passionate instinct of American standards. Whether
or
remain. Is it uniform with my country?
Are its dis-
part of my materials. Does this answer? or is
it without
knowledgement, and set slavery at nought for life and
go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs
are
effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is
true,
the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his
country
World.
2.
Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
Yourself, the
present and future lands, the indissoluble
compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal
progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
This, then, is life;
Here is what has come to the
surface after so many throes
and convulsions.
How curious! how real!
Underfoot the divine
soil—overhead the sun.
See, revolving, the globe;
The ancestor-continents,
away, grouped together;
The present and future continents,
north and south, with
the isthmus between.
See, vast trackless spaces;
As in a dream, they
change, they swiftly fill;
Countless masses debouch upon
them;
They are now covered with the foremost people, arts,
institutions, known.
See, projected through time,
For me an audience interminable.
With firm and regular step they wend—they never
stop,
Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred
millions;
One generation playing its part, and passing
on,
Another generation playing its part, and passing on in its
turn,
With faces turned sideways or
backward towards me, to
listen,
With eyes retrospective
towards me.
3.
Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian;
Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
For you a
programme of chants.
Chants of the prairies;
Chants of the long-running
Mississippi, and down to the
Mexican Sea;
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota;
Chants going forth from
the centre, from Kansas, and
thence, equidistant,
Shooting in
pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.
4.
In the Year 80 of the States,*
My tongue, every atom
of my blood, formed from this
soil, this air,
Born here of parents
born here, from parents the same,
and their parents the same,
I, now
thirty-six years old, in perfect health begin,
Hoping to
cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
(Retiring back a
while, sufficed at what they are, but
never forgotten,)
I harbour, for good
or bad—I permit to speak, at every
hazard—
Nature now without
check, with original energy.
5.
Take my leaves, America! take them South, and take
them North!
*1856.
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your
own offspring;
Surround them, East
and West! for they would surround
you;
And you precedents! connect
lovingly with them, for
they connect lovingly with you.
I conned old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the
great masters:
Now, if eligible, O that the great masters
might return
and study me!
In the name of these States, shall I scorn the
antique?
Why these are the children of the antique, to
justify it.
6.
Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists,
inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers on
other shores,
Nations once powerful, now reduced,
withdrawn, or
desolate,
I dare not proceed till I
respectfully credit what you have
left, wafted hither:
I have perused
it—own it is admirable, (moving awhile
among it;)
Think nothing can ever be
greater—nothing can ever
deserve more than it deserves;
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing
it,
I stand in my place, with my own day, here.
Here lands female and male;
Here the heirship and
heiress-ship of the world—here the
flame of materials;
Here
spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,
The
ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;
The satisfier,
after due long-waiting, now advancing,
Yes, here comes my
mistress, the Soul.
7.
The S
OUL!
Forever and
forever—longer than soil is brown and solid
—longer than water ebbs and
flows.
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are
to be the most spiritual poems;
And I
will make the poems of my body and of mor-
tality,
For I think I shall then
supply myself with the poems of
my soul, and of immortality.
I will make a song for these States, that no one State may
under any circumstances be subjected to
another
State;
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day
and by night between all the States, and
between
any two of them;
And I will make a
song for the ears of the President, full
of weapons with menacing points,
And
behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces:
And a
song make I, of the One formed out of all;
The fanged and
glittering one whose head is over all;
Resolute, warlike
one, including and over all;
However high the head of any
else, that head is over all.
I will acknowledge contemporary lands;
I will trail
the whole geography of the globe, and salute
courteously every city large and
small;
And employments! I will put in my poems, that with
you
is heroism, upon land and sea—And
I will report
all heroism from an American point of
view;
And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in
me—
for I am determined to tell you with
courageous
clear voice, to prove you
illustrious.
I will sing the song of companionship;
I will show
what alone must finally compact These;
I believe These are
to found their own ideal of manly love,
indicating it in me;
I will therefore
let flame from me the burning fires that
were threatening to consume me;
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering
fires;
I will give them complete
abandonment;
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and
of love;
For who but I should understand love, with all
its sorrow
and joy?
And who but I should be the
poet of comrades?
8.
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;
I
advance from the people en masse in their own spirit;
Here
is what sings unrestricted faith.
Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;
I make
the poem of evil also—I commemorate that part
also;
I am myself just as much evil
as good, and my nation is
—And I say there is in fact no
evil,
Or if there is, I say it is just as important to
you, to the
land, or to me, as anything else.
