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Leaves of Grass (1860)
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CHANTS DEMOCRATIC AND NATIVE AMERICAN.
Apostroph.
| 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, |
View Page 127
|
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,
|
View Page 128
|
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,
|
View Page 129
|
| 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,
|
View Page 130
|
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,
|
View Page 131
|
| 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. |
View Page 132
|
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,
|
View Page 133
|
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,
|
View Page 134
|
| 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,
|
View Page 135
|
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, |
| The solid forest gives fluid utterances, |
View Page 137
|
| 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.
|
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.
|
View Page 138
|
| 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.
|
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.
|
| 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,
|
View Page 139
|
The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the
chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste
husband, content after his day's work.
|
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.
|
Shapes of doors giving so many exits and en-
trances,
|
The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed, and
in haste,
|
View Page 140
|
| 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.
|
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,
|
View Page 141
|
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.
|
| 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.
| Push closer, my lovers, and take the best I possess, |
| Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you |
2 This is unfinished business with me—How is it with
you?
|
I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper
between us.
|
I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass
with the contact of bodies and souls.
|
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.
|
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
work with ice,
|
The four-double cylinder press, the hand-press, the
frisket and tympan, the compositor's stick and
rule, type-setting, making up the forms, all the
work of newspaper counters, folders, carriers,
news-men,
|
The implements for daguerreotyping—the tools of
the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker,
|
Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes,
brush-making, glazier's implements,
|
The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's orna-
ments, the decanter and glasses, the shears and
flat-iron,
|
The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart
measure, the counter and stool, the writing-pen
of quill or metal—the making of all sorts of
edged tools,
|
The ladders and hanging-ropes of the gymnasium,
manly exercises, the game of base-ball, running,
leaping, pitching quoits,
|
View Page 155
|
The designs for wall-papers, oil-cloths, carpets, the
fancies for goods for women, the book-binder's
stamps,
|
The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every
thing that is done by brewers, also by wine-
makers, also vinegar-makers,
|
Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-
twisting, distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning,
coopering, cotton-picking—electro-plating, elec-
trotyping, stereotyping,
|
Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,
ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam-
wagons,
|
The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous
dray,
|
The wires of the electric telegraph stretched on land,
or laid at the bottom of the sea, and then the
message in an instant from a thousand miles off,
|
The snow-plough, and two engines pushing it—the
ride in the express-train of only one car, the
swift go through a howling storm—the locomo-
tive, and all that is done about a locomotive,
|
The bear-hunt or coon-hunt—the bonfire of shavings
in the open lot in the city, and the crowd of
children watching,
|
The blows of the fighting-man, the upper-cut, and
one-two-three,
|
Pyrotechny, letting off colored fire-works at night,
fancy figures and jets,
|
Shop-windows, coffins in the sexton's ware-room, fruit
on the fruit-stand—beef in the butcher's stall,
the slaughter-house of the butcher, the butcher
in his killing-clothes,
|
View Page 156
|
The area of pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the
hog-hook, the scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's
cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous
winter-work of pork-packing,
|
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice—
the barrels and the half and quarter barrels, the
loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and
levees,
|
Bread and cakes in the bakery, the milliner's rib-
bons, the dress-maker's patterns, the tea-table,
the home-made sweetmeats;
|
Cheap literature, maps, charts, lithographs, daily and
weekly newspapers,
|
The column of wants in the one-cent paper, the news
by telegraph, amusements, operas, shows,
|
The business parts of a city, the trottoirs of a city
when thousands of well-dressed people walk up
and down,
|
The cotton, woollen, linen you wear, the money you
make and spend,
|
Your room and bed-room, your piano-forte, the stove
and cook-pans,
|
The house you live in, the rent, the other tenants, the
deposit in the savings-bank, the trade at the
grocery,
|
The pay on Seventh Day night, the going home, and
the purchases;
|
In them the heft of the heaviest—in them far more
than you estimated, and far less also,
|
In them realities for you and me—in them poems for
you and me,
|
In them, not yourself—you and your Soul enclose all
things, regardless of estimation,
|
View Page 157
|
In them themes, hints, provokers—if not, the whole
earth has no themes, hints, provokers, and never
had.
|
30 I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile—I do
not advise you to stop,
|
| I do not say leadings you thought great are not great, |
But I say that none lead to greater, sadder, happier,
than those lead to.
