Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1871-72)

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PASSAGE TO INDIA.

1

¹ SINGING my days,

Singing the great achievements of the present,

Singing the strong light works of engineers,

Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,)

In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal,

The New by its mighty railroad spann'd,

The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires,

I sound, to commence, the cry with thee, O soul,

The Past! the Past! the Past!

² The Past! the dark unfathom'd retrospect!

The teeming gulf! the sleepers and the shadows!

The past! the infinite greatness of the past!

For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past?

(As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line,
still keeps on,

So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.)

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³ Passage, O soul to India!

Eclaircise the myths Asiatic—the primitive fables.

⁴ Not you alone, proud truths of the world!

Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science!

But myths and fables of eld—Asia's, Africa's fables!

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The far-darting beams of the spirit—the unloos'd
dreams!

The deep diving bibles and legends;

The daring plots of the poets—the elder religions;

—O you temples fairer than lilies, pour'd over by the
rising sun!

O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of
the known, mounting to heaven!

You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses,
burnish'd with gold!

Towers of fables immortal, fashion'd from mortal
dreams!

You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest;

You too with joy I sing.

3

⁵ Passage to India!

Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first?

The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work,

The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in mar-
riage,

The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,

The lands to be welded together.

⁶ (A worship new I sing;

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours!

You engineers! you architects, machinists, yours!

You, not for trade or transportation only,

But in God's name, and for thy sake, O soul.

4

⁷ Passage to India!

Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain,

I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open'd,

I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Euge-
nie's leading the van;

I mark, from on deck, the strange landscape, the pure
sky, the level sand in the distance;

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I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen
gather'd,

The gigantic dredging machines.

⁸ In one again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul,
the same,)

I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad, sur-
mounting every barrier;

I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte,
carrying freight and passengers;

I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the
shrill steam-whistle,

I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest
scenery in the world;

I cross the Laramie plains—I note the rocks in gro-
tesque shapes, the buttes;

I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions—the bar-
ren, colorless, sage-deserts;

I see in glimpses afar, or towering immediately above
me, the great mountains—I see the Wind river
and the Wahsatch mountains;

I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle's Nest—
I pass the Promontory—I ascend the Nevadas;

I scan the noble Elk mountain, and wind around its
base,

I see the Humboldt range—I thread the valley and
cross the river,

I see the clear waters of Lake Tahoe—I see forests of
majestic pines,

Or, crossing the great desert, the alkaline plains, I be-
hold enchanting mirages of waters and meadows;

Marking through these, and after all, in duplicate slen-
der lines,

Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land
travel,

Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,

The road between Europe and Asia.

⁹ (Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream!

Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,

The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!)

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¹⁰ Passage to India!

Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor
dead!

Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,

Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd sky.

¹¹ Along all history, down the slopes,

As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to
the surface rising,

A ceaseless thought, a varied train—Lo, soul! to thee,
thy sight, they rise,

The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions:

Again Vasco de Gama sails forth;

Again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's compass,

Lands found, and nations born—thou born America,
(a hemisphere unborn,)

For purpose vast, man's long probation fill'd,

Thou, rondure of the world, at last accomplish'd.

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¹² O, vast Rondure, swimming in space,

Cover'd all over with visible power and beauty!

Alternate light and day, and the teeming, spiritual
darkness;

Unspeakable, high processions of sun and moon, and
countless stars above;

Below, the manifold grass and waters, animals, moun-
tains, trees;

With inscrutable purpose—some hidden prophetic
intention,

Now, first, it seems, my thought begins to span thee.

¹³ Down from the gardens of Asia, descending, radiat-
ing,

Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after
them,

Wandering, yearning, curious—with restless explo-
rations,

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With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish—with
never-happy hearts,

With that sad, incessant refrain, Wherefore, unsatisfied
soul? and, Whither O mocking life?

¹⁴ Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?

Who justify these restless explorations?

Who speak the secret of impassive Earth?

Who bind it to us? What is this separate Nature, so
unnatural?

What is this Earth to our affections? (unloving earth,
without a throb to answer ours;

Cold earth, the place of graves.)

¹⁵ Yet, soul, be sure the first intent remains—and shall
be carried out;

(Perhaps even now the time has arrived.)

¹⁶ After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already
cross'd,)

After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd
their work,

After the noble inventors—after the scientists, the
chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,

Finally shall come the Poet, worthy that name;

The true Son of God shall come, singing his songs.

¹⁷ Then, not your deeds only, O voyagers, O scientists
and inventors, shall be justified,

All these hearts as of fretted children shall be sooth'd,

All affection shall be fully responded to—the secret
shall be told;

All these separations and gaps shall be taken up, and
hook'd and link'd together;

The whole Earth—this cold, impassive, voiceless Earth,
shall be completely justified;

Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accomplish'd and
compacted by the true son of God, the poet,

(He shall indeed pass the straits and conquer the mountains,

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He shall double the Cape of Good Hope to some pur-
pose;)

Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more,

The true Son of God shall absolutely fuse them.

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¹⁸ Year at whose open'd, wide-flung door I sing!

Year of the purpose accomplish'd!

Year of the marriage of continents, climates and
oceans!

(No mere Doge of Venice now, wedding the Adriatic,)

I see, O year, in you, the vast terraqueous globe, given,
and giving all,

Europe to Asia, Africa join'd, and they to the New
World;

The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival
garland,

As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.

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¹⁹ Passage to India!

Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of man,

The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up again.