I too, following many, and followed by many, inaugurate
a Religion—I too go to the
wars;
It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries
thereof,
the winner’s pealing
shouts;
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar
above
everything.
Each is not for its own sake;
I say the whole earth,
and all the stars in the sky, are for
religion’s sake.
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough
None has ever yet adored or worshiped half enough;
None has
begun to think how divine he himself is, and
how certain the future is.
I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these
States must be their religion;
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;
Nor
character, nor life worthy the name, without religion;
Nor
land, nor man or woman, without religion.
9.
What are you doing, young man?
Are you so
earnest—so given up to literature, science, art,
amours?
These ostensible realities,
politics, points?
Your ambition or business, whatever it
may be?
It is well—Against such I say not a
word—I am their
poet also;
But behold! such swiftly
subside—burnt up for religion’s
sake;
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the
essential life of the earth,
Any more
than such are to religion.
10.
What do you seek, so pensive and silent?
What do you
need, Camerado?
Dear son! do you think it is love?
Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or
son!
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—
and yet it satisfies—it is
great;
But there is something else very great—it
makes the whole
coincide;
It, magnificent, beyond
materials, with continuous hands,
sweeps and provides for all.
11.
Know you! to drop in the earth the germs of a greater
religion,
The following chants, each
for its kind, I sing.
My comrade!
For you, to share with me, two
greatnesses—and a third
one, rising inclusive and more
resplendent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy—and the greatness
of Religion.
Mélange mine own! the unseen and the seen;
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;
Prophetic spirit
of materials shifting and flickering around
me;
Living beings, identities, now
doubtless near us, in the air
that we know not of;
Contact daily
and hourly that will not release me;
These
selecting—these, in hints, demanded of me.
Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing
me
Has winded and twisted around me
that which holds me
to him,
Any more than I am held to
the heavens, to the spiritual
world,
After what they have done to
me, suggesting themes.
O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O
divine average!
O warblings under the sun—ushered,
as now, or at noon,
or setting!
O strain, musical, flowing through ages—now reaching
hither,
I take to your reckless and
composite chords—I add to
them, and cheerfully pass them
forward.
12.
As I have walked in Alabama my morning walk,
I have
seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on
her nest in the briers, hatching her
brood.
I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear
him, near at hand, inflating his
throat, and joyfully singing.
And while I paused, it came to me that what he really
sang for was not there only,
Nor for
his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by
the echoes;
But subtle, clandestine,
away beyond,
A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for
those being
born.
13.
Democracy!
Near at hand to you a throat is now
inflating itself and
joyfully singing.
Ma femme!
For the brood beyond us and of us,
For
those who belong here, and those to come,
I, exultant, to
be ready for them, will now shake out carols
stronger and haughtier than have ever yet
been
heard upon earth.
I will make the songs of passion, to give them their
way,
And your songs, outlawed offenders—for I scan
you with
kindred eyes, and carry you with me the
same as
any.
I will make the true poem of riches,—
To
earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres, and
goes forward, and is not dropped by
death.
I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying
all—and I
will be the bard of personality;
And
I will show of male and female that either is but the
equal of the other;
And I will show
that there is no imperfection in the pre-
sent—and can be none in the
future;
And I will show that, whatever happens to anybody,
it
may be turned to beautiful
results—and I will
show that nothing can happen more
beautiful than
death;
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time
and events are compact,
And that all
the things of the universe are perfect miracles,
each as profound as any.
I will not make poems with reference to parts;
But I
will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says,
thoughts, with reference to ensemble:
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with
reference to all days;
And I will not
make a poem, nor the least part of a poem,
but has reference to the soul;
Because, having looked at the objects of the universe, I
find
there is no one, nor any particle of one,
but has
reference to the soul.
14.
Was somebody asking to see the Soul?
See! your own
shape and countenance—persons, sub-
stances, beasts, the trees, the running
rivers, the
rocks and sands.
All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:
How can the real body ever die, and be buried?
Of your real body, and any man’s or
woman’s real body,
Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-
cleaners, and pass to fitting
spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment
of birth
to the moment of death.
Not the types set up by the printer return their impres-
sion, the meaning, the main concern,
Any more than a man’s substance and life, or a
woman’s
substance and life, return in the body and
the
soul,
Indifferently before death and
after death.
Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main
concern—and includes and is the
soul;
Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is
your
body, or any part of it.
