studying the print of ani-
mals' feet, or the moccason print,

By the cot in the hospital, reaching lemonade to a
feverish patient,

By the coffined 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,

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Speeding amid the seven satellites, and the broad
ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles,

Speeding with tailed 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.

²⁰² I visit the orchards of spheres, and look at the product,

And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quin-
tillions green.

²⁰³ I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul,

My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

²⁰⁴ I help myself to material and immaterial,

No guard can shut me off, nor law prevent me.

²⁰⁵ I anchor my ship for a little while only,

My messengers continually cruise away, or bring their
returns to me.

²⁰⁶ I go hunting polar furs and the seal—Leaping
chasms with a pike-pointed staff—Clinging to
topples of brittle and blue.

²⁰⁷ I ascend to the foretruck,

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,

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The enormous masses of ice pass me, and I pass them
—the scenery is plain in all directions,

The white-topped 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 out-posts of the encampment—
we pass with still feet and caution,

Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and
ruined city,

The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the
living cities of the globe.

²⁰⁸ I am a free companion—I bivouac by invading
watchfires.

²⁰⁹ I turn the bridegroom out of bed, and stay with the
bride myself,

I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

²¹⁰ My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail
of the stairs,

They fetch my man's body up, dripping and drowned.

²¹¹ I understand the large hearts of heroes,

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 chalked in large letters, on a board, Be of good
cheer, We will not desert you,

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How he followed with them, and tacked with them—
and would not give it up,

How he saved the drifting company at last,

How the lank loose-gowned women looked when
boated from the side of their prepared graves,

How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick,
and the sharp-lipped unshaved men,

All this I swallow—it tastes good—I like it well—
it becomes mine,

I am the man—I suffered—I was there.

²¹² The disdain and calmness of martyrs,

The mother, condemned for a witch, burnt with dry
wood, her children gazing on,

The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the
the fence, blowing, covered with sweat,

The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck
—the murderous buck-shot and the bullets,

All these I feel or am.

²¹³ I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the
dogs,

Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack
the marksmen,

I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned
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.

²¹⁴ Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels—I
myself become the wounded person,

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My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and
observe.

²¹⁵ I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken,

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 cleared the beams away—they tenderly
lift me forth.

²¹⁶ I lie in the night air in my red shirt—the pervading
hush is for my sake,

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.

²¹⁷ Distant and dead resuscitate,

They show as the dial or move as the hands of me—
I am the clock myself.

²¹⁸ I am an old artillerist—I tell of my fort's bombard-
ment,

I am there again.

²¹⁹ Again the reveille of drummers,

Again the attacking cannon, mortars, howitzers,

Again the attacked send cannon responsive.

²²⁰ I take part—I see and hear the whole,

The cries, curses, roar—the plaudits for well-aimed
shots,

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The ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip,

Workmen searching after damages, making indis-
pensable 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.

²²¹ Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general—he
furiously waves with his hand,

He gasps through the clot, Mind not me — mind —
the entrenchments .

²²² 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.

²²³ Hear now the tale of the murder in cold blood of four
hundred and twelve young men.

²²⁴ Retreating, they had formed in a hollow square, with
their baggage for breastworks,

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, received
writing and seal, gave up their arms, and
marched back prisoners of war.

²²⁵ They were the glory of the race of rangers,

Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,

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Large, turbulent, generous, brave, handsome, proud,
and affectionate,

Bearded, sunburnt, dressed in the free costume of
hunters,

Not a single one over thirty years of age.

²²⁶ The second First Day morning they were brought out
in squads and massacred—it was beautiful early
summer,

The work commenced about five o'clock, and was over
by eight.

²²⁷ None obeyed the command to kneel,

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 maimed and mangled dug in the dirt—the new-
comers saw them there,

Some, half-killed, attempted to crawl away,

These were despatched with bayonets, or battered with
the blunts of muskets,

A youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till
two more came to release him,

The three were all torn, and covered with the boy's
blood.

²²⁸ At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies:

That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred
and twelve young men.

²²⁹ Did you read in the sea-books of the old-fashioned
frigate-fight?

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Did you learn who won by the light of the moon and
stars?

²³⁰ Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you,

His was the English pluck—and there is no tougher
or truer, and never was, and never will be;

Along the lowered eve he came, horribly raking us.

²³¹ We closed with him—the yards entangled—the
cannon touched,

My captain lashed fast with his own hands.

²³² We had received some eighteen-pound shots under
the water,

On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at
the first fire, killing all around, and blowing up
overhead.

²³³ Ten o'clock at night, and the full moon shining, and
the leaks on the gain, and five feet of water
reported,

The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in
the after-hold, to give them a chance for them-
selves.

²³⁴ The transit to and from the magazine was now
stopped by the sentinels,

They saw so many strange faces, they did not know
whom to trust.

²³⁵ Our frigate was afire,

The other asked if we demanded quarter?

If our colors were struck, and the fighting done?

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²³⁶ I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little
captain,

We have not struck, he composedly cried, We have
just begun our part of the fighting .

²³⁷ Only three guns were in use,

One was directed by the captain himself against the
enemy's main-mast,

Two, well served with grape and canister, silenced his
musketry and cleared his decks.

²³⁸ The tops alone seconded the fire of this little battery,
especially the main-top,

They all held out bravely during the whole of the
action.

²³⁹ Not a moment's cease,

The leaks gained fast on the pumps—the fire eat
toward the powder-magazine,

One of the pumps was shot away—it was generally
thought we were sinking.

²⁴⁰ Serene stood the little captain,

He was not hurried—his voice was neither high
nor low,

His eyes gave more light to us than our battle-
lanterns.

²⁴¹ Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the
moon, they surrendered to us.

²⁴² Stretched and still lay the midnight,

Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the
darkness,

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Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking—preparations
to pass to the one we had conquered,

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 served in the
cabin,

The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and
carefully curled whiskers,

The flames, spite of all that could 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.

²⁴³ O Christ! This is mastering me!

Through the conquered doors they crowd. I am
possessed.

²⁴⁴ What the rebel said, gayly adjusting his throat to the
rope-noose,

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What the savage at the stump, his eye-sockets empty,
his mouth spirting whoops and defiance,

What stills the traveller come to the vault at Mount
Vernon,

What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the
shores of the Wallabout and remembers the
Prison Ships,

What burnt the gums of the red-coat at Saratoga
when he surrendered his brigades,

These become mine and me every one—and they are
but little,

I become as much more as I like.

²⁴⁵ I become any presence or truth of humanity here,

See myself in prison shaped like another man,

And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

²⁴⁶ For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their
carbines and keep watch,

It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.

²⁴⁷ Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I
am hand-cuffed to him and walk by his side,

I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one,
with sweat on my twitching lips.

²⁴⁸ Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too,
and am tried and sentenced.

²⁴⁹ Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp, but I also
lie at the last gasp,

My face is ash-colored—my sinews gnarl—away
from me people retreat.

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²⁵⁰ Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied
in them,

I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

²⁵¹ Enough—I bring such to a close,

Rise extatic through all, sweep with the true gravita-
tion,

The whirling and whirling elemental within me.

²⁵² Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!

Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slum-
bers, dreams, gaping,

I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

²⁵³ That I could forget the mockers and insults!

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.

²⁵⁴ I remember now,

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.

²⁵⁵ I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of
an average unending procession,

We walk the roads of the six North Eastern States,
         and of Virginia, Wisconsin, Manhattan Island,
         Philadelphia, New Orleans, Texas, Charleston,
         Havana, Mexico,

Inland and by the sea-coast and boundary lines, and
we pass all boundary lines.

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²⁵⁶ Our swift ordinances are on their way over the whole
earth,

The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of
two thousand years.

²⁵⁷ Élèves, I salute you!

