Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1860)

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6.

¹ You just maturing youth! You male or female!

Remember the organic compact of These States,

Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thence-
forward to the rights, life, liberty, equality of
man,

Remember what was promulged by the founders, rat-
         ified by The States, signed in black and white by
         the Commissioners, and read by Washington at
         the head of the army,

Remember the purpose of the founders,—Remember
Washington;

Remember the copious humanity streaming from every
direction toward America;

Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and
men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man, without
hospitality!)

Remember, government is to subserve individuals,

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Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more
than you or me,

Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less
than you or me.

² Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to be-
come the hundred, or two hundred millions, of
equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined.

³ Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a
part;

Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions,
of the idea of caste,

Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.

⁴ Anticipate the best women;

I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-
defined women are to spread through all These
States,

I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable,
dauntless, just the same as a boy.

⁵ Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless
power,

Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those
errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?

Do you see that lost character?—Do you see de-
cay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy, fever,
mortal cancer or inflammation?

Do you see death, and the approach of death?

⁶ Think of the Soul;

I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to
your Soul somehow to live in other spheres,

I do not know how, but I know it is so.

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⁷ Think of loving and being loved;

I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse
yourself with such things that everybody that sees
you shall look longingly upon you.

⁸ Think of the past;

I warn you that in a little while, others will find their
past in you and your times.

⁹ The race is never separated—nor man nor woman
escapes,

All is inextricable—things, spirits, nature, nations,
you too—from precedents you come.

¹⁰ Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers precede
them;)

Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers,
of the earth,

Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons—brother
of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseased
persons.

¹¹ Think of the time when you was not yet born,

Think of times you stood at the side of the dying,

Think of the time when your own body will be dying.

¹² Think of spiritual results,

Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does
every one of its objects pass into spiritual results.

¹³ Think of manhood, and you to be a man;

Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood,
nothing?

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¹⁴ Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;

The creation is womanhood,

Have I not said that womanhood involves all?

Have I not told how the universe has nothing better
than the best womanhood?

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