|
| 31 Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, |
In things best known to you, finding the best, or as
good as the best,
|
In folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest,
strongest, lovingest,
|
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this
place—not for another hour, but this hour,
|
Man in the first you see or touch—always in your
friend, brother, nighest neighbor—Woman in
your mother, lover, wife,
|
The popular tastes and occupations taking precedence
in poems or any where,
|
You workwomen and workmen of These States having
your own divine and strong life,
|
Looking the President always sternly in the face,
unbending, nonchalant,
|
Understanding that he is to be kept by you to short
and sharp account of himself,
|
And all else thus far giving place to men and women
like you.
|
| I cannot tell you how I love you; |
View Page 158
|
All I love America for, is contained in men and
women like you.
|
| 33 When the psalm sings instead of the singer, |
| When the script preaches instead of the preacher, |
When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the
carver that carved the supporting-desk,
|
When I can touch the body of books, by night or by
day, and when they touch my body back again,
|
When the holy vessels, or the bits of the eucharist,
or the lath and plast, procreate as effectually as
the young silver-smiths or bakers, or the masons
in their over-alls,
|
When a university course convinces like a slumbering
woman and child convince,
|
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the
night-watchman's daughter,
|
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and
are my friendly companions,
|
I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much
of them as I do of men and women like you.
|
View Page 159
|
CHANTS DEMOCRATIC.
4.
| Always me joined with you, whoever you are! |
| Always our own feuillage! |
Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the price-
less delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields
of Alabama and Texas!
|
Always California's golden hills and hollows—and
the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always
soft-breath'd Cuba!
|
Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea
—inseparable with the slopes drained by the
Eastern and Western Seas,
|
The area the Eighty-third year of These States—the
three and a half millions of square miles,
|
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-
coast on the main—the thirty thousand miles
of river navigation,
|
The seven millions of distinct families, and the same
number of dwellings—Always these and more,
branching forth into numberless branches;
|
Always the free range and diversity! Always the
continent of Democracy!
|
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities,
travellers, Kanada, the snows;
|
View Page 160
|
Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips
with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes;
|
Always the West, with strong native persons—the
increasing density there—the habitans, friendly,
threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
|
All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promis-
cuously done at all times,
|
All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed,
myriads unnoticed,
|
Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things
gathering;
|
On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine
knots, steamboats wooding up;
|
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna,
and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappa-
hannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and
Delaware;
|
In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the
Adirondacks, the hills—or lapping the Saginaw
waters to drink;
|
In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock,
sitting on the water, rocking silently;
|
In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest
labor done—they rest standing—they are too
tired;
|
Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily,
while her cubs play around;
|
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed—
the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open,
beyond the floes;
|
White drift spooning ahead, where the ship in the
tempest dashes;
|
On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all
strike midnight together;
|
View Page 161
|
In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding—
the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther,
and the hoarse bellow of the elk;
|
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead
Lake—in summer visible through the clear
waters, the great trout swimming;
|
In lower latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas,
the large black buzzard floating slowly high
beyond the tree-tops,
|
Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria—the
pines and cypresses, growing out of the white
sand that spreads far and flat;
|
Rude boats descending the big Pedee—climbing
plants, parasites, with colored flowers and berries,
enveloping huge trees,
|
The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and
low, noiselessly waved by the wind;
|
The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the
supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by
whites and negroes,
|
Thirty or forty great wagons—the mules, cattle,
horses, feeding from troughs,
|
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old
sycamore-trees—the flames—also the black
smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising;
|
Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and inlets
of North Carolina's coast—the shad-fishery
and the herring-fishery—the large sweep-seines
—the windlasses on shore worked by horses—
the clearing, curing, and packing houses;
|
Deep in the forest, in the piney woods, turpentine
and tar dropping from the incisions in the trees
—There is the turpentine distillery,
|
View Page 162
|
There are the negroes at work, in good health—the
ground in all directions is covered with pine
straw;
|
In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coal-
ings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the
corn-shucking;
|
In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long
absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the
aged mulatto nurse;
|
On rivers, boatmen safely moored at night-fall, in their
boats, under the shelter of high banks,
|
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the
banjo or fiddle—others sit on the gunwale,
smoking and talking;
|
Late in the afternoon, the mocking-bird, the American
mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp—
there are the greenish waters, the resinous odor,
the plenteous moss, the cypress tree, and the
juniper tree;
|
Northward, young men of Mannahatta—the target
company from an excursion returning home at
evening—the musket-muzzles all bear bunches
of flowers presented by women;
|
Children at play—or on his father's lap a young boy
fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles
in his sleep!)