I see the approach of your numberless gangs—I see
you understand yourselves and me,

And know that they who have eyes and can walk are
divine, and the blind and lame are equally divine,

And that my steps drag behind yours, yet go before
them,

And are aware how I am with you no more than I am
with everybody.

²⁵⁸ The friendly and flowing savage, Who is he?

Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and master-
ing it?

²⁵⁹ Is he some south-westerner, raised out-doors? Is he
Kanadian?

Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon,
California? the mountains? prairie-life, bush-
life? or from the sea?

²⁶⁰ Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire
him,

They desire he should like them, touch them, speak
to them, stay with them.

²⁶¹ Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as
grass, uncombed head, laughter, and näveté,

Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes
and emanations,

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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.

²⁶² Flaunt of the sunshine, I need not your bask,—lie
over!

You light surfaces only—I force surfaces and depths
also.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,

Say, old Top-knot! what do you want?

²⁶³ Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but
cannot,

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.

²⁶⁴ Behold! I do not give lectures or a little charity,

What I give, I give out of myself.

²⁶⁵ You there, impotent, loose in the knees,

Open your scarfed 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.

²⁶⁶ I do not ask who you are—that is not important to
me,

You can do nothing, and be nothing, but what I will
infold you.

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²⁶⁷ To a drudge of the cotton-fields or cleaner of privies
I lean,

On his right cheek I put the family kiss,

And in my soul I swear, I never will deny him.

²⁶⁸ On women fit for conception I start bigger and nim-
bler babes,

This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant
republics.

²⁶⁹ To any one dying—thither I speed, and twist the
knob of the door,

Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,

Let the physician and the priest go home.

²⁷⁰ I seize the descending man, and raise him with resist-
less will.

²⁷¹ O despairer, here is my neck,

By God! you shall not go down! Hang your whole
weight upon me.

²⁷² I dilate you with tremendous breath—I buoy you up,

Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force,

Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

²⁷³ Sleep! I and they keep guard all night,

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.

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²⁷⁴ 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.

²⁷⁵ I heard what was said of the universe,

Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;

It is middling well as far as it goes,—But is that all?

²⁷⁶ Magnifying and applying come I,

Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,

The most they offer for mankind and eternity less
than a spirt of my own seminal wet,

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
day,

Admitting they bore mites, as for unfledged birds,
who have now to rise and fly and sing for them-
selves,

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,

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Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-
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,

Those 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 charred 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 bagged out at
their waists,

The snag-toothed hostler with red hair redeeming sins
past and to come,

Selling all he possesses, travelling 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 worshipped half enough,

Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed,

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,

Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to
receive puffs out of pulpit or print;

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By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,

Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb
of the shadows.

²⁷⁷ A call in the midst of the crowd,

My own voice, orotund, sweeping, final.

²⁷⁸ Come my children,

Come my boys and girls, my women, household,
and intimates,

Now the performer launches his nerve—he has
passed his prelude on the reeds within.

²⁷⁹ Easily written, loose-fingered chords! I feel the thrum
of their climax and close.

²⁸⁰ My head slues round on my neck,

Music rolls, but not from the organ,

Folks are around me, but they are no household of
mine.

²⁸¹ Ever the hard unsunk ground,

Ever the eaters and drinkers—Ever the upward
and downward sun—Ever the air and the cease-
less tides,

Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked,
real,

Ever the old inexplicable query—Ever that thorned
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.

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²⁸² Here and there, with dimes on the eyes walking,

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.

²⁸³ This is the city, and I am one of the citizens,

Whatever interests the rest interests me—politics,
markets, newspapers, schools,

Benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs,
steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate,
and personal estate.

²⁸⁴ They who piddle and patter here in collars and tailed
coats—I am aware who they are—they are not
worms or fleas.

²⁸⁵ I acknowledge the duplicates of myself—the weakest
and shallowest is deathless with me,

What I do and say, the same waits for them,

Every thought that flounders in me, the same floun-
ders in them.

²⁸⁶ I know perfectly well my own egotism,

I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any
less,

And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with
myself.

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²⁸⁷ My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate
reality and motive power:

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 fleet of ships of the line, and all the modern
improvements—but the craft and pluck of the
admiral?

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 human brain,
and what is reason? and what is love? and what
is life?

²⁸⁸ I do not despise you, priests,

My faith is the greatest of faiths, and the least of
faiths,

Enclosing all 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 pro-
cession—rapt and austere in the woods, a
gymnosophist,

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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.

²⁸⁹ One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang, I turn
and talk like a man leaving charges before a
journey.

²⁹⁰ Down-hearted doubters, dull and excluded,

Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, disheart-
ened, atheistical,

I know every one of you—I know the unspoken
interrogatories,

By experience I know them.

²⁹¹ How the flukes splash!

How they contort, rapid as lightning, with spasms,
and spouts of blood!

²⁹² Be at peace, bloody flukes of doubters and sullen
mopers,

I take my place among you as much as among any,

The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the
same,

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Day and night are for you, me, all,

And what is yet untried and afterward is for you,
me, all, precisely the same.

²⁹³ I do not know what is untried and afterward,

But I know it is sure, alive, sufficient.

²⁹⁴ Each who passes is considered—Each who stops is
considered—Not a single one can it fail.

²⁹⁵ It cannot fail the young man who died and was
buried,

Nor the young woman who died and was put by his
side,

Nor the little child that peeped 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 slaughtered and wrecked—nor
the brutish koboo called 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.

²⁹⁶ It is time to explain myself—Let us stand up.

²⁹⁷ What is known I strip away,

I launch all men and women forward with me into
THE UNKNOWN.

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²⁹⁸ The clock indicates the moment—but what does
eternity indicate?

²⁹⁹ We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and
summers,

There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

³⁰⁰ Births have brought us richness and variety,

And other births will bring us richness and variety.

³⁰¹ I do not call one greater and one smaller,

That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

³⁰² Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my
brother, my sister?

I am sorry for you—they are not murderous or jeal-
ous upon me,

All has been gentle with me—I keep no account
with lamentation,

(What have I to do with lamentation?)

³⁰³ I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an
encloser of things to be.

³⁰⁴ My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches
between the steps,

All below duly travelled, and still I mount and mount.

³⁰⁵ Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,

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,

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And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid
carbon.

³⁰⁶ Long I was hugged close—long and long.

³⁰⁷ Immense have been the preparations for me,

Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.

³⁰⁸ Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like
cheerful boatmen,

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,

They sent influences to look after what was to
hold me.

³⁰⁹ Before I was born out of my mother, generations
guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid—nothing could
overlay it.

³¹⁰ For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

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.

³¹¹ All forces have been steadily employed to complete
and delight me,

Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.

³¹² O span of youth! Ever-pushed elasticity!

O manhood, balanced, florid, and full.

³¹³ My lovers suffocate me!

Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,

Jostling me through streets and public halls—
coming naked to me at night,

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Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river
—swinging and chirping over my head,

Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled
under-brush,

Or while I swim in the bath, or drink from the pump
         at the corner—or the curtain is down at the
         opera, or I glimpse at a woman's face in the
         railroad car,

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.

³¹⁴ Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace
of dying days!

³¹⁵ Every condition promulges not only itself—it pro-
mulges what grows after and out of itself,

And the dark hush promulges as much as any.

³¹⁶ I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled
systems,

And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge
but the rim of the farther systems.

³¹⁷ Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always
expanding,

Outward, outward, and forever outward.

³¹⁸ My sun has his sun, and round him obediently
wheels,

He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,

And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest
inside them.

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³¹⁹ There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage,

If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their sur-
         faces, and all the palpable life, 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.

³²⁰ A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic
leagues, do not hazard the span, or make it
impatient,

They are but parts—anything is but a part.

³²¹ See ever so far, there is limitless space outside
of that,

Count ever so much, there is limitless time around
that.

