The Walt Whitman Archive
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Books by Whitman
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To You.
| 1
WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, |
| I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; |
| Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissi- pate away from you, |
| Your true Soul and Body appear before me, |
| They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. |
| 2
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; |
| I whisper with my lips close to your ear, |
| I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. |
| 3 O I have been dilatory and dumb; |
| I should have made my way straight to you long ago; |
| I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you. |
| 4 I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; |
| None have understood you, but I understand you; |
| None have done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself; |
| None but have found you imperfect—I only find no imperfection in you; |
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| None but would subordinate you—I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you; |
| I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. |
| 5
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; |
| From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light; |
| But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head with- out its nimbus of gold-color'd light; |
| From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. |
| 6 O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! |
| You have not known what you are—you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; |
| Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; |
| What you have done returns already in mockeries; |
| Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?) |
| 7 The mockeries are not you; |
| Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; |
| I pursue you where none else has pursued you; |
| Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; |
| The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure com- plexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me, |
| The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. |
| 8
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; |
| There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; |
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| No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; |
| No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. |
| 9
As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you; |
| I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you. |
| 10 Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! |
| These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you; |
| These immense meadows—these interminable rivers— you are immense and interminable as they; |
| These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, |
| Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, ele- ments, pain, passion, dissolution. |
| 11
The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an un- failing sufficiency; |
| Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself; |
| Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are pro- vided, nothing is scanted; |
| Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way. |