|
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of
the Mississippi—he ascends a knoll and sweeps
his eye around;
|
California life—the miner, bearded, dressed in his
rude costume—the stanch California friendship
—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing,
meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path;
|
View Page 163
|
Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins—
drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts
—cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves;
|
Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the Amer-
ican Soul, with equal hemispheres—one Love,
one Dilation or Pride;
|
In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the
aborigines—the calumet, the pipe of good-will
arbitration, and indorsement,
|
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun
and then toward the earth,
|
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted
faces and guttural exclamations,
|
The setting out of the war-party—the long and
stealthy march,
|
The single file—the swinging hatchets—the surprise
and slaughter of enemies;
|
All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of These
States—reminiscences, all institutions,
|
All These States, compact—Every square mile of
These States, without excepting a particle—you
also—me also,
|
Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields,
Paumanok's fields,
|
Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow
butterflies, shuffling between each other, ascend-
ing high in the air;
|
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects—the
fall traveller southward, but returning northward
early in the spring;
|
The country boy at the close of the day, driving the
herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter
to browse by the road-side;
|
View Page 164
|
The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco,
|
The departing ships, when the sailors heave at the
capstan;
|
| Evening—me in my room—the setting sun, |
The setting summer sun shining in my open window,
showing me flies, suspended, balancing in the
air in the centre of the room, darting athwart,
up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on
the opposite wall, where the shine is;
|
The athletic American matron speaking in public to
crowds of listeners;
|
Males, females, immigrants, combinations—the co-
piousness—the individuality and sovereignty
of The States, each for itself—the money-
makers;
|
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces—the
windlass, lever, pulley—All certainties,
|
| The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, |
In space, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars
—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands,
|
O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (what-
ever it is,) I become a part of that, whatever
it is,
|
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flap-
ping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along
the coasts of Florida—or in Louisiana, with
pelicans breeding,
|
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw,
the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the
Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan, or
the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and
skipping and running;
|
View Page 165
|
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of
Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons
wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic
plants;
|
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird,
from piercing the crow with its bill, for amuse-
ment—And I triumphantly twittering;
|
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn
to refresh themselves—the body of the flock feed
—the sentinels outside move around with erect
heads watching, and are from time to time re-
lieved by other sentinels—And I feeding and
taking turns with the rest;
|
In Kanadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cor-
nered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-
feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs
as sharp as knives—And I, plunging at the
hunters, cornered and desperate;
|
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-
houses, and the countless workmen working in
the shops,
|
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and
no less in myself than the whole of the Manna-
hatta in itself,
|
Singing the song of These, my ever united lands
—my body no more inevitably united, part to
part, and made one identity, any more than
my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE
IDENTITY,
|
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great Pastoral
Plains,
|
Cities, labors, death, animals, products, good and evil
—these me,
|
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|
These affording, in all their particulars, endless
feuillage to me and to America, how can I do
less than pass the clew of the union of them, to
afford the like to you?
|
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine
leaves, that you also be eligible as I am?
|
How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for
yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable
feuillage of These States?
|
5.
Let every one answer! Let those who sleep be
waked! Let none evade—not you, any more
than others!
|
(If it really be as is pretended, how much longer must
we go on with our affectations and sneaking?
|
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for
a new distribution of roles,)
|
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let
that which was behind advance to the front and
speak!
|
Let murderers, thieves, bigots, fools, unclean persons,
offer new propositions!
|
| Let the old propositions be postponed! |
Let faces and theories be turned inside out! Let
meanings be freely criminal, as well as results!
|
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|
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of
drudgery!
|
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say!
do you know your destination?)
|
Let trillions of men and women be mocked with
bodies and mocked with Souls!
|
Let the love that waits in them, wait! Let it die,
or pass still-born to other spheres!
|
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait!
or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other spheres!
|
Let contradictions prevail! Let one thing contradict
another! and let one line of my poems contradict
another!
|
Let the people sprawl with yearning aimless hands!