³²² My rendezvous is appointed,

The Lord will be there, and wait till I come on per-
fect terms.

³²³ I know I have the best of time and space, and was
never measured, and never will be measured.

³²⁴ I tramp a perpetual journey,

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,

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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.

³²⁵ Not I—not any one else, can travel that road for
you,

You must travel it for yourself.

³²⁶ It is not far—it is within reach,

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born,
and did not know,

Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.

³²⁷ Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us
hasten forth,

Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as
we go.

³²⁸ If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff
of your hand on my hip,

And in due time you shall repay the same service
to me,

For after we start we never lie by again.

³²⁹ This day before dawn I ascended a hill, and looked
at the crowded heaven,

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
          filled and satisfied then?

And my Spirit said No, we level that lift, to pass and
continue beyond.

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³³⁰ You are also asking me questions, and I hear you,

I answer that I cannot answer—you must find out
for yourself.

³³¹ Sit a while, wayfarer,

Here are biscuits to eat, and here is milk to drink,

But as soon as you sleep, and renew yourself in
         sweet clothes, I will certainly kiss you with my
         good-bye kiss, and open the gate for your egress
         hence.

³³² Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,

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.

³³³ Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by
the shore,

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.

³³⁴ 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.

³³⁵ The boy I love, the same becomes a man, not through
derived power, but in his own right,

Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or
fear,

Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,

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Unrequited love, or a slight, cutting him worse than
a wound 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 faces pitted with small-pox, over
all latherers, and those that keep out of the sun.

³³⁶ I teach straying from me—yet who can stray from
me?

I follow you, whoever you are, from the present
hour,

My words itch at your ears till you understand
them.

³³⁷ I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up
the time while I wait for a boat,

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 loosened.

³³⁸ I swear I will never again mention love or death
inside a house,

And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only
to him or her who privately stays with me in
the open air.

³³⁹ If you would understand me, go to the heights or
water-shore,

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.

³⁴⁰ No shuttered room or school can commune with me,

But roughs and little children better than they.

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³⁴¹ The young mechanic is closest to me—he knows me
pretty well,

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 fisher-
men and seamen, and love them.

³⁴² My face rubs to the hunter's face, when he lies down
alone in his blanket,

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.

³⁴³ 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, dressed 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,

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And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub
for the wheeled universe,

And any man or woman shall stand cool and
supercilious before a million universes.

³⁴⁴ And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,

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.

³⁴⁵ I hear and behold God in every object, yet under-
stand God not in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more won-
derful than myself.

³⁴⁶ Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

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 dropped in the street—and
every one is signed by God's name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that
others will punctually come forever and ever.

³⁴⁷ And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality,
it is idle to try to alarm me.

³⁴⁸ To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,

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.

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³⁴⁹ And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure,
but that does not offend me,

I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,

I reach to the leafy lips—I reach to the polished
breasts of melons.

³⁵⁰ And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of
many deaths,

No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times
before.

³⁵¹ I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven,

O suns! O grass of graves! O perpetual transfers and
promotions!

If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?

³⁵² Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,

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.

³⁵³ I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,

I perceive of the ghastly glimmer the sunbeams re-
flected,

And debouch to the steady and central from the
offspring great or small.

³⁵⁴ There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but
I know it is in me.

³⁵⁵ Wrenched and sweaty—calm and cool then my body
becomes,

I sleep—I sleep long.

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³⁵⁶ I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word
unsaid,

It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

³⁵⁷ Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

To it the creation is the friend whose embracing
awakes me.

³⁵⁸ Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my
brothers and sisters.

³⁵⁹ Do you see, O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it
is eternal life—it is HAPPINESS.

³⁶⁰ The past and present wilt—I have filled them, emp-
tied them,

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

³⁶¹ Listener up there! Here you! What have you to
confide to me?

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.

³⁶² Do I contradict myself?

Very well, then, I contradict myself,

I am large—I contain multitudes.

³⁶³ I concentrate toward them that are nigh—I wait on
the door-slab.

³⁶⁴ Who has done his day's work? Who will soonest be
through with his supper?

Who wishes to walk with me?

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³⁶⁵ Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove
already too late?

³⁶⁶ The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he
complains of my gab and my loitering.

³⁶⁷ I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

³⁶⁸ The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness, after the rest, and true as any,
on the shadowed wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

³⁶⁹ I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the
run-away sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

³⁷⁰ I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the
grass I love,

If you want me again, look for me under your boot-
soles.

³⁷¹ You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

³⁷² Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,

Missing me one place, search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

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CHANTS DEMOCRATIC AND NATIVE AMERICAN.

Apostroph.

O mater! O fils!

O brood continental!

O flowers of the prairies!

O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!

O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent,
proud!

O race of the future! O women!

O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!

O native power only! O beauty!

O yourself! O God! O divine average!

O you bearded roughs! O bards! O all those slum-
berers!

O arouse! the dawn-bird's throat sounds shrill! Do
you not hear the cock crowing?

O, as I walk'd the beach, I heard the mournful notes
foreboding a tempest—the low, oft-repeated
shriek of the diver, the long-lived loon;

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O I heard, and yet hear, angry thunder;—O you
sailors! O ships! make quick preparation!

O from his masterful sweep, the warning cry of the
eagle!

(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your
spoils;)

O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world
should prove indeed a sham, a sell!)

O I believe there is nothing real but America and
freedom!

O to sternly reject all except Democracy!

O imperator! O who dare confront you and me?

O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which
builds for mankind!

O feuillage! O North! O the slope drained by the
Mexican sea!

O all, all inseparable—ages, ages, ages!

O a curse on him that would dissever this Union for
any reason whatever!

O climates, labors! O good and evil! O death!

O you strong with iron and wood! O Personality!

O the village or place which has the greatest man or
woman! even if it be only a few ragged huts;

O the city where women walk in public processions in
the streets, the same as the men;

O a wan and terrible emblem, by me adopted!

O shapes arising! shapes of the future centuries!

O muscle and pluck forever for me!

O workmen and workwomen forever for me!

O farmers and sailors! O drivers of horses forever
for me!

O I will make the new bardic list of trades and tools!

O you coarse and wilful! I love you!

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O South! O longings for my dear home! O soft and
sunny airs!

O pensive! O I must return where the palm grows
and the mocking-bird sings, or else I die!

O equality! O organic compacts! I am come to be
your born poet!

O whirl, contest, sounding and resounding! I am
your poet, because I am part of you;

O days by-gone! Enthusiasts! Antecedents!

O vast preparations for These States! O years!

O what is now being sent forward thousands of years
to come!

O mediums! O to teach! to convey the invisible faith!

To promulge real things! to journey through all The
States!

O creation! O to-day! O laws! O unmitigated
adoration!

O for mightier broods of orators, artists, and singers!

O for native songs! carpenter's, boatman's, plough-
man's songs! shoemaker's songs!

O haughtiest growth of time! O free and extatic!

O what I, here, preparing, warble for!

O you hastening light! O the sun of the world will
ascend, dazzling, and take his height—and you
too will ascend;

O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent,
darting and burning;

O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light!
with pouring glories!

O copious! O hitherto unequalled!

O Libertad! O compact! O union impossible to
dissever!

O my Soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless!

O centuries, centuries yet ahead!

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O voices of greater orators! I pause—I listen for
you!

O you States! Cities! defiant of all outside authority!
I spring at once into your arms! you I most
love!

O you grand Presidentiads! I wait for you!

New history! New heroes! I project you!

Visions of poets! only you really last! O sweep on!
sweep on!

O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet!

O heights! O infinitely too swift and dizzy yet!

O purged lumine! you threaten me more than I can
stand!

O present! I return while yet I may to you!

O poets to come, I depend upon you!

1.

¹ A NATION announcing itself, (many in one,)

I myself make the only growth by which I can be
appreciated,

I reject none, accept all, reproduce all in my own
forms.

