Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1860)

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Salut au Monde!

¹ O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!

Such gliding wonders! Such sights and sounds!

Such joined unended links, each hooked to the next!

Each answering all—each sharing the earth with all.

² What widens within you, Walt Whitman?

What waves and soils exuding?

What climes? What persons and lands are here?

Who are the infants? Some playing, some slum-
bering?

Who are the girls? Who are the married women?

Who are the three old men going slowly with their
arms about each others' necks?

What rivers are these? What forests and fruits are
these?

What are the mountains called that rise so high in
the mists?

What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with
dwellers?

³ Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,

Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is
provided for in the west,

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Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,

Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends;

Within me is the longest day—the sun wheels in
slanting rings—it does not set for months,

Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun
just rises above the horizon, and sinks again,

Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plains, volcanoes,
groups,

Oceanica, Australasia, Polynesia, and the great West
Indian islands.

⁴ What do you hear, Walt Whitman?

⁵ I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife
singing,

I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of
animals early in the day,

I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East
Tennessee and Kentucky, hunting on hills,

I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the
wild horse,

I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chest-
nut shade, to the rebeck and guitar,

I hear continual echoes from the Thames,

I hear fierce French liberty songs,

I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative
of old poems,

I hear the Virginia plantation chorus of negroes, of
a harvest night, in the glare of pine knots,

I hear the strong baritone of the 'long-shore-men of
Manhatta,

I hear the stevedores unlading the cargoes, and
singing,

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I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary north-
west lakes,

I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike
the grain and grass with the showers of their
terrible clouds,

I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively
falling on the breast of the black venerable vast
mother, the Nile,

I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of
Kanada,

I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the
bells of the mule,

I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the
mosque,

I hear Christian priests at the altars of their churches
—I hear the responsive base and soprano,

I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired
Irish grand-parents, when they learn the death
of their grand-son,

I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice,
putting to sea at Okotsk,

I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves
         march on—as the husky gangs pass on by twos
         and threes, fastened together with wrist-chains
         and ankle-chains,

I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punishment
—I hear the sibilant whisk of thongs through
the air;

I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,

I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the
strong legends of the Romans,

I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death
of the beautiful God, the Christ,

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I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the
         loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this
         day from poets who wrote three thousand years
         ago.

⁶ What do you see, Walt Whitman?

Who are they who salute, and that one after another
salute you?

⁷ I see a great round wonder rolling through the air,

I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails,
factories, palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents
of nomads, upon the surface,

I see the shaded part on one side, where the sleepers
are sleeping—and the sun-lit part on the other
side,

I see the curious silent change of the light and shade,

I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants
of them, as my land is to me.

⁸ I see plenteous waters,

I see mountain peaks—I see the sierras of Andes and
Alleghanies, where they range,

I see plainly the Himmalehs, Chian Shahs, Altays,
Gauts,

I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds,

I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,

I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians—and to the
north the Dofrafields, and off at sea Mount Hecla,

I see Vesuvius and Etna—I see the Anahuacs,

I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Moun-
tains, and the Red Mountains of Madagascar,

I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cor-
dilleras;

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I see the vast deserts of Western America,

I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;

I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,

I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones—the
Atlantic and Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Bra-
zilian sea, and the sea of Peru,

The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea,
and the Gulf of Guinea,

The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British
shores, and the Bay of Biscay,

The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to an-
other of its islands,

The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,

The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.

⁹ I behold the mariners of the world,

Some are in storms—some in the night, with the
watch on the look-out,

Some drifting helplessly—some with contagious diseases
eases.

