|
Leaves of Grass (1867)
contents
| previous
| next
2.
| 1 TO ORATISTS—to male or female, |
Vocalism, breath, measure, concentration, determina-
tion, and the divine power to use words.
|
View Page 316
|
2 Are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long
trial? from vigorous practice? from physique?
|
| Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? |
| Come duly to the divine power to use words? |
3 For only at last, after many years—after chastity,
friendship, procreation, prudence, and naked-
ness;
|
| After treading ground and breasting river and lake; |
After a loosen'd throat—after absorbing eras, temper-
aments, races—after knowledge, freedom,
crimes;
|
After complete faith—after clarifyings, elevations, and
removing obstructions;
|
After these, and more, it is just possible there comes
to a man, a woman, the divine power to use
words.
|
4 Then toward that man or that woman, swiftly hasten
all—None refuse, all attend;
|
Armies, ships, antiquities, the dead, libraries, paintings,
machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain, theft,
murder, aspiration, form in close ranks;
|
They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently
through the mouth of that man, or that woman.
|
| 5 O I see arise orators fit for inland America; |
And I see it is as slow to become an orator as to be-
come a man;
|
| And I see that power is folded in a great vocalism. |
6 Of a great vocalism, the merciless light thereof shall
pour, and the storm rage,
|
| Every flash shall be a revelation, an insult, |
The glaring flame on depths, on heights, on suns, on
stars,
|
| On the interior and exterior of man or woman, |
| On the laws of Nature—on passive materials, |
View Page 317
|
On what you called death—(and what to you there-
fore was death,
|
| As far as there can be death.) |
contents
| previous
| next
|
| |
)
)