Leaves of Grass (1856)
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| WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking
the walks of dreams, |
| I fear those realities are to melt from under your
feet and hands; |
| Even now, your features, joys, speech, house,
trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate 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, begetting, dying, |
| They receive these in their places, they find these
or the like of these, eternal, for reasons, |
| They find themselves eternal, they do not find that
the water and soil tend to endure forever — and they not endure. |
| Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you,
that you be my poem, |
| I whisper with my lips close to your ear, |
)
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| I have loved many women and men, but I love
none better than you. |
| O I have been dilatory and dumb, |
| I should have made my way straight to you long
ago, |
| I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should
have chanted nothing but you. |
| 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, |
| 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 intrin- sically in yourself. |
| Painters have painted their swarming groups, and
the centre figure of all, |
| From the head of the centre figure spreading a
nimbus of gold-colored light, |
| But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head
without its nimbus of gold-colored light, |
| From my hand, from the brain of every man and
woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever. |
)
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| O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about
you! |
| You have not known what you are—you have
slumbered upon yourself all your life, |
| Your eye-lids have been as much as closed most
of the time, |
| What you have done returns already in mock-
eries, |
| Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not
return in mockeries, what is their return? |
| 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 accustomed routine, if these con- ceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me, |
| The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure
complexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me, |
| The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunken-
ness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside, |
| I track through your windings and turnings—I
come upon you where you thought eye should never come upon you. |
| There is no endowment in man or woman that is
not tallied in you, |
)
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| There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman
but as good is in you, |
| No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is
in you, |
| No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal plea-
sure waits for you. |
| 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. |
| Whoever you are, you are to hold your own at
any hazard, |
| These shows of the east and west are tame com-
pared to you, |
| These immense meadows, these interminable riv-
ers—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,
elements, pain, passion, dissolution. |
| The hopples fall from your ankles! you find an
unfailing sufficiency! |
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| Old, young, male, female, rude, low, rejected by
the rest, whatever you are promulges itself, |
| Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are
provided, nothing is scanted, |
| Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance,
ennui, what you are picks its way. |