²⁰ Lo, soul, the retrospect, brought forward;

The old, most populous, wealthiest of Earth's lands,

The streams of the Indus and the Ganges and their many
many affluents;

(I, my shores of America walking to-day, behold, resum-
ing all,)

The tale of Alexander, on his warlike marches, suddenly
dying,

On one side China and on the other side Persia and
Arabia,

To the south the great seas and the Bay of Bengal;

The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, religions,
castes,

Old occult Brahma, interminably far back—the tender
and junior Buddha,

Central and southern empires and all their belongings,
possessors,

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The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Aurungzebe,

The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, Venetians,
Byzantium, the Arabs, Portuguese,

The first travelers, famous yet, Marco Polo, Batouta
the Moor,

Doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, blanks to be
fill'd,

The foot of man unstay'd, the hands never at rest,

Thyself, O soul, that will not brook a challenge.

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²¹ The medieval navigators rise before me,

The world of 1492, with its awaken'd enterprise;

Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of
the earth in spring,

The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.

²² And who art thou sad shade?

Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,

With majestic limbs, and pious, beaming eyes,

Spreading around, with every look of thine, a golden
world,

Enhuing it with gorgeous hues.

²³ As the chief histrion,

Down to the footlights walks, in some great scena,

Dominating the rest, I see the Admiral himself,

(History's type of courage, action, faith;)

Behold him sail from Palos, leading his little fleet;

His voyage behold—his return—his great fame,

His misfortunes, calumniators—behold him a prisoner,
chain'd,

Behold his dejection, poverty, death.

²⁴ (Curious, in time, I stand, noting the efforts of
heroes;

Is the deferment long? bitter the slander, poverty,
death?

Lies the seed unreck'd for centuries in the ground?
Lo! to God's due occasion,

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Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms,

And fills the earth with use and beauty.)

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²⁵ Passage indeed, O soul, to primal thought!

Not lands and seas alone—thy own clear freshness,

The young maturity of brood and bloom;

To realms of budding bibles.

²⁶ O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou with me,

Thy circumnavigation of the world begin,

Of man, the voyage of his mind's return,

To reason's early paradise,

Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions,

Again with fair creation.

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²⁷ O we can wait no longer!

We too take ship, O soul!

Joyous, we too launch out on trackless seas!

Fearless, for unknown shores, on waves of ecstasy to
sail,

Amid the wafting winds, (thou pressing me to thee, I
thee to me, O soul,)

Caroling free—singing our song of God,

Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.

²⁸ With laugh, and many a kiss,

(Let others deprecate—let others weep for sin, remorse,
humiliation;)

O soul thou pleasest me—I thee.

²⁹ Ah, more than any priest, O soul, we too believe in God,

But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.

³⁰ O soul, thou pleasest me—I thee;

Sailing these seas, or on the hills, or waking in the night,
night,

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Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and
Death, like waters flowing,

Bear me indeed, as through the regions infinite,

Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear—lave me all
over;

Bathe me, O God, in thee—mounting to thee,

I and my soul to range in range of thee.

³¹ O Thou transcendent!

Nameless—the fibre and the breath!

Light of the light—shedding forth universes—thou
centre of them,

Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving!

Thou moral, spiritual fountain! affection's source!
thou reservoir!

(O pensive soul of me! O thirst unsatisfied! waitest not
there?

Waitest not haply for us, somewhere there, the Com-
rade perfect?)

Thou pulse! thou motive of the stars, suns, systems,

That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious,

Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space!

How should I think—how breathe a single breath—
how speak, if, out of myself,

I could not launch, to those, superior universes?

³² Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,

At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,

But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, thou actual Me,

And lo! thou gently masterest the orbs,

Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,

And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.

³³ Greater than stars or suns,

Bounding, O soul, thou journeyest forth;

—What love, than thine and ours could wider amplify?

What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours, O soul?

What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, per-
fection, strength?

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What cheerful willingness, for others' sake, to give up
all?

For others' sake to suffer all?

³⁴ Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time
achiev'd.

(The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage
done,)

Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim
attain'd,

As, fill'd with friendship, love complete, the Elder
Brother found,

The Younger melts in fondness in his arms.

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³⁵ Passage to more than India!

Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far flights?

O Soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages like those?

Disportest thou on waters such as those?

Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas?

Then have thy bent unleash'd.

³⁶ Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce enigmas!

Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye strangling
problems!

You, strew'd with the wrecks of skeletons, that, living,
never reach'd you.

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³⁷ Passage to more than India!

O secret of the earth and sky!

Of you, O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and
rivers!

Of you, O woods and fields! Of you, strong mountains
of my land!

Of you, O prairies! Of you, gray rocks!

O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!

O day and night, passage to you!

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³⁸ O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and
Jupiter!

Passage to you!

³⁹ Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my
veins!

Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long
enough?

Have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and
drinking like mere brutes?

Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books
long enough?

⁴⁰ Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!

Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with
me;

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to
go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

⁴¹ O my brave soul!

O farther, farther sail!

O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of
God?

O farther, farther, farther sail!

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THOUGHT.

AS I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly, while
the music is playing,

To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral, in
mist of a wreck at sea;

Of certain ships—how they sail from port with flying
streamers and wafted kisses—and that is the
last of them!

Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the
President,

Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations,
founder'd off the Northeast coast, and going
down—Of the steamship Arctic going down,

Of the veil'd tableau—Women gather'd together on
deck, pale, heroic, waiting the moment that
draws so close—O the moment!

A huge sob—a few bubbles—the white foam spirting
up—and then the women gone,

Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on—And
I now pondering, Are those women indeed gone?

Are Souls drown'd and destroy'd so?

Is only matter triumphant?

O LIVING ALWAYS—ALWAYS DYING.

O LIVING always—always dying!

O the burials of me past and present!

O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious
as ever!

O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not,—
I am content;)

O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which
I turn and look at where I cast them!

To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the
corpses behind!

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