Let their tongues be broken! Let their eyes be
discouraged! Let none descend into their hearts
with the fresh lusciousness of love!
|
Let the theory of America be management, caste,
comparison! (Say! what other theory would
you?)
|
Let them that distrust birth and death lead the
rest! (Say! why shall they not lead you?)
|
Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! Let the
days be darker than the nights! Let slumber
bring less slumber than waking-time brings!
|
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom
it was all made!
|
Let the heart of the young man exile itself from the
heart of the old man! and let the heart of the
old man be exiled from that of the young man!
|
Let the sun and moon go! Let scenery take the
applause of the audience! Let there be apathy
under the stars!
|
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|
Let freedom prove no man's inalienable right! Every
one who can tyrannize, let him tyrannize to his
satisfaction!
|
| Let none but infidels be countenanced! |
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm,
hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust, be taken
for granted above all! Let writers, judges, gov-
ernments, households, religions, philosophies, take
such for granted above all!
|
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst
women!
|
| Let priests still play at immortality! |
| Let Death be inaugurated! |
Let nothing remain upon the earth except the ashes of
teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and learned
and polite persons!
|
| Let him who is without my poems be assassinated! |
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—
Let the mud-fish, the lobster, the mussel, eel, the
sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—Let these,
and the like of these, be put on a perfect equality
with man and woman!
|
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the
corpses of those who have died of the most filthy
of diseases!
|
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none
but fools!
|
Let men among themselves talk and think obscenely
of women! and let women among themselves
talk and think obscenely of men!
|
Let every man doubt every woman! and let every
woman trick every man!
|
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|
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public,
naked, monthly, at the peril of our lives! Let
our bodies be freely handled and examined by
whoever chooses!
|
Let nothing but copies, pictures, statues, reminis-
cences, elegant works, be permitted to exist
upon the earth!
|
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever hence-
forth be mentioned the name of God!
|
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, cus-
tom, authority, precedents, pallor, dyspepsia,
smut, ignorance, unbelief!
|
Let judges and criminals be transposed! Let the
prison-keepers be put in prison! Let those that
were prisoners take the keys! (Say! why might
they not just as well be transposed?)
|
Let the slaves be masters! Let the masters become
slaves!
|
Let the reformers descend from the stands where
they are forever bawling! Let an idiot or insane
person appear on each of the stands!
|
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the
American and the Australian, go armed against
the murderous stealthiness of each other! Let
them sleep armed! Let none believe in good-will!
|
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! Let such be
scorned and derided off from the earth!
|
Let a floating cloud in the sky—Let a wave of the
sea—Let one glimpse of your eye-sight upon the
landscape or grass—Let growing mint, spinach,
onions, tomatoes—Let these be exhibited as
shows at a great price for admission!
|
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|
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a
few smouchers! Let the few seize on what they
choose! Let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey!
|
Let shadows be furnished with genitals! Let sub-
stances be deprived of their genitals!
|
Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but
through any of them, not a single poet, saviour,
knower, lover!
|
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away!
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest
set upon him! Let them affright faith! Let
them destroy the power of breeding faith!
|
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent!
Let them dance on, while seeming lasts! (O
seeming! seeming! seeming!)
|
Let the preachers recite creeds! Let them teach only
what they have been taught!
|
Let the preachers of creeds never dare to go meditate
candidly upon the hills, alone, by day or by
night! (If one ever once dare, he is lost!)
|
| Let insanity have charge of sanity! |
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers,
clouds!
|
| Let the daubed portraits of heroes supersede heroes! |
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself!
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after con-
sumptive and genteel persons!
|
Let the white person tread the black person under his
heel! (Say! which is trodden under heel, after
all ?)
|
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied
in mirrors! Let the things themselves continue
unstudied!
|
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|
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in him-
self! Let a woman seek happiness everywhere
except in herself! (Say! what real happiness
have you had one single time through your whole
life ?)
|
Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limit-
less years of death! (Say! what do you suppose
death will do, then ?)
|
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? |
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.
|
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?
|
7.