² A breed whose testimony is behavior,

What we are WE ARE—nativity is answer enough
to objections;

We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,

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We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,

We are executive in ourselves—We are sufficient
in the variety of ourselves,

We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in our-
selves,

Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,

Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are
beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.

³ Have you thought there could be but a single
Supreme?

There can be any number of Supremes—One does
         not countervail another, any more than one eye-
         sight countervails another, or one life counter-
         vails another.

⁴ All is eligible to all,

All is for individuals—All is for you,

No condition is prohibited, not God's or any,

If one is lost, you are inevitably lost.

⁵ All comes by the body—only health puts you rapport
with the universe.

⁶ Produce great persons, the rest follows.

⁷ How dare a sick man, or an obedient man, write
poems for These States?

Which is the theory or book that, for our purposes, is
not diseased?

⁸ Piety and conformity to them that like!

Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like!

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I am he who tauntingly compels men, women,
nations, to leap from their seats and contend
for their lives.

⁹ I am he who goes through the streets with a barbed
tongue, questioning every one I meet—ques-
tioning you up there now:

Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you
knew before?

Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in
your nonsense?

¹⁰ Are you, or would you be, better than all that has
ever been before?

If you would be better than all that has ever been
before, come listen to me, and not otherwise.

¹¹ Fear grace—Fear delicatesse,

Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice,

Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature,

Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of
states and men.

¹² Ages, precedents, poems, have long been accumu-
lating undirected materials,

America brings builders, and brings its own styles.

¹³ Mighty bards have done their work, and passed to
other spheres,

One work forever remains, the work of surpassing all
they have done.

¹⁴ America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by
its own at all hazards,

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Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound,

Sees itself promulger of men and women, initiates
the true use of precedents,

Does not repel them or the past, or what they have
         produced under their forms, or amid other pol-
         itics, or amid the idea of castes, or the old
         religions,

Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse
slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms
of the house,

Perceives that it waits a little while in the door—
that it was fittest for its days,

That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-
shaped heir who approaches,

And that he shall be fittest for his days.

¹⁵ Any period, one nation must lead,

One land must be the promise and reliance of the
future.

¹⁶ These States are the amplest poem,

Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of
nations,

Here the doings of men correspond with the broad-
cast doings of the day and night,

Here is what moves in magnificent masses, carelessly
faithful of particulars,

Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combative-
ness, the Soul loves,

Here the flowing trains—here the crowds, equality,
diversity, the Soul loves.

¹⁷ Race of races, and bards to corroborate!

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Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light
his west-bred face,

To him the hereditary countenance bequeathed, both
mother's and father's,

His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,

Built of the common stock, having room for far and
near,

Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this
land,

Attracting it body and Soul to himself, hanging on its
neck with incomparable love,

Plunging his semitic muscle into its merits and
demerits,

Making its geography, cities, beginnings, events,
glories, defections, diversities, vocal in him,

Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,

Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes
—Missouri, Columbia, Ohio, Niagara, Hudson,
spending themselves lovingly in him,

If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast
stretch, he stretching with them north or south,

Spanning between them east and west, and touching
whatever is between them,

Growths growing from him to offset the growth of
         pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chest-
         nut, cypress, hickory, lime-tree, cotton-wood,
         tulip-tree, cactus, tamarind, orange, magnolia,
         persimmon,

Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or
swamp,

He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests
coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging
from the boughs,

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Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna,
upland, prairie,

Through him flights, songs, screams, answering those
of the wild-pigeon, coot, fish-hawk, qua-bird,
mocking-bird, condor, night-heron, eagle;

His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed
to good and evil,

Surrounding the essences of real things, old times
and present times,

Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red
aborigines,

Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, the
rapid stature and muscle,

The haughty defiance of the Year 1—war, peace,
the formation of the Constitution,

The separate States, the simple, elastic scheme, the
immigrants,

The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and
always calm and impregnable,

The unsurveyed interior, log-houses, clearings, wild
animals, hunters, trappers;

Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, tem-
perature, the gestation of new States,

Congress convening every Twelfth Month, the mem-
bers duly coming up from the uttermost parts;

Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and
farmers, especially the young men,

Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships
—the gait they have of persons who never knew
how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors,

The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the
copiousness and decision of their phrenology,

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The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their
deathless attachment to freedom, their fierceness
when wronged,

The fluency of their speech, their delight in music,
their curiosity, good temper, and open-handed-
ness—the whole composite make,

The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large am-
ativeness,

The perfect equality of the female with the male, the
fluid movement of the population,

The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries,
whaling, gold-digging,

Wharf-hemmed cities, railroad and steamboat lines,
intersecting all points,

Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the
north-east, north-west, south-west,

Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plan-
tation life,

Slavery, the tremulous spreading of hands to shelter
it—the stern opposition to it, which ceases only
when it ceases.

¹⁸ For these and the like, their own voices! For these,
space ahead!

Others take finish, but the Republic is ever con-
structive, and ever keeps vista;

Others adorn the past—but you, O, days of the
present, I adorn you!

O days of the future, I believe in you!

O America, because you build for mankind, I build
for you!

O well-beloved stone-cutters! I lead them who plan
with decision and science,

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I lead the present with friendly hand toward the
future.

¹⁹ Bravas to States whose semitic impulses send whole-
some children to the next age!

But damn that which spends itself on flaunters and
dalliers, with no thought of the stain, pains,
dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.

²⁰ By great bards only can series of peoples and States
be fused into the compact organism of one
nation.

²¹ To hold men together by paper and seal, or by com-
pulsion, is no account,

That only holds men together which is living prin-
ciples, as the hold of the limbs of the body, or
the fibres of plants.

²² Of all races and eras, These States, with veins full
of poetical stuff, most need poets, and are to have
the greatest, and use them the greatest,

Their Presidents shall not be their common referee
so much as their poets shall.

²³ Of mankind, the poet is the equable man,

Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque,
eccentric, fail of their full returns,

Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place
is bad,

He bestows on every object or quality its fit propor-
tions, neither more nor less,

He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,

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He is the equalizer of his age and land,

He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what
wants checking,

In peace, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large,
         rich, thrifty, building populous towns, encour-
         aging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the
         study of man, the Soul, health, immortality,
         government,

In war, he is the best backer of the war—he fetches
artillery as good as the engineer's—he can make
every word he speaks draw blood;

The years straying toward infidelity, he withholds by
his steady faith,

He is no arguer, he is judgment,

He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun
falling round a helpless thing;

As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,

His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,

In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,

He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and
denouement,

He sees eternity in men and women—he does not
see men and women as dreams or dots.

²⁴ Of the idea of perfect and free individuals, the idea
of These States, the bard walks in advance,
leader of leaders,

The attitude of him cheers up slaves, and horrifies
foreign despots.

²⁵ Without extinction is Liberty! Without retrograde
is Equality!

They live in the feelings of young men, and the
best women,

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Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the
earth been always ready to fall for Liberty!

²⁶ Are YOU indeed for Liberty?

Are you a man who would assume a place to teach
here, or lead here, or be a poet here?

The place is august—the terms obdurate.

²⁷ Who would assume to teach here, may well prepare
himself, body and mind,

He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden,
make lithe, himself,

He shall surely be questioned beforehand by me with
many and stern questions.

²⁸ Who are you, indeed, who would talk or sing in
America?

Have you studied out MY LAND, its idioms and
men?

Have you learned the physiology, phrenology, poli-
tics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship, of
my land? its substratums and objects?

Have you considered the organic compact of the first
         day of the first year of the independence of The
         States, signed by the Commissioners, ratified by
         The States, and read by Washington at the head
         of the army?

Have you possessed yourself of the Federal Constitu-
tion?

Do you acknowledge Liberty with audible and abso-
lute acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought
for life and death?

