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Leaves of Grass (1871-72)
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BROTHER OF ALL, WITH GENEROUS HAND.
( G. P., Buried 1870. )
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1 BROTHER of all, with generous hand, |
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my
Soul,
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A thought to launch in memory of thee, |
2 What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? |
What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire? |
—The life thou lived'st, we know not, |
But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the
haunts of brokers;
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Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory. |
3 Yet lingering, yearning, joining soul with thine, |
If not thy past we chant, we chant the future, |
Select, adorn the future. |
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4 Lo, Soul, the graves of heroes! |
The pride of lands—the gratitudes of men, |
The statues of the manifold famous dead, Old World
and New,
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The kings, inventors, generals, poets, (stretch wide thy
vision, Soul,)
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The excellent rulers of the races, great discoverers,
sailors,
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Marble and brass select from them, with pictures,
scenes,
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(The histories of the lands, the races, bodied there, |
In what they've built for, graced and graved, |
Monuments to their heroes.) |
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With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd, |
Turning from all the samples, all the monuments of
heroes.
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6 While through the interior vistas, |
Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as, by night, Auroras of
the North,)
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Lambent tableaux, prophetic, bodiless scenes, |
7 In one, among the city streets, a laborer's home ap-
pear'd,
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After his day's work done, cleanly, sweet-air'd, the gas-
light burning,
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The carpet swept, and a fire in the cheerful stove. |
8 In one, the sacred parturition scene, |
A happy, painless mother birth'd a perfect child. |
9 In one, at a bounteous morning meal, |
Sat peaceful parents, with contented sons. |
10 In one, by twos and threes, young people, |
Hundreds concentring, walk'd the paths and streets
and roads,
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Toward a tall-domed school. |
11 In one a trio, beautiful, |
Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's
daughter, sat,
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12 In one, along a suite of noble rooms, |
'Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the
walls, fine statuettes,
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Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics, young
and old,
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13 All, all the shows of laboring life, |
City and country, women's, men's and children's, |
Their wants provided for, hued in the sun, and tinged
for once with joy,
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Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room,
lodging-room,
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Labor and toil, the bath, gymnasium, playground,
library, college,
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The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught; |
The sick cared for, the shoeless shod—the orphan
father'd and mother'd,
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The hungry fed, the houseless housed; |
(The intentions perfect and divine, |
The workings, details, haply human.) |
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14 O thou within this tomb, |
From thee, such scenes—thou stintless, lavish Giver, |
Tallying the gifts of Earth—large as the Earth, |
Thy name an Earth, with mountains, fields and rivers. |
15 Nor by your streams alone, you rivers, |
By you, your banks, Connecticut, |
By you, and all your teeming lif old Thames, |
By you, Potomac, laving the ground Washington trod
—by you Patapsco,
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You, Hudson—you, endless Mississippi—not by you
alone,
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But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory. |
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16 Lo, Soul, by this tomb's lambency, |
The darkness of the arrogant standards of the world, |
With all its flaunting aims, ambitions, pleasures. |
17 (Old, commonplace, and rust saws, |
The rich, the gay, the supercilious, smiled at long, |
Now, piercing to the marrow in my bones, |
Fused with each drop my heart's blood jets |
Swim in ineffable meaning.) |
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18 Lo, Soul, the sphere requireth, portioneth, |
To each his share, his measure, |
The moderate to the moderate, the ample to the
ample.
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19 Lo, Soul, see'st thou not, plain as the sun, |
The only real wealth of wealth in generosity, |
The only life of life in goodness? |
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