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations
of past ages,
|
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be
hero, as I am,
|
| With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece, and Rome, |
With the Celt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the
Saxon,
|
With antique maritime ventures—with laws, arti-
sanship, wars, and journeys,
|
With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the
oracle,
|
With the sale of slaves—with enthusiasts—with
the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk,
|
With those old continents whence we have come to this
new continent,
|
| With the fading kingdoms and kings over there, |
| With the fading religions and priests, |
With the small shores we look back to, from our own
large and present shores,
|
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|
With countless years drawing themselves onward, and
arrived at these years,
|
You and Me arrived—America arrived, and making
this year,
|
This year! sending itself ahead countless years to
come.
|
| 2 O but it is not the years—it is I—it is You, |
| We touch all laws, and tally all antecedents, |
We are the skald, the oracle, the monk, and the
knight—we easily include them, and more,
|
We stand amid time, beginningless and endless—we
stand amid evil and good,
|
All swings around us—there is as much darkness as
light,
|
The very sun swings itself and its system of planets
around us,
|
| Its sun, and its again, all swing around us. |
| I have the idea of all, and an all, and believe in all; |
I believe materialism is true, and spiritualism is true—
I reject no part.
|
| 4 Have I forgotten any part? |
Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I give you
recognition.
|
| 5 I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews, |
| I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, |
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are
true, without exception,
|
I assert that all past days were what they should have
been,
|
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|
And that they could no-how have been better than
they were,
|
And that to-day is what it should be—and that
America is,
|
And that to-day and America could no-how be better
than they are.
|
6 In the name of These States, and in your and my
name, the Past,
|
And in the name of These States, and in your and my
name, the Present time.
|
7 I know that the past was great, and the future will
be great,
|
And I know that both curiously conjoint in the pres-
ent time,
|
(For the sake of him I typify—for the common
average man's sake—your sake, if you are he;)
|
And that where I am, or you are, this present day,
there is the centre of all days, all races,
|
And there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever
come of races and days, or ever will come.
|
8.
| 1 SPLENDOR of falling day, floating and filling me, |
| Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past, |
| Inflating my throat—you, divine average! |
| You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. |
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|
| 2 Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness, |
| Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection, |
| Natural life of me, faithfully praising things, |
| Corroborating forever the triumph of things. |
Illustrious what we name space—sphere of unnum-
bered spirits,
|
Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even
the tiniest insect,
|
Illustrious the attribute of speech—the senses—the
body,
|
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale
reflection on the moon in the western sky!
|
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the
last.
|
| In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals, |
| In the annual return of the seasons, |
| In the hilarity of youth, |
| In the strength and flush of manhood, |
| In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, |
| In the superb vistas of Death. |
| The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood, |
| To breathe the air, how delicious! |
| To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand! |
To prepare for sleep, for bed—to look on my rose-
colored flesh,
|
| To be conscious of my body, so amorous, so large, |
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|
| To be this incredible God I am, |
To have gone forth among other Gods—those men
and women I love.
|
| 6 Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself! |
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles
around!
|
| How the clouds pass silently overhead! |
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun,
moon, stars, dart on and on!
|
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is
alive!)
|
How the trees rise and stand up—with strong trunks
—with branches and leaves!
|
(Surely there is something more in each of the trees—
some living Soul.)
|
| 7 O amazement of things! even the least particle! |
| O spirituality of things! |
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents
—now reaching me and America!
|
I take your strong chords—I intersperse them, and
cheerfully pass them forward.
|
| 8 I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or setting, |
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and
of all the growths of the earth,
|
| I too have felt the resistless call of myself. |
| 9 As I sailed down the Mississippi, |
| As I wandered over the prairies, |
As I have lived—As I have looked through my
windows, my eyes,
|
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|
As I went forth in the morning—As I beheld the
light breaking in the east,
|
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and
again on the beach on the Western Sea,
|
As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago—whatever
streets I have roamed,
|
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with
contentment and triumph.
|
| 10 I sing the Equalities, |
| I sing the endless finales of things, |
| I say Nature continues—Glory continues, |
| I praise with electric voice, |
| For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, |
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at
last in the universe.
|
| 11 O setting sun! O when the time comes, |
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmiti-
gated adoration!
|
9.