¹⁰ I behold the steam-ships of the world,

Some double the Cape of Storms—some Cape Verde
—others Cape Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,

Others Dondra Head—others pass the Straits of Sun-
da—others Cape Lopatka—others Behring's
Straits,

Others Cape Horn—others the Gulf of Mexico, or
along Cuba or Hayti—others Hudson's Bay or
Baffin's Bay,

Others pass the Straits of Dover—others enter the
Wash—others the Firth of Solway—others round
Cape Clear—others the Land's End,

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Others traverse the Zuyder Zee, or the Scheld,

Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook,

Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar, or the
Dardanelles,

Others sternly push their way through the northern
winter-packs,

Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,

Others the Niger or the Congo—others the Indus,
the Burampooter and Cambodia,

Others wait at the wharves of Manahatta, steamed up,
ready to start,

Wait, swift and swarthy, in the ports of Australia,

Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lis-
bon, Naples, Hamburg, Bremen, Bourdeaux, the
Hague, Copenhagen,

Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama,

Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Balti-
more, Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston, San
Francisco.

¹¹ I see the tracks of the rail-roads of the earth,

I see them welding State to State, city to city, through
North America;

I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,

I see them in Asia and in Africa.

¹² I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,

I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths,
losses, gains, passions, of my race.

¹³ I see the long river-stripes of the earth,

I see where the Mississippi flows—I see where the.
Columbia flows,

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I see the Great River, and the Falls of Niagara,

I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,

I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the
Yellow River, the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl;

I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the
Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,

I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the
Oder,

I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Vene-
tian along the Po,

I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.

¹⁴ I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that
of Persia, and that of India,

I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of
Saukara.

¹⁵ I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by
avatars in human forms,

I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth
—oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, lamas,
monks, muftis, exhorters;

I see where druids walked the groves of Mona—I see
the mistletoe and vervain,

I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods—
I see the old signifiers.

¹⁶ I see Christ once more eating the bread of his last sup-
per, in the midst of youths and old persons,

I see where the strong divine young man, the Hercules,
toiled faithfully and long, and then died,

I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless
fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limbed
Bacchus,

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I see Kneph, blooming, dressed in blue, with the crown
of feathers on his head,

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying
to the people, Do not weep for me,

This is not my true country, I have lived banished from
my true country—I now go back there,

I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes
in his turn .

¹⁷ I see the battle-fields of the earth—grass grows upon
them, and blossoms and corn,

I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.

¹⁸ I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of
the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth.

¹⁹ I see the places of the sagas,

I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,

I see granite boulders and cliffs—I see green meadows
and lakes,

I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,

I see them raised high with stones, by the marge of
         restless oceans, that the dead men's spirits, when
         they wearied of their quiet graves, might rise up
         through the mounds, and gaze on the tossing
         billows, and be refreshed by storms, immensity,
         liberty, action.

²⁰ I see the steppes of Asia,

I see the tumuli of Mongolia—I see the tents of Kal-
mucks and Baskirs,

I see the nomadic tribes, with herds of oxen and cows,

I see the table-lands notched with ravines—I see the
jungles and deserts,

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I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-
tailed sheep, the antelope, and the burrowing
wolf.

²¹ I see the high-lands of Abyssinia,

I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree,
tamarind, date,

And see fields of teff-wheat, and see the places of
verdure and gold.

²² I see the Brazilian vaquero,

I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata,

I see the Wacho crossing the plains—I see the
incomparable rider of horses with his lasso on
his arm,

I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for
their hides.

²³ I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some
uninhabited;

I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Pau-
manok, quite still,

I see ten fishermen waiting—they discover now a
thick school of mossbonkers—they drop the
joined seine-ends in the water,

The boats separate—they diverge and row off, each
on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing
the mossbonkers,

The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop
ashore,

Some of the fishermen lounge in the boats—others
stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, poised
on strong legs,

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The boats are partly drawn up—the water slaps
against them,

On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the
water, lie the green-backed spotted mossbonkers.

²⁴ I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering
about the banks of Moingo, and about Lake
Pepin,

He has heard the quail and beheld the honey-bee, and
sadly prepared to depart.

²⁵ I see the regions of snow and ice,

I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,

I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance,

I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by
dogs,

I see the porpoise-hunters—I see the whale-crews of
the South Pacific and the North Atlantic,

I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzer-
land—I mark the long winters, and the
isolation.

