The Walt Whitman Archive
Published Works
Books by Whitman
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To ORATISTS.
| 1 TO ORATISTS—to male or female, |
| Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to use words. |
| 2
Are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique? |
| Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? |
| Come duly to the divine power to use words? |
| 3
For only at last, after many years—after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness; |
| After treading ground and breasting river and lake; |
| After a loosen'd throat—after absorbing eras, tempera- ments, races—after knowledge, freedom, crimes; |
| After complete faith—after clarifyings, elevations, and removing obstructions; |
| After these, and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, a woman, the divine power to use words. |
| 4
Then toward that man or that woman, swiftly hasten all—None refuse, all attend; |
| Armies, ships, antiquities, the dead, libraries, paintings, machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in close ranks; |
View Page 348
| They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the mouth of that man, or that woman. |
| 5 ….O I see arise orators fit for inland America; |
| And I see it is as slow to become an orator as to be- come a man; |
| And I see that all power is folded in a great vocalism. |
| 6
Of a great vocalism, the merciless light thereof shall pour, and the storm rage, |
| Every flash shall be a revelation, an insult, |
| The glaring flame on depths, on heights, on suns, on stars, |
| On the interior and exterior of man and woman, |
| On the laws of Nature—on passive materials, |
| On what you called death—(and what to you therefore was death, |
| As far as there can be death.) |