| A THOUGHT of what I am here for, |
Of these years I sing—how they pass through con-
vulsed pains, as through parturitions;
|
How America illustrates birth, gigantic youth, the
promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people
—Illustrates evil as well as good;
|
View Page 180
|
Of how many hold despairingly yet to the models
departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion,
and to infidelity;
|
How few see the arrived models, the Athletes, The
States—or see freedom or spirituality—or hold
any faith in results,
|
(But I see the Athletes—and I see the results
glorious and inevitable—and they again leading
to other results;)
|
How the great cities appear—How the Democratic
masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them,
|
How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with
good, the sounding and resounding, keep on
and on;
|
How society waits unformed, and is between things
ended and things begun;
|
How America is the continent of glories, and of the
triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and
of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun;
|
And how The States are complete in themselves—
And how all triumphs and glories are complete
in themselves, to lead onward,
|
And how these of mine, and of The States, will in
their turn be convulsed, and serve other par-
turitions and transitions,
|
And how all people, sights, combinations, the Demo-
cratic masses too, serve—and how every fact
serves,
|
And how now, or at any time, each serves the
exquisite transition of Death.
|
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|
10.
| HISTORIAN! you who celebrate bygones! |
You have explored the outward, the surface of the
races—the life that has exhibited itself,
|
You have treated man as the creature of politics,
aggregates, rulers, and priests;
|
| But now I also, arriving, contribute something: |
I, an habitué of the Alleghanies, treat man as he is in
the influences of Nature, in himself, in his own
inalienable rights,
|
Advancing, to give the spirit and the traits of new
Democratic ages, myself, personally,
|
(Let the future behold them all in me—Me, so
puzzling and contradictory—Me, a Manhattan-
ese, the most loving and arrogant of men;)
|
I do not tell the usual facts, proved by records and
documents,
|
What I tell, (talking to every born American,)
requires no further proof than he or she who
will hear me, will furnish, by silently meditating
alone;
|
I press the pulse of the life that has hitherto seldom
exhibited itself, but has generally sought con-
cealment, (the great pride of man, in himself,)
|
I illuminate feelings, faults, yearnings, hopes—I
have come at last, no more ashamed nor afraid;
|
| Chanter of Personality, outlining a history yet to be, |
| I project the ideal man, the American of the future. |
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|
11.
Of Death, (the life greater)—of seeds dropping into
the ground—of birth,
|
Of the steady concentration of America, inland,
upward, to impregnable and swarming places,
|
Of what Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and the rest, are
to be,
|
Of what a few years will show there in Missouri,
Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the
rest,
|
Of what the feuillage of America is the preparation
for—and of what all the sights, North, South,
East and West, are;
|
Of the temporary use of materials for identity's
sake,
|
Of departing—of the growth of a mightier race
than any yet,
|
Of myself, soon, perhaps, closing up my songs by
these shores,
|
Of California—of Oregon—and of me journeying
hence to live and sing there;
|
Of the Western Sea—of the spread inland between
it and the spinal river,
|
| Of the great pastoral area, athletic and feminine, |
Of all sloping down there where the fresh free-
giver, the mother, the Mississippi flows—and
Westward still;
|
View Page 183
|
Of future men and women there—of happiness in
those high plateaus, ranging three thousand
miles, warm and cold,
|
Of cities yet unsurveyed and unsuspected, (as I am
also, and as it must be,)
|
Of the new and good names—of the strong develop-
ments—of the inalienable homesteads,
|
Of a free original life there—of simple diet, and
clean and sweet blood,
|
Of litheness, majestic faces, clear eyes, and perfect
physique there,
|
Of immense spiritual results, future years, inland,
spread there each side of the Anahuacs,
|
Of these Leaves well-understood there, (being made
for that area,)
|
| Of the native scorn of grossness and gain there, |
(O it lurks in me night and day—What is gain,
after all, to savageness and freedom?)
|
12.
| 1 To oratists—to male or female, |
Vocalism, breath, measure, concentration, determina-
tion, and the divine power to use words.
|
Are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long trial?
from vigorous practice? from physique?
|
View Page 184
|
| Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? |
Remembering inland America, the high plateaus,
stretching long?
|
Remembering Kanada—Remembering what edges
the vast round edge of the Mexican Sea?
|
| 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 loosened throat—after absorbing eras, tem-
peraments, 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, paint-
ings, machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain,
theft, murder, aspiration, form in close ranks,
|
They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently
through the mouth of that man, or that woman.
|
| 5 O now I see arise orators fit for inland America, |
And I see it is as slow to become an orator as to
become a man,
|
| And I see that power is folded in a great vocalism. |
6 Of a great vocalism, when you hear it, the merciless
light shall pour, and the storm rage around,
|
View Page 185
|
| Every flash shall be a revelation, an insult, |
The glaring flame turned on depths, on heights, on
suns, on stars,
|
| On the interior and exterior of man or woman, |
| On the laws of Nature—on passive materials, |
On what you called death—and what to you there-
fore was death,
|
| As far as there can be death. |
13.