²⁶ I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at ran-
dom a part of them,

I am a real Parisian,

I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin,
Constantinople,

I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,

I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh,
Limerick,

I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons,
Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin,
Florence,

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I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw—or northward
in Christiania or Stockholm—or in Siberian
Irkutsk—or in some street in Iceland;

I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them
again.

²⁷ I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,

I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the
poisoned splint, the fetish, and the obi.

²⁸ I see African and Asiatic towns,

I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo,
Monrovia,

I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi,
Calcutta, Yedo,

I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and
Ashantee-man in their huts,

I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo,

I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and
those of Herat,

I see Teheran—I see Muscat and Medina, and the
intervening sands—I see the caravans toiling
onward;

I see Egypt and the Egyptians—I see the pyramids
and obelisks,

I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut
in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite blocks,

I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies,
embalmed, swathed in linen cloth, lying there
many centuries,

I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the
side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the
breast.

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²⁹ I see the menials of the earth, laboring,

I see the prisoners in the prisons,

I see the defective human bodies of the earth,

I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunch-
backs, lunatics,

I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-
makers of the earth,

I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men
and women.

³⁰ I see male and female everywhere,

I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,

I see the constructiveness of my race,

I see the results of the perseverance and industry of
my race,

I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations—I go
among them—I mix indiscriminately,

And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.

³¹ You, where you are!

You daughter or son of England!

You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you
Russ in Russia!

You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African,
large, fine-headed, nobly-formed, superbly des-
tined, on equal terms with me!

You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you
Prussian!

You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!

You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!

You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!

You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohe-
mian! farmer of Styria!

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You neighbor of the Danube!

You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the
Weser! you working-woman too!

You Sardinian! you Bavarian! you Swabian! Saxon!
Wallachian! Bulgarian!

You citizen of Prague! you Roman! Neapolitan!
Greek!

You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!

You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or
Caucasus!

You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stal-
lions feeding!

You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the
saddle, shooting arrows to the mark!

You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tar-
tar of Tartary!

You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!

You Jew journeying in your old age through every
risk, to stand once on Syrian ground!

You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!

You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream
of the Euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of
Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!

You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle
of the minarets of Mecca!

You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babel-
mandel, ruling your families and tribes!

You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Naz-
areth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias!

You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining
in the shops of Lassa!

You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagas-
car, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!

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All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Aus-
tralia, indifferent of place!

All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes
of the sea!

And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!

And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not,
but include just the same!

Health to you! Good will to you all—from me and
America sent,

For we acknowledge you all and each.

³¹ Each of us inevitable,

Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her
right upon the earth,

Each of us allowed the eternal purport of the earth,

Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

³² You Hottentot with clicking palate!

You woolly-haired hordes! you white or black owners
of slaves!

You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-
drops!

You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive
countenances of brutes!

You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look
down upon, for all your glimmering language
and spirituality!

You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah,
Oregon, California!

You dwarfed Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!

You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive
lip, grovelling, seeking your food!

You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!

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You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee!

You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul,
Cairo!

You bather bathing in the Ganges!

You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian!
you Fegee-man!

You peon of Mexico! you Russian serf! you slave of
Carolina, Texas, Tennessee!

I do not prefer others so very much before you either,

I do not say one word against you, away back there,
where you stand,

(You will come forward in due time to my side.)

³³ My spirit has passed in compassion and determination
around the whole earth,

I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them
ready for me in all lands;

I think some divine rapport has equalized me with
them.

³⁴ O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved
away to distant continents, and fallen down
there, for reasons,

I think I have blown with you, O winds,

O waters, I have fingered every shore with you.

³⁵ I have run through what any river or strait of the
globe has run through,

I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and
on the highest embedded rocks, to cry thence.

³⁶ Salut au Monde!

What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I pen-
etrate those cities myself,

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All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my
way myself.

³⁷ Toward all,

I raise high the perpendicular hand—I make the
signal,

To remain after me in sight forever,

For all the haunts and homes of men.

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