Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1871-72)

contents | previous | next

A CAROL OF HARVEST, FOR 1867.

1

¹ A SONG of the good green grass!

A song no more of the city streets;

A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields.

² A song of the smell of sun-dried hay, where the
nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;

A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.

2

³ For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for
myself,

Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,

Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,

Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,

Tuning a verse for thee.

⁴ O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!

O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!

O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming
womb!

A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.

View Page 88

3

⁵ Ever upon this stage,

Is acted God's calm, annual drama,

Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,

Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,

The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical,
strong waves,

The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering
trees,

The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of
the grass,

The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,

The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,

The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear
cerulean, and the bulging, silvery fringes,

The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,

The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald
meadows,

The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths
and products.

4

⁶ Fecund America! To day,

Thou art all over set in births and joys!

Thou groan'st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as
with a swathing garment!

Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions!

A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all
thy vast demesne!

As some huge ship, freighted to water's edge, thou
ridest into port!

As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from
earth, so have the precious values fallen upon
thee, and risen out of thee!

Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!

Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty!

Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns!

Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle, and
lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East,
and lookest West!

View Page 89

Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles
—that giv'st a million farms, and missest noth-
ing,

Thou All-Acceptress—thou Hospitable—(thou only art
hospitable, as God is hospitable.)

5

⁷ When late I sang, sad was my voice;

Sad were the shows around me, with deafening noises
of hatred, and smoke of conflict;

In the midst of the armies, the Heroes, I stood,

Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and
dying.

⁸ But now I sing not War,

Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents
of camps,

Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line
of battle.

⁹ No more the dead and wounded;

No more the sad, unnatural shows of War.

¹⁰ Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks? the first
forth-stepping armies?

Ask room, alas, the ghastly ranks—the armies dread
that follow'd.

6

¹¹ (Pass—pass, ye proud brigades!

So handsome, dress'd in blue—with your tramping,
sinewy legs;

With your shoulders young and strong—with your
knapsacks and your muskets;

—How elate I stood and watch'd you, where, starting
off, you march'd!

¹² Pass;—then rattle, drums, again!

Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud
and shrill, your salutes!

View Page 90

For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering
army!

Swarming, trailing on the rear—O you dread, accruing
army!

O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhoea!
with your fever!

O my land's maim'd darlings! with the plenteous bloody
bandage and the crutch!

Lo! your pallid army follow'd!)

7

¹³ But on these days of brightness,

On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads
and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the
fruits and barns,

Should the dead intrude?

¹⁴ Ah, the dead to me mar not—they fit well in Na-
ture;

They fit very well in the landscape, under the trees and
grass,

And along the edge of the sky, in the horizon's far
margin.

¹⁵ Nor do I forget you, departed;

Nor in winter or summer, my lost ones;

But most, in the open air, as now, when my soul is
rapt and at peace—like pleasing phantoms,

Your dear memories, rising, glide silently by me.

8

¹⁶ I saw the day, the return of the Heroes;

(Yet the heroes never surpass'd, shall never return;

Them, that day, I saw not.)

¹⁷ I saw the interminable Corps—I saw the processions
of armies,

I saw them approaching, defiling by, with divisions,

Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile
in clusters of mighty camps.

View Page 91

¹⁸ No holiday soldiers!—youthful, yet veterans;

Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of home-
stead and workshop,

Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march,

Inured on many a hard-fought, bloody field.

9

¹⁹ A pause—the armies wait;

A million flush'd, embattled conquerors wait;

The world, too, waits—then, soft as breaking night, and
sure as dawn,

They melt—they disappear.

²⁰ Exult, indeed, O lands! victorious lands!

Not there your victory, on those red, shuddering fields;

But here and hence your victory.

²¹ Melt, melt away ye armies! disperse, ye blue-clad
soldiers!

Resolve ye back again—give up, for good, your deadly
arms;

Other the arms, the fields henceforth for you, or South
or North, or East or West,

With saner wars—sweet wars—life-giving wars.

10

²² Loud, O my throat, and clear, O soul!

The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding;

The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.

²³ All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me;

I see the true arenas of my race—or first or last,

Man's innocent and strong arenas.

²⁴ I see the Heroes at other toils;

I see, well-wielded in their hands, the better weapons.

View Page 92

²⁵ I see where America, Mother of All,

Well-pleased, with full-spanning eye, gazes forth, dwells
long,

And counts the varied gathering of the products.

²⁶ Busy the far, the sunlit panorama;

Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,

Cotton and rice of the South, and Louisianian cane;

Open, unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and tim-
othy,

Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and
swine,

And many a stately river flowing, and many a jocund
brook,

And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,

And the good green grass—that delicate miracle, the
ever-recurring grass.

12

²⁷ Toil on Heroes! harvest the products!

Not alone on those warlike fields, the Mother of All,

With dilated form and lambent eyes, watch'd you.

²⁸ Toil on Heroes! toil well! handle the weapons
well!

The Mother of All—yet here, as ever, she watches
you.

²⁹ Well-pleased, America, thou beholdest,

Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters,

The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving imple-
ments:

Beholdest, moving in every direction, imbued as with
life, the revolving hay-rakes,

The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power
machines,

View Page 93

The engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain,
well separating the straw—the nimble work of
the patent pitchfork;

Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin,
and the rice-cleanser.

³⁰ Beneath thy look, O Maternal,

With these, and else, and with their own strong hands,
the Heroes harvest.

³¹ All gather, and all harvest;

(Yet but for thee, O Powerful! not a scythe might
swing, as now, in security;

Not a maize-stalk dangle, as now, its silken tassels in
peace.

14

³² Under thee only they harvest—even but a wisp of
hay, under thy great face, only;

Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin—every
barbed spear, under thee;

Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee—
each ear in its light-green sheath,

Gather the hay to its myriad mows, in the odorous,
tranquil barns,

Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of
Michigan, to theirs;

Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and
hoard the golden, the sweet potato of Georgia
and the Carolinas,

Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,

Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco
in the Borders,

Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the
trees, or bunches of grapes from the vines,

Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or
South,

Under the beaming sun, and under Thee.

contents | previous | next