For strong artists and leaders—for fresh broods of
teachers, and perfect literats for America,
|
| For diverse savans, and coming musicians. |
2 There shall be no subject but it shall be treated with
reference to the ensemble of the world, and the
compact truth of the world—And no coward or
copyist shall be allowed;
|
There shall be no subject too pronounced—All works
shall illustrate the divine law of indirections;
|
There they stand—I see them already, each poised
and in its place,
|
Statements, models, censuses, poems, dictionaries,
biographies, essays, theories—How complete!
How relative and interfused! No one super-
sedes another;
|
| They do not seem to me like the old specimens, |
View Page 186
|
They seem to me like Nature at last, (America has
given birth to them, and I have also;)
|
They seem to me at last as perfect as the animals,
and as the rocks and weeds—fitted to them,
|
Fitted to the sky, to float with floating clouds—to
rustle among the trees with rustling leaves,
|
To stretch with stretched and level waters, where
ships silently sail in the distance.
|
| 3 What do you suppose Creation is? |
What do you suppose will satisfy the Soul, except to
walk free and own no superior?
|
What do you suppose I have intimated to you in a
hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good
as God?
|
And that there is no God any more divine than
Yourself?
|
And that that is what the oldest and newest myths
finally mean?
|
And that you or any one must approach Creations
through such laws?
|
14.
Not to-day is to justify me, and Democracy, and
what we are for,
|
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental,
greater than before known,
|
View Page 187
|
| 2 Indeed, if it were not for you, what would I be? |
| What is the little I have done, except to arouse you? |
3 I depend on being realized, long hence, where the
broad fat prairies spread, and thence to Oregon
and California inclusive,
|
I expect that the Texan and the Arizonian, ages
hence, will understand me,
|
I expect that the future Carolinian and Georgian will
understand me and love me,
|
I expect that Kanadians, a hundred, and perhaps
many hundred years from now, in winter, in the
splendor of the snow and woods, or on the icy
lakes, will take me with them, and permanently
enjoy themselves with me.
|
4 Of to-day I know I am momentary, untouched—I
am the bard of the future,
|
| I but write one or two indicative words for the future, |
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry
back in the darkness.
|
5 I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully
stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then
averts his face,
|
| Leaving it to you to prove and define it, |
| Expecting the main things from you. |
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|
15.
WHO has gone farthest? For I swear I will go
farther;
|
And who has been just? For I would be the most
just person of the earth;
|
And who most cautious? For I would be more
cautious;
|
And who has been happiest? O I think it is I! I
think no one was ever happier than I;
|
And who has lavished all? For I lavish constantly
the best I have;
|
| And who has been firmest? For I would be firmer; |
And who proudest? For I think I have reason to be
the proudest son alive—for I am the son of the
brawny and tall-topt city;
|
And who has been bold and true? For I would be
the boldest and truest being of the universe;
|
And who benevolent? For I would show more be-
nevolence than all the rest;
|
And who has projected beautiful words through the
longest time? By God! I will outvie him! I
will say such words, they shall stretch through
longer time!
|
And who has received the love of the most friends?
For I know what it is to receive the passionate
love of many friends;
|
And to whom has been given the sweetest from
women, and paid them in kind? For I will
take the like sweets and pay them in kind;
|
View Page 189
|
And who possesses a perfect and enamoured body?