Do you see who have left described processes and
poems behind them, and assumed new ones?

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Are you faithful to things? Do you teach whatever
the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood,
amativeness, angers, excesses, crimes, teach?

Have you sped through customs, laws, popularities?

Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies,
whirls, fierce contentions? Are you very strong?
Are you of the whole people?

Are you not of some coterie? some school or religion?

Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? ani-
mating to life itself?

Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of
These States?

Have you sucked the nipples of the breasts of the
mother of many children?

Have you too the old, ever-fresh, forbearance and
impartiality?

Do you hold the like love for those hardening to
maturity? for the last-born? little and big?
and for the errant?

²⁹ What is this you bring my America?

Is it uniform with my country?

Is it not something that has been better told or done
before?

Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in
some ship?

Is it a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?

Has it never dangled at the heels of the poets, poli-
ticians, literats, of enemies' lands?

Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is
still here?

Does it answer universal needs? Will it improve
manners?

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Can your performance face the open fields and the
sea-side?

Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, nobility,
meanness—to appear again in my strength, gait,
face?

Have real employments contributed to it? original
makers—not amanuenses?

Does it meet modern discoveries, calibers, facts, face
to face?

Does it respect me? Democracy? the Soul? to-day?

What does it mean to me? to American persons,
         progresses, cities? Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas?
         the planter, Yankee, Georgian, native, immi-
         grant, sailors, squatters, old States, new States?

Does it encompass all The States, and the unexcep-
tional rights of all the men and women of the
earth, the genital impulse of These States?

Does it see behind the apparent custodians, the
         real custodians, standing, menacing, silent, the
         mechanics, Manhattanese, western men, south-
         erners, significant alike in their apathy and in
         the promptness of their love?

Does it see what befalls and has always befallen
         each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist,
         alarmist, infidel, who has ever asked anything
         of America?

What mocking and scornful negligence?

The track strewed with the dust of skeletons?

By the roadside others disdainfully tossed?

³⁰ Rhymes and rhymers pass away—poems distilled
from other poems pass away,

The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and
leave ashes;

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Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make the soil
of literature;

America justifies itself, give it time—no disguise can
deceive it, or conceal from it—it is impassive
enough,

Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet
them,

If its poets appear, it will advance to meet them—
there is no fear of mistake,

The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferred, till his
country absorbs him as affectionately as he has
absorbed it.

³¹ He masters whose spirit masters—he tastes sweetest
who results sweetest in the long run,

The blood of the brawn beloved of time is uncon-
straint,

In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, manners,
         engineering, an appropriate native grand-opera,
         shipcraft, any craft, he or she is greatest who
         contributes the greatest original practical ex-
         ample.

³² Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, fills
the houses and streets,

People's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers,
positive knowers;

There will shortly be no more priests—I say their
work is done,

Death is without emergencies here, but life is per-
petual emergencies here,

Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death
you shall be superb;

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Friendship, self-esteem, justice, health, clear the way
with irresistible power;

How dare you place anything before a man?

³³ Fall behind me, States!

A man, before all—myself, typical, before all.

³⁴ Give me the pay I have served for!

Give me to speak beautiful words! take all the
rest;

I have loved the earth, sun, animals—I have despised
riches,

I have given alms to every one that asked, stood up
for the stupid and crazy, devoted my income
and labor to others,

I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God,
had patience and indulgence toward the people,
taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,

I have gone freely with powerful uneducated persons,
and with the young, and with the mothers of
families,

I have read these leaves to myself in the open air—
I have tried them by trees, stars, rivers,

I have dismissed whatever insulted my own Soul or
defiled my body,

I have claimed nothing to myself which I have not
carefully claimed for others on the same terms.

I have studied my land, its idioms and men,

I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth
of the taste of myself,

I reject none, I permit all,

Whom I have staid with once I have found longing
for me ever afterward.

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³⁴ I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things!

It is not the earth, it is not America, who is so great,

It is I who am great, or to be great—it is you, or
any one,

It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, govern-
ments, theories, nature, poems, shows, to indi-
viduals.

³⁵ Underneath all are individuals,

I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores
individuals!

The American compact is altogether with individuals,

The only government is that which makes minute of
individuals,

The whole theory of the universe is directed to one
single individual—namely, to You.

³⁶ Underneath all is nativity,

I swear I will stand by my own nativity—pious or
impious, so be it;

I swear I am charmed with nothing except nativity,

Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from
nativity.

³⁷ Underneath all is the need of the expression of love
for men and women,

I swear I have had enough of mean and impotent
modes of expressing love for men and women,

After this day I take my own modes of expressing
love for men and women.

³⁸ I swear I will have each quality of my race in
myself,

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Talk as you like, he only suits These States whose
manners favor the audacity and sublime turbu-
lence of The States.

³⁹ Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, nature,
governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive
other lessons,

Underneath all to me is myself—to you, yourself,
(the same monotonous old song,)

If all had not kernels for you and me, what were it
to you and me?

⁴⁰ O I see now, flashing, that this America is only you
and me,

Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,

Its roughs, beards, haughtiness, ruggedness, are you
and me,

Its ample geography, the sierras, the prairies, Mis-
sissippi, Huron, Colorado, Boston, Toronto,
Raleigh, Nashville, Havana, are you and me,

Its settlements, wars, the organic compact, peace,
Washington, the Federal Constitution, are you
and me,

Its young men's manners, speech, dress, friendships,
are you and me,

Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, slavery, are you
and me,

Its Congress is you and me—the officers, capitols,
armies, ships, are you and me,

Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,

Its inventions, science, schools, are you and me,

Its deserts, forests, clearings, log-houses, hunters, are
you and me,

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Natural and artificial are you and me,

Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you
and me,

Failures, successes, births, deaths, are you and me,

Past, present, future, are only you and me.

⁴¹ I swear I dare not shirk any part of myself,

Not any part of America, good or bad,

Not my body—not friendship, hospitality, pro-
creation,

Not my Soul, nor the last explanation of prudence,

Not the similitude that interlocks me with all iden-
tities that exist, or ever have existed,

Not faith, sin, defiance, nor any disposition or duty
of myself,

Not the promulgation of Liberty—not to cheer up
slaves and horrify despots,

Not to build for that which builds for mankind,

Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the
sexes,

Not to justify science, nor the march of equality,

Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn beloved
of time.

⁴² I swear I am for those that have never been
mastered!

For men and women whose tempers have never been
mastered,

For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never
master.

⁴³ I swear I am for those who walk abreast with the
whole earth!

Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.

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⁴⁴ I swear I will not be outfaced by irrational things!

I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic
upon me!

I will make cities and civilizations defer to me!

(This is what I have learnt from America—it is the
amount—and it I teach again.)

⁴⁵ I will confront these shows of the day and night!

I will know if I am to be less than they!

I will see if I am not as majestic as they!

I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they!

I will see if I am to be less generous than they!

⁴⁶ I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and
ships have meaning!

I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough
for themselves, and I am not to be enough for
myself.

⁴⁷ I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths,
mountains, brutes,

Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and
become the master myself.

⁴⁸ The Many In One—what is it finally except myself?

These States—what are they except myself?

⁴⁹ I have learned why the earth is gross, tantalizing,
wicked—it is for my sake,

I take you to be mine, you beautiful, terrible, rude
forms.

View Page 126

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.

2.

¹ BROAD-AXE, shapely, naked, wan!

Head from the mother's bowels drawn!

Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one and
lip only one!

Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced
from a little seed sown!

Resting the grass amid and upon,

To be leaned, and to lean on.

² Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes—
masculine trades, sights and sounds,

Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,

Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the
keys of the great organ.

³ Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind,

Welcome are lands of pine and oak,

Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,

Welcome are lands of gold,

Welcome are lands of wheat and maize—welcome
those of the grape,

Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,

Welcome the cotton-lands—welcome those of the
white potato and sweet potato,

Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies,

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Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands,
openings,

Welcome the measureless grazing lands—welcome
the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp,

Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced
lands,

Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands,

Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,

Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,

LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe!

⁴ The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,

The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space
cleared for a garden,

The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves,
after the storm is lulled,

The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of
the sea,

The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on
their beam-ends, and the cutting away of masts;

The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned
houses and barns;

The remembered print or narrative, the voyage at a
venture of men, families, goods,

The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,

The voyage of those who sought a New England and
found it—the outset anywhere,

The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa,
Willamette,

The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle,
saddle-bags;

The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,

The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their
clear untrimmed faces,

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The beauty of independence, departure, actions that
rely on themselves,

The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies,
the boundless impatience of restraint,

The loose drift of character, the inkling through
random types, the solidification;

The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard
schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,

Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the
woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the
occasional snapping,

The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry
song, the natural life of the woods, the strong
day's work,

The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper,
the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the
bear-skin;

The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,

The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mor-
tising,

The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their
places, laying them regular,

Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises,
according as they were prepared,

The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of
the men, their curved limbs,

Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins,
holding on by posts and braces,

The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm
wielding the axe,

The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed,

Their postures bringing their weapons downward on
the bearers,

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The echoes resounding through the vacant building;

The huge store-house carried up in the city, well
under way,

The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at
each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a
heavy stick for a cross-beam,

The crowded line of masons with trowels in their
right hands, rapidly laying the long side-wall,
two hundred feet from front to rear,

The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click
of the trowels striking the bricks,

The bricks, one after another, each laid so workman-
like in its place, and set with a knock of the
trowel-handle,

The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-
boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-
men;

Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of
well-grown apprentices,

The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log,
shaping it toward the shape of a mast,

The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly
into the pine,

The butter-colored chips flying off in great flakes and
slivers,

The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips
in easy costumes;

The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads,
floats, stays against the sea;

The city fireman—the fire that suddenly bursts forth
in the close-packed square,

The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble
stepping and daring,

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The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the
falling in line, the rise and fall of the arms
forcing the water,

The slender, spasmic blue-white jets—the bringing
to bear of the hooks and ladders, and their
execution,

The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or
through floors, if the fire smoulders under them,

The crowd with their lit faces, watching—the glare
and dense shadows;

The forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron
after him,

The maker of the axe large and small, and the
welder and temperer,

The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel,
and trying the edge with his thumb,

The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it
firmly in the socket,

The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past
users also,

The primal patient mechanics, the architects and
engineers,

The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,

The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,

The antique European warrior with his axe in
combat,

The uplifted arm, the clatter, of blows on the
helmeted head,

The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush
of friend and foe thither,

The siege of revolted lieges determined for liberty,

The summons to surrender, the battering at castle
gates, the truce and parley,

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The sack of an old city in its time,

The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumul-
tuously and disorderly,

Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,

Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams
of women in the gripe of brigands,

Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running,
old persons despairing,

The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,

The list of all executive deeds and words, just or
unjust,

The power of personality, just or unjust.

⁵ Muscle and pluck forever!

What invigorates life, invigorates death,

And the dead advance as much as the living advance,

And the future is no more uncertain than the present,

And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses
as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of
man,

And nothing endures but personal qualities.

⁶ What do you think endures?

Do you think the greatest city endures?

Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared
constitution? or the best built steamships?

Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'œuvres
of engineering, forts, armaments?

⁷ Away! These are not to be cherished for themselves,

They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians
play for them,

The show passes, all does well enough of course,

All does very well till one flash of defiance.

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⁸ The greatest city is that which has the greatest man
or woman,

If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city
in the whole world.

⁹ The place where the greatest city stands is not the
place of stretched wharves, docks, manufactures,
deposits of produce,

Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new comers, or
the anchor-lifters of the departing,

Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings,
or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,

Nor the place of the best libraries and schools—nor
the place where money is plentiest,

Nor the place of the most numerous population.

¹⁰ Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of
orators and bards,

Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and
loves them in return, and understands them,

Where these may be seen going every day in the
streets, with their arms familiar to the shoulders
of their friends,

Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the
common words and deeds,

Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its
place,

Where behavior is the finest of the fine arts,

Where the men and women think lightly of the
laws,

Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves
ceases,

Where the populace rise at once against the never-
ending audacity of elected persons,

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Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea
to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and
unript waves,

Where outside authority enters always after the
precedence of inside authority,

Where the citizen is always the head and ideal—and
President, Mayor, Governor, and what not, are
agents for pay,

Where children are taught from the jump that they
are to be laws to themselves, and to depend on
themselves,

Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,

Where speculations on the Soul are encouraged,

Where women walk in public processions in the
streets, the same as the men,

Where they enter the public assembly and take
places the same as the men, and are appealed
to by the orators, the same as the men,

Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,

Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,

Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,

Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,

There the greatest city stands.

¹¹ How beggarly appear poems, arguments, orations,
before an electric deed!

How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels
before a man's or woman's look!

¹² All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being
appears;

A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the
ability of the universe,

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When he or she appears, materials are overawed,

The dispute on the Soul stops,

The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned
back, or laid away.

¹³ What is your money-making now? What can it do
now?

What is your respectability now?

What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions,
statute-books now?

Where are your jibes of being now?

Where are your cavils about the Soul now?

¹⁴ Was that your best? Were those your vast and
solid?

Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obe-
diently from the path of one man or woman!

The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under
the foot-soles of one man or woman!

¹⁵ —A sterile landscape covers the ore—there is as
good as the best, for all the forbidding appear-
ance,

There is the mine, there are the miners,

The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished,
the hammers-men are at hand with their tongs
and hammers,

What always served and always serves, is at hand.

¹⁶ Than this nothing has better served—it has served
all,

Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek,
and long ere the Greek,

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Served in building the buildings that last longer
than any,

Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient
Hindostanee,

Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi—served
those whose relics remain in Central America,

Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with
unhewn pillars, and the druids, and the bloody
body laid in the hollow of the great stone,

Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the
snow-covered hills of Scandinavia,

Served those who, time out of mind, made on the
granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon,
stars, ships, ocean-waves,

Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths—
served the pastoral tribes and nomads,

Served the incalculably distant Kelt—served the
hardy pirates of the Baltic,

Served before any of those, the venerable and harm-
less men of Ethiopia,

Served the making of helms for the galleys of
pleasure, and the making of those for war,

Served all great works on land, and all great works
on the sea,

For the medival ages, and before the mediæval
ages,

Served not the living only, then as now, but served
the dead.

¹⁷ I see the European headsman,

He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs,
and strong naked arms,

And leans on a ponderous axe.

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¹⁸ Whom have you slaughtered lately, European heads-
man?

Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?

¹⁹ I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,

I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,

Ghosts of dead lords, uncrowned ladies, impeached
ministers, rejected kings,

Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and
the rest.

²⁰ I see those who in any land have died for the good
cause,

The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never
run out,

(Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall
never run out.)

²¹ I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe,

Both blade and helve are clean,

They spirt no more the blood of European nobles—
they clasp no more the necks of queens.

²² I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,

I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy—I see no
longer any axe upon it,

I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of
my own race, the newest largest race.

²³ America! I do not vaunt my love for you,

I have what I have.

²⁴ The axe leaps!

The solid forest gives fluid utterances,

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They tumble forth, they rise and form,

Hut, tent, landing, survey,

Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,

Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,

Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-
house, library,

Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter,
turret, porch,

Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-
plane, mallet, wedge, rounce,

Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,

Work-box, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame,
and what not,

Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,

Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or
for the poor or sick,

Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the meas-
ure of all seas.

²⁵ The shapes arise!

Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users,
and all that neighbors them,

Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Pe-
nobscot, or Kennebec,

Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains,
or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia,

Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio
Grande—friendly gatherings, the characters and
fun,

Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellow-
stone river—dwellers on coasts and off coasts,

Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages
through the ice.

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²⁶ The shapes arise!

Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,

Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,

Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks,
girders, arches,

Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake craft, river
craft.

²⁷ The shapes arise!

Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and
Western Seas, and in many a bay and by-place,

The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the
hackmatack-roots for knees,

The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of
scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and inside,

The tools lying around, the great auger and little
auger, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and
bead-plane.

²⁸ The shapes arise!

The shape measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained,

The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his
shroud;

The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in
the posts of the bride's bed,

The shape of the little trough, the shape of the
rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle,

The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for
dancers' feet,

The shape of the planks of the family home, the
home of the friendly parents and children,

The shape of the roof of the home of the happy
young man and woman, the roof over the well-
married young man and woman,

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The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the
chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste
husband, content after his day's work.

²⁹ The shapes arise!

The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room,
and of him or her seated in the place,

The shape of the pill-box, the disgraceful ointment-
box, the nauseous application, and him or her
applying it,

The shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the
young rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker,

The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod by
sneaking footsteps,

The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous
unwholesome couple,

The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish
winnings and losings,

The shape of the slats of the bed of a corrupted body,
the bed of the corruption of gluttony or alcoholic
drinks,

The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and
sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard
face and pinioned arms,

The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and
white-lipped crowd, the sickening dangling of
the rope.

³⁰ The shapes arise!

Shapes of doors giving so many exits and en-
trances,

The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed, and
in haste,

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The door that admits good news and bad news,

The door whence the son left home, confident and
puffed up,

The door he entered again from a long and scan-
dalous absence, diseased, broken down, without
innocence, without means.

³¹ Their shapes arise, above all the rest—the shapes of
full-sized men,

Men taciturn yet loving, used to the open air, and the
manners of the open air,

Saying their ardor in native forms, saying the old
response,

Take what I have then, (saying fain,) take the pay
you approached for,

Take the white tears of my blood, if that is what you
are after.

³² Her shape arises,

She, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than
ever,

The gross and soiled she moves among do not make
her gross and soiled,

She knows the thoughts as she passes—nothing is
concealed from her,

She is none the less considerate or friendly therefore,

She is the best-beloved—it is without exception—
she has no reason to fear, and she does not fear,

Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, proposals, smutty
expressions, are idle to her as she passes,

She is silent—she is possessed of herself—they do
not offend her,

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She receives them as the laws of nature receive them
—she is strong,

She too is a law of nature—there is no law stronger
than she is.

³³ His shape arises,

Arrogant, masculine, näive, rowdyish,

Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman,

Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer
swimmer in rivers or by the sea,

Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body
         perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free
         forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-
         breathed,

Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and
eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty
inches round the breast and back,

Countenance sun-burnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,

Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gentleman
on equal terms,

Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck gray
and open, of slow movement on foot,

Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his
friends, companion of the street,

Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest
touches, and never their meanest,

A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of
Broadway, fond of the life of the wharves and
the great ferries,

Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, easily
understood after all,

Never offering others, always offering himself, corrob-
orating his phrenology,

View Page 142

Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious,
         alimentive, intuitive, of copious friendship,
         sublimity, firmness, self-esteem, comparison,
         individuality, form, locality, eventuality,

Avowing by life, manners, works, to contribute illus-
trations of results of The States,

Teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism,

Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their
strength against his.

³⁴ The main shapes arise!

Shapes of Democracy, final—result of centuries,

Shapes of those that do not joke with life, but are
in earnest with life,

Shapes, ever projecting other shapes,

Shapes of a hundred Free States, begetting another
hundred north and south,

Shapes of turbulent manly cities,

Shapes of an untamed breed of young men, and
natural persons,

Shapes of the women fit for These States,

Shapes of the composition of all the varieties of the
earth,

Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole
earth,

Shapes bracing the whole earth, and braced with the
whole earth.

View Page 143

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.

3.

¹ COME closer to me,

Push closer, my lovers, and take the best I possess,

Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you

possess.

² This is unfinished business with me—How is it with
you?

I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper
between us.

³ Male and Female!

I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass
with the contact of bodies and souls.

⁴ American masses!

I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking
the touch of me—I know that it is good for you
to do so.

⁵ Workmen and Workwomen!

Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well
displayed out of me, what would it amount to?

Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor,
wise statesman, what would it amount to?

View Page 144

Were I to you as the boss employing and paying
you, would that satisfy you?

⁶ The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual
terms,

A man like me, and never the usual terms.

⁷ Neither a servant nor a master am I,

I take no sooner a large price than a small price—
I will have my own, whoever enjoys me,

I will be even with you, and you shall be even
with me.

⁸ If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as
the nighest in the same shop,

If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend,
I demand as good as your brother or dearest
friend,

If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or
night, I must be personally as welcome,

If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become
so for your sake,

If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do
you think I cannot remember my own foolish
and outlawed deeds? plenty of them;

If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite
side of the table,

If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love
him or her, do I not often meet strangers in the
street, and love them?

If you see a good deal remarkable in me, I see just
as much, perhaps more, in you.

View Page 145

⁹ Why, what have you thought of yourself?

Is it you then that thought yourself less?

Is it you that thought the President greater than
you?

Or the rich better off than you? or the educated
wiser than you?

¹⁰ Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was
         once drunk, or a thief, or diseased, or rheumatic,
         or a prostitute, or are so now, or from frivolity or
         impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never
         saw your name in print, do you give in that you
         are any less immortal?

¹¹ Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen,
unheard, untouchable and untouching,

It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to
settle whether you are alive or no,

I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns—
I see and hear you, and what you give and take,

What is there you cannot give and take?

¹² I see not merely that you are polite or white-faced,
married, single, citizens of old States, citizens of
new States,

Eminent in some profession, a lady or gentleman in a
parlor, or dressed in the jail uniform, or pulpit
uniform;

Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and
every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as
much as the other, I see,

And all else is behind or through them.

View Page 146

¹³ The wife—and she is not one jot less than the
husband,

The daughter—and she is just as good as the son,

The mother—and she is every bit as much as the
father.

¹⁴ Offspring of those not rich, boys apprenticed to
trades,

Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows
working on farms,

The näive, the simple and hardy, he going to the
polls to vote, he who has a good time, and he
has who a bad time,

Mechanics, southerners, new arrivals, laborers, sailors,
man-o'wars-men, merchantmen, coasters,

All these I see—but nigher and farther the same I
see,

None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape
me.

¹⁵ I bring what you much need, yet always have,

Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;

I send no agent or medium, offer no representative
of value, but offer the value itself.

¹⁶ There is something that comes home to one now and
perpetually,

It is not what is printed, preached, discussed—it
eludes discussion and print,

It is not to be put in a book—it is not in this
book,

It is for you, whoever you are—it is no farther from
you than your hearing and sight are from you,

View Page 147

It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest—it is
not them, though it is endlessly provoked by
them, (what is there ready and near you now?)

¹⁷ You may read in many languages, yet read nothing
about it,

You may read the President's Message, and read
nothing about it there,

Nothing in the reports from the State department or
Treasury department, or in the daily papers or
the weekly papers,

Or in the census returns, assessors' returns, prices
current, or any accounts of stock.

¹⁸ The sun and stars that float in the open air—the
apple-shaped earth, and we upon it—surely the
drift of them is something grand!

I do not know what it is, except that it is grand,
and that it is happiness,

And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a
speculation, or bon-mot, or reconnoissance,

And that it is not something which by luck may
turn out well for us, and without luck must be
a failure for us,

And not something which may yet be retracted in
a certain contingency.