15.
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.
Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative
hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female
of the States,
Live
words—words to the lands.
O the lands! interlinked, food-yielding lands!
Land
of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of cotton,
sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef,
pork! Land of wool and hemp!
Land of the apple and the grape!
Land
of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world!
Land of those sweet-aired interminable
plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house
of
adobie!
Lands where the northwest
Columbia winds, and where
the southwest Colorado winds!
Land of
the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware!
Land of
Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen!
Massachusetts land! Land
of Vermont and Connecticut!
Land of
the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of
boatmen and sailors! Fishermen’s land!
Inextricable lands! the clutched together! the passionate
ones!
The side by side! the elder and
younger brothers! the
bony-limbed!
The great
women’s land! the feminine! the experienced
sisters and the inexperienced
sisters!
Far-breathed land! Arctic-braced!
Mexican-breezed! the
diverse! the compact!
The
Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Caro-
linian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations!
O I at any rate include you all with
perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you—not
from one, any
sooner than another!
O Death! O!— for all that, I am yet of you
unseen, this
hour, with irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveller,
Splashing my
bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples,
on Paumanok’s sands,
Crossing the prairies—dwelling again in
Chicago—dwell-
ing in every town,
Observing shows,
births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to the
orators and the oratresses in public halls,
Of and through
the States, as during life*—each man and
woman my neighbour,
The Louisianian,
the Georgian, as near to me, and I as
near to him and her,
The
Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me—and I yet
with any of them;
Yet upon the plains
west of the spinal river—yet in my
house of adobie,
Yet returning
eastward—yet in the Sea-Side State, or in
Maryland,
*The poet here contemplates himself as yet
living spiritually and
in his poems after the death of the
body, still a friend and brother
to all present and future
American lands and persons.
Yet Canadian cheerily braving the winter—the snow and
ice welcome to me, or mounting the
Northern
Pacific, to Sitka, to Aliaska;
Yet a
true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,*
or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of
the Empire
State; †
Yet sailing to
other shores to annex the same—yet wel-
coming every new brother;
Hereby
applying these leaves to the new ones, from the
hour they unite with the old ones;
Coming among the new ones myself, to be their companion
and equal—coming personally to
you now;
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles,
with me.
16.
With me, with firm holding—yet haste, haste on.
For your life, adhere to me;
Of all the men of the
earth, I only can unloose you and
toughen you;
I may have to be
persuaded many times before I consent
to give myself to you—but what of
that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
* New
Hampshire †
New York State
No dainty dolce affettuoso I;
Bearded, sunburnt,
gray-necked, forbidding, I have
arrived,
To be wrestled with as I
pass, for the solid prizes of the
universe;
For such I afford whoever
can persevere to win them.
17.
On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here
for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft—still
the Future of the
States I harbinge, glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the
red aborigines.
The red aborigines!
Leaving natural breaths, sounds
of rain and winds, calls as
of birds and animals in the woods,
syllabled to us
for names;
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa,
Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez,
Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-
Walla;
Leaving such to the States,
they melt, they depart,
charging the water and the land with
names.
18.
O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements,
breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and
audacious;
A world primal
again—vistas of glory, incessant and
branching;
A new race, dominating
previous ones, and grander far,
with new contests,
New politics, new
literatures and religions, new inventions
and arts.
These my voice announcing—I will sleep no more, but
arise;
You oceans that have been calm
within me! how I feel
you, fathomless, stirring, preparing
unprecedented
waves and storms.
19.
See! steamers steaming through my poems!
See in my
poems immigrants continually coming and
landing;
See in arriere, the wigwam,
the trail, the hunter’s hut, the
flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the
rude fence,
and the backwoods village;
See, on
the one side the Western Sea, and on the other
the Eastern Sea, how they advance and
retreat upon
my poems, as upon their own shores;
See pastures and forests in my poems—See, animals
wild
and tame—See, beyond the Kanzas,
countless herds
of buffalo, feeding on short curly
grass;
See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with
paved
streets, with iron and stone edifices,
ceaseless
vehicles, and commerce;
See the
many-cylindered steam printing-press—See the
electric telegraph, stretching across the
Continent,
from the Western Sea to Manhattan;
See, through Atlantica’s depths, pulses American,
Europe
reaching—pulses of Europe, duly
returned;
See the strong and quick locomotive, as it
departs, panting,
blowing the steam-whistle;
See
ploughmen, ploughing farms—See miners, digging
mines—See the numberless
factories;
See mechanics, busy at their benches, with
tools—See,
from among them, superior judges,
philosophs,
Presidents, emerge, dressed in working
dresses;
See, lounging through the shops and fields of the
States
me, well-beloved, close-held by day and
night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the
hints
come at last.
20.
O Camerado close!
O you and me at last—and
us two only.
O a word to clear one’s path ahead
endlessly!
O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
O now I triumph—and you shall also;
O hand
in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one more
desirer and lover!
O to haste, firm
holding—to haste, haste on, with me.
___________
AMERICAN FEUILLAGE.
AMERICA always!
Always our old feuillage!
Always
Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless
delta of Louisiana! Always the
cotton-fields of
Alabama and Texas!
Always
California’s golden hills and hollows—and
the
silver mountains of New Mexico! Always
soft-
breathed Cuba!
Always the vast slope
drained by the Southern Sea—
inseparable with the slopes drained by the
Eastern
and Western seas!
The area the
eighty-third year of these States*—the three
and a half millions of square miles;
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast
on the main—the thirty thousand
miles of river
navigation,
*1858-9
The seven millions of distinct families, and the same
number of dwellings—Always these,
and more,
branching forth into numberless
branches;
Always the free range and diversity! Always the
conti-
nent of Democracy!
Always the
prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers,
Canada, the snows;
Always these
compact lands—lands tied at the hips with
the belt stringing the huge oval
lakes;
Always the West, with strong native
persons—the
increasing density there—the
habitans, friendly,
threatening, ironical, scorning
invaders;
All sights, South, North, East—all
deeds, promiscuously
done at all times,
All characters,
movements, growths—a few noticed,
myriads unnoticed.
Through
Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things
gathering.
On interior rivers, by
night, in the glare of pine knots,
steamboats wooding up;
Sunlight by
day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on
the valleys of the Potomac and
Rappahannock, and
the valleys of the Roanoke and
Delaware;
In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting
the
Adirondacks, the hills—or lapping
the Saginaw
waters to drink;
In a lonesome inlet,
a sheldrake, lost from the flock,
sitting on the water rocking
silently;
In farmers’ barns, oxen in the stable, their
harvest labour
done—they rest
standing—they are too tired;
Afar on arctic ice,
the she-walrus lying drowsily, while
her cubs play around;
The hawk
sailing where men have not yet sailed—the
farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline,
open, beyond
the floes;
White drift spooning
ahead, where the ship in the tempest
dashes.
On solid land, what is done
in cities, as the bells strike
midnight together;
In primitive
woods, the sounds there also sounding—the
howl of the wolf, the scream of the
panther, and
the hoarse bellow of the elk;
In
winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake,
in summer visible through the clear
waters, the
great trout swimming;
In lower
latitudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the
large black buzzard floating slowly, high
beyond
the tree tops,
Below, the red cedar,
festooned with tylandria—the pines
and cypresses, growing out of the white
sand that
spreads far and flat;
Rude boats
descending the big Pedee—climbing plants,
parasites with colored flowers and
berries, enve-
loping huge trees,
The waving drapery
on the live oak, trailing long and
low, noiselessly waved by the wind;
The camp of Georgia wagoners, just after dark—the
supper-fires, and the cooking and eating
by whites
and negroes,
Thirty or forty great
wagons—the mules, cattle, horses,
feeding from troughs,
The shadows,
gleams, up under the leaves of the old
sycamore-trees—the
flames—also the black smoke
from the pitch-pine, curling and
rising;
Southern fishermen fishing—the sounds and
inlets of
North Carolina’s
coast—the shad-fishery and the
herring-fishery—the large
sweep-seines—the wind-
lasses on shore worked by
horses—the clearing,
curing, and packing-houses;
Deep in
the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping
from the incisions in the
trees—There are the
turpentine works,
There are the
negroes at work, in good health—the
ground in all directions is covered with
pine
straw.
—In Tennessee and
Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings,
at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at
the corn-
shucking;
In Virginia, the
planter’s son returning after a long
absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by
the aged
mulatto nurse.
On rivers, boatmen
safely moored at night-fall, in their
boats, under shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo
or fiddle—others sit on the
gunwale, smoking and
talking;
Late in the afternoon, the
mocking-bird, the American
mimic, singing in the Great Dismal
Swamp—there
are the greenish waters, the resinous
odour, the
plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the
juniper-tree.
—Northward, young men of
Mannahatta—the target
company from an excursion returning home
at
evening, the musket-muzzles all bear
bunches of
flowers presented by women;
Children
at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy
fallen
asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles
in his
sleep!)
The scout riding on horseback
over the plains west of the
Mississippi—he ascends a knoll
and sweeps his eye
around.
California life—the
miner, bearded, dressed in his rude
costume—the stanch California
friendship—the
sweet air—the graves one, in
passing, meets, soli-
tary, just aside the horse-path;
Down
in Texas, the cotton-field, the
negro-cabins—drivers
driving mules or oxen before rude
carts—cotton-
bales piled on banks and wharves.
Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the American
Soul, with equal hemispheres—one
Love, one Dila-
tion or Pride.
—In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the
aborigines—the calumet, the pipe
of good-will,
arbitration, and endorsement,
The
sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and
then toward the earth,
The drama of
the scalp-dance enacted
with painted faces
and guttural exclamations,
The
setting out of the war-party—the long and
stealthy
march,
The single-file—the
swinging hatchets—the surprise and
slaughter of enemies.
—All
the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these
States—reminiscences, all
institutions,
All these States, compact—Every
square mile of these
States without excepting a
particle—you also—me
also.
Me pleased, rambling in lanes
and country fields, Pauma-
nok’s fields,
Me, observing
the spiral flight of two little yellow butter-
flies shuffling between each other,
ascending high
in the air;
The darting swallow, the
destroyer of insects—the fall-
traveler southward, but returning
northward early
in the spring;
The country boy at the
close of the day, driving the herd
of cows and shouting to them as they
loiter to
browse by the road-side
The city wharf—Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charles-
ton, New Orleans, San Francisco,
The
departing ships, when the sailors heave at the
capstan;
Evening—me in my
room—the setting sun,
The setting summer sun
shining in my open window,
showing the swarm of flies, suspended,
balancing
in the air in the centre of the room,
darting
athwart, up and down, casting swift
shadows in
specks on the opposite wall, where the
shine
is.
The athletic American matron
speaking in public to crowds
of listeners;
Males, females,
immigrants, combinations—the copiousness
—the individuality of the States,
each for itself—
the money-makers;
Factories,
machinery, the mechanical forces—the windlass,
lever, pulley—All
certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom,
futurity;
In space, the sporades, the scattered islands,
the stars—on
the firm earth, the lands, my lands!
O lands! O all so dear to me—what you are,
(whatever
it is), I become a part of that, whatever
it is.
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow
flapping,
with the myriads of gulls wintering along
the
coasts of Florida—or in
Louisiana, with pelicans
breeding,
Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the
Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the
Tom-
bigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchawan or
the
Osage, I with the spring waters laughing
and
skipping and running;
Northward, on
the sands, on some shallow bay of Pau-
manok, I, with parties of snowy herons
wading in
the wet to seek worms and aquatic
plants;
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the
king-bird, from
piercing the crow with its bill, for
amusement—
And I triumphantly twittering;
The
migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to
refresh themselves—the body of
the flock feed—
the sentinels outside move around with
erect heads
watching, and are from time to time
relieved by
other sentinels—and I feeding and
taking turns
with the rest;
In Canadian forests,
the moose, large as an ox, cornered
by hunters, rising desperately on his
hind-feet, and
plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as
sharp as
knives—And I, plunging at the
hunters, cornered
and desperate;
In the Mannahatta,
streets, piers, shipping, store-houses,
and the countless workmen working in the
shops,
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing
thereof—and no
less in myself than the whole of the
Mannahatta in
itself,
Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands—my
body no more inevitably united part to
part, and
made one identity, any more than my lands
are
inevitably united, and made ONE IDENTITY;
Nativities, climates, the
grass of the great pastoral plains,
Cities, labours,
death, animals, products, war, good and evil—
these me,—
These affording,
in all their particulars, endless feuillage to
me and to America, how can I do less than
pass the
clue of the union of them, to afford the
like to
you?
Whoever you are! how can I but
offer you divine leaves,
that you also be eligible as I am?
How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself
to collect bouquets of the incomparable
feuillage of
these States?
___________
THE PAST-PRESENT
I WAS looking a long while for the history of the past
for myself, and for these
chants—and now I have
found it.
It is not in those paged
fables in the libraries, (them I
neither accept nor reject;)
It is no more in the legends than in all else;
It is
in the present—it is this earth to-day;
It is in
Democracy—in this America—the Old World
also;
It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average
man of to-day;
It is languages,
social customs, literatures, arts;
It is the broad show of
artificial things, ships, machinery,
politics, creeds, modern improvements, and
the
interchange of nations,
All for the
average man of to-day.
___________
YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED.
YEARS of the unperformed! your horizon rises—I
see it part away for more august
dramas;
I see not America only—I see not only
Liberty’s nation,
but other nations embattling;
I see
tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combi-
nations—I see the solidarity of
races;
I see that force advancing with irresistible power
on the
world’s stage;
Have the old
forces played their parts? are the acts suit-
able to them closed?
I see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very
haughty, with Law by her side, both
issuing forth
against the idea of caste;
—What historic denouements are these we so rapidly
ap-
proach?
I see men marching and
countermarching by swift millions!
I see the frontiers and
boundaries of the old aristocracies
broken;
I see the landmarks of
European kings removed;
I see this day the People
beginning their landmarks, all
others give way;
Never were such
sharp questions asked as this day;
Never was average man,
his soul, more energetic, more
like a God.
Lo, how he urges and
urges, leaving the masses no rest;
His daring foot is on
land and sea everywhere—he colonizes
the Pacific, the archipelagoes;
With
the steam-ship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper,
the wholesale engines of war,
With
these, and the world-spreading factories, he inter-
links all geography, all lands;
—What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead
of
you, passing under the seas?
Are all
nations communing? is there going to be but one
heart to the globe?
Is humanity
forming en masse?—for lo! tyrants tremble,
crowns grow dim;
The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general
divine war;
No one knows what will
happen next—such portents fill
the days and nights.
Years
prophetical! the space ahead as I walk, as I vainly
try to pierce it, is full of
phantoms;
Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their
shapes
around me;
This incredible rush and
heat—this strange ecstatic fever
of dreams, O years!
Your dreams, O
years, how they penetrate through me!
(I know not whether I sleep or wake!)
The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in
shadow behind me,
The unperformed,
more gigantic than ever, advance, ad-
vance upon me.
___________
FLUX.
OF these years I sing,
How they pass through
convulsed pains, as through
parturitions;
How America illustrates
birth, gigantic youth, the pro-
mise, the sure fulfilment, despite of
people—Illus-
trates evil as well as good;
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed,
caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and
to infi-
delity;
How few see the arrived
models, the athletes, the States
—or see freedom or
spirituality—or hold any faith
in results.
But I see the
athletes—and I see the results glorious and
inevitable—and they again leading
to other results;
How the great cities appear—How
the Democratic masses,
turbulent, willful, as I love them,
How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good,
the sounding and resounding, keep on and
on;
How society waits unformed, and is between things
ended
and things begun;
How America is the
continent of glories, and of the triumph
of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of
the
fruits of society, and of all that is
begun;
And how the States are complete in
themselves—And how
all triumphs and glories are complete in
themselves,
to lead onward,
And how these of
mine, and of the States, will in their
turn be convulsed, and serve other
parturitions and
transitions,
And how all people,
sights, combinations, the Democratic
masses, too, serve—and how every
fact serves,
And how now, or at any time, each serves the
exquisite
transition of Death.
TO WORKING-MEN.
I.
COME closer to me;
Push close, my lovers, and take
the best I possess;
Yield closer and closer, and give me
the best you posses.
This is unfinished business with me—How is it
with you?
(I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper
between us.)
Male and Female!
I pass so poorly with paper and
types, I must pass with the
contact of bodies and souls.
American masses!
I do not thank you for liking me as
I am, and liking the
touch of me—I know that it is
good for you to
do so.
2.
This is the poem of occupations;
In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of
fields, I find the developments,
And
find the eternal meanings.
Workmen and Workwomen!
Were all educations, practical
and ornamental, well dis-
played out of me, what would it amount
to?
Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor,
wise
statesman, what would it amount to?
Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you,
would that satisfy you?
The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual
terms;
A man like me, and never the usual terms.
Neither a servant nor a master am I;
I take no sooner
a large price than a small price—I will
have my own, whoever enjoys me;
I
will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.
If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the
nighest in the same shop;
If you
bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I
demand as good as your brother or dearest
friend;
If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or
night,
I must be personally as welcome;
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so
for your sake;
If you remember your