For I do not believe any one possesses a more
perfect or enamoured body than mine;
|
And who thinks the amplest thoughts? For I will
surround those thoughts;
|
And who has made hymns fit for the earth? For I
am mad with devouring extacy to make joyous
hymns for the whole earth!
|
16.
| THEY shall arise in the States—mediums shall, |
They shall report Nature, laws, physiology, and
happiness,
|
| They shall illustrate Democracy and the kosmos, |
| They shall be alimentive, amative, perceptive, |
They shall be complete women and men—their pose
brawny and supple, their drink water, their blood
clean and clear,
|
They shall enjoy materialism and the sight of prod-
ucts—they shall enjoy the sight of the beef,
lumber, bread-stuffs, of Chicago, the great city,
|
They shall train themselves to go in public to become
oratists, (orators and oratresses,)
|
Strong and sweet shall their tongues be—poems and
materials of poems shall come from their lives—
they shall be makers and finders,
|
Of them, and of their works, shall emerge divine
conveyers, to convey gospels,
|
View Page 190
|
Characters, events, retrospections, shall be conveyed
in gospels—Trees, animals, waters, shall be
conveyed,
|
Death, the future, the invisible faith, shall all be
conveyed.
|
17.
1 Now we start hence, I with the rest, on our jour-
neys through The States,
|
We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers
of all.
|
2 I have watched the seasons dispensing themselves,
and passing on,
|
And I have said, Why should not a man or woman
do as much as the seasons, and effuse as much?
|
| 3 We dwell a while in every city and town, |
We pass through Kanada, the north-east, the vast
valley of the Mississippi, and the Southern
States,
|
| We confer on equal terms with each of The States, |
We make trial of ourselves, and invite men and
women to hear,
|
We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid,
promulge the body and the Soul,
|
Promulge real things—Never forget the equality of
humankind, and never forget immortality;
|
View Page 191
|
Dwell a while, and pass on—Be copious, temperate,
chaste, magnetic,
|
And what you effuse may then return as the seasons
return,
|
| And may be just as much as the seasons. |
18.
| Me standing at ease in Nature, |
Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the
midst of irrational things,
|
| Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they, |
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles,
crimes, less important than I thought;
|
Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary—all
these subordinate, (I am eternally equal with
the best—I am not subordinate;)
|
Me toward the Mexican Sea, or in the Mannahatta,
or the Tennessee, or far north, or inland,
|
A river-man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-
life of These States, or of the coast, or the lakes,
or Kanada,
|
Me, wherever my life is to be lived, O to be self-bal-
anced for contingencies!
|
O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, acci-
dents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.
|
View Page 192
|
19.
I WAS looking a long while for the history of the
past for myself, and for these Chants—and now
I have found it,
|
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them
I neither accept nor reject,)
|
| It is no more in the legends than in all else, |
| It is in the present—it is this earth to-day, |
It is in Democracy—in this America—the old world
also,
|
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the
average man of to-day;
|
| It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts, |
It is the broad show of artificial things, ships, ma-
chinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements,
and the interchanges of nations,
|
| All for the average man of to-day. |
20.
Those of mechanics—each one singing, his, as it
should be, blithe and strong,
|
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank
or beam,
|
View Page 193
|
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work,
or leaves off work,
|
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat
—the deck-hand singing on the steamboat deck,
|
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the
hatter singing as he stands,
|
The wood-cutter's song—the ploughboy's, on his way
in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at
sundown;
|
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the
young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or
washing—Each singing what belongs to her,
and to none else,
|
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the
party, of young fellows, robust, friendly, clean-
blooded, singing with melodious voices, melo-
dious thoughts.
|
2 Come! some of you! still be flooding The States
with hundreds and thousands of mouth-songs,
fit for The States only.
|
21.
| 1 As I walk, solitary, unattended, |
Around me I hear that eclat of the world—politics,
produce,
|
| The announcements of recognized things—science, |
The approved growth of cities, and the spread of
inventions.
|
View Page 194
|
| 2 I see the ships, (they will last a few years,) |
| The vast factories with their foremen and workmen, |
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object
to it.
|
| 3 But we too announce solid things, |
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not noth-
ing—they serve,
|
| They stand for realities—all is as it should be. |
| What else is so real as mine? |
Libertad, and the divine average—Freedom to every
slave on the face of the earth,
|
The rapt promises and lumine of seers—the spir-
itual world—these centuries-lasting songs,
|
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid
announcements of any.
|
| After the rest is done and gone, we remain, |
| There is no final reliance but upon us, |
Democracy rests finally upon us, (I, my brethren,
begin it,)
|
| And our visions sweep through eternity. |
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