¹⁹ The light and shade, the curious sense of body
         and identity, the greed that with perfect com-
         plaisance devours all things, the endless pride
         and out-stretching of man, unspeakable joys and
         sorrows,

The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees,
and the wonders that fill each minute of time for-
ever, and each acre of surface and space forever,

View Page 148

Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work?
         or for the profits of a store? or to achieve your-
         self a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure,
         or a lady's leisure?

²⁰ Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and
form that it might be painted in a picture?

Or men and women that they might be written of,
and songs sung?

Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and
harmonious combinations, and the fluids of the
air, as subjects for the savans?

Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and
charts?

Or the stars to be put in constellations and named
fancy names?

Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables,
or agriculture itself?

²¹ Old institutions—these arts, libraries, legends, col-
lections, and the practice handed along in manu-
factures—will we rate them so high?

Will we rate our cash and business high? I have
no objection,

I rate them high as the highest—then a child born
of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate.

²² We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution
grand,

I do not say they are not grand and good, for they
are,

I am this day just as much in love with them as
you,

View Page 149

Then I am in love with you, and with all my fellows
upon the earth.

²³ We consider bibles and religions divine—I do not
say they are not divine,

I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow
out of you still,

It is not they who give the life—it is you who give
the life,

Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees
from the earth, than they are shed out of you.

²⁴ The sum of all known reverence I add up in you,
whoever you are,

The President is there in the White House for you—
it is not you who are here for him,

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you—not
you here for them,

The Congress convenes every Twelfth Month for
you,

Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of
cities, the going and coming of commerce and
mails, are all for you.

²⁵ All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exurge from
you,

All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed
anywhere, are tallied in you,

The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the
records reach, is in you this hour, and myths
and tales the same,

If you were not breathing and walking here, where
would they all be?

View Page 150

The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations
and plays would be vacuums.

²⁶ All architecture is what you do to it when you look
upon it,

Did you think it was in the white or gray stone?
or the lines of the arches and cornices?

²⁷ All music is what awakes from you, when you are
reminded by the instruments,

It is not the violins and the cornets—it is not the
         oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the
         baritone singer singing his sweet romanza—nor
         that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's
         chorus,

It is nearer and farther than they.

²⁸ Will the whole come back then?

Can each see signs of the best by a look in the
looking-glass? is there nothing greater or more?

Does all sit there with you, and here with me?

²⁹ The old, forever-new things—you foolish child! the
closest, simplest things, this moment with you,

Your person, and every particle that relates to your
person,

The pulses of your brain, waiting their chance and
encouragement at every deed or sight,

Anything you do in public by day, and anything
you do in secret between-days,

What is called right and what is called wrong—
what you behold or touch, or what causes your
anger or wonder,

View Page 151

The ankle-chain of the slave, the bed of the bed-
house, the cards of the gambler, the plates of
the forger,

What is seen or learnt in the street, or intuitively
learnt,

What is learnt in the public school, spelling, reading,
writing, ciphering, the black-board, the teacher's
diagrams,

The panes of the windows, all that appears through
them, the going forth in the morning, the aimless
spending of the day,

(What is it that you made money? What is it that you
got what you wanted?)

The usual routine, the work-shop, factory, yard, office,
store, desk,

The jaunt of hunting or fishing, and the life of hunt-
ing or fishing,

Pasture-life, foddering, milking, herding, and all the
personnel and usages,

The plum-orchard, apple-orchard, gardening, seed-
lings, cuttings, flowers, vines,

Grains, manures, marl, clay, loam, the subsoil
plough, the shovel, pick, rake, hoe, irrigation,
draining,

The curry-comb, the horse-cloth, the halter, bridle,
bits, the very wisps of straw,

The barn and barn-yard, the bins, mangers, mows,
racks,

Manufactures, commerce, engineering, the building of
cities, every trade carried on there, and the
implements of every trade,

The anvil, tongs, hammer, the axe and wedge, the
square, mitre, jointer, smoothing-plane,

View Page 152

The plumbob, trowel, level, the wall-scaffold, the
work of walls and ceilings, or any mason-work,

The steam-engine, lever, crank, axle, piston, shaft,
         air-pump, boiler, beam, pulley, hinge, flange,
         band, bolt, throttle, governors, up and down
         rods,

The ship's compass, the sailor's tarpaulin, the stays
and lanyards, the ground tackle for anchoring or
mooring, the life-boat for wrecks,

The sloop's tiller, the pilot's wheel and bell, the yacht
         or fish-smack—the great gay-pennanted three-
         hundred-foot steamboat, under full headway, with
         her proud fat breasts, and her delicate swift-
         flashing paddles,

The trail, line, hooks, sinkers, and the seine, and
hauling the seine,

The arsenal, small-arms, rifles, gunpowder, shot, caps,
wadding, ordnance for war, and carriages;

Every-day objects, house-chairs, carpet, bed, coun-
terpane of the bed, him or her sleeping at night,
wind blowing, indefinite noises,

The snow-storm or rain-storm, the tow-trowsers, the
lodge-hut in the woods, the still-hunt,

City and country, fire-place, candle, gas-light, heater,
aqueduct,

The message of the Governor, Mayor, Chief of Police
—the dishes of breakfast, dinner, supper,

The bunk-room, the fire-engine, the string-team, the
car or truck behind,

The paper I write on or you write on, every word we
         write, every cross and twirl of the pen, and the
         curious way we write what we think, yet very
         faintly,

View Page 153

The directory, the detector, the ledger, the books in
ranks on the book-shelves, the clock attached to
the wall,

The ring on your finger, the lady's wristlet, the scent-
powder, the druggist's vials and jars, the draught
of lager-beer,

The etui of surgical instruments, the etui of oculist's
or aurist's instruments, or dentist's instruments,

The permutating lock that can be turned and locked
as many different ways as there are minutes in a
year,

Glass-blowing, nail-making, salt-making, tin-roofing,
shingle-dressing, candle-making, lock-making and
hanging,

Ship-carpentering, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying,
stone-breaking, flagging of side-walks by flaggers,

The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-
kiln and brick-kiln,

Coal-mines, all that is down there, the lamps in the
         darkness, echoes, songs, what meditations, what
         vast native thoughts looking through smutch'd
         faces,

Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains, or by river-
         banks, men around feeling the melt with huge
         crowbars—lumps of ore, the due combining of
         ore, limestone, coal—the blast-furnace and the
         puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of
         the melt at last—the rolling-mill, the stumpy
         bars of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped T rail
         for railroads,

Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-
house, steam-saws, the great mills and factories,

Lead-mines, and all that is done in lead-mines, or
with the lead afterward,

View Page 154

Copper-mines, the sheets of copper, and what is
formed out of the sheets, and all the work in
forming it,

Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades, or win-
dow or door lintels—the mallet, the tooth-chisel,
the jib to protect the thumb,

Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the
kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire under
the kettle,

The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and
         buck of the sawyer, the screen of the coal-
         screener, the mould of the moulder, the work-
         ing-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the
&

The Walt Whitman Archive

Published Works

Books by Whitman

Boston,

year 85 of The States,(1860-61)

CONTENTS

PROTO-LEAF.

WALT WHITMAN.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC AND NATIVE AMERICAN.

Apostroph.

1.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.

2.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.

3.

The Walt Whitman Archive

Published Works

Books by Whitman

Boston,Thayer and Eldridge,year 85 of The States,(1860-61)View Page Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860,BY WALT WHITMAN,In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.ELECTROTYPED AT THEBOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.PRINTED BYGEORGE C. RAND & AVERY.

Boston,

year 85 of The States,(1860-61)

CONTENTS

PROTO-LEAF.

WALT WHITMAN.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC AND NATIVE AMERICAN.

Apostroph.

1.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC. 2.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC. 3.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.

2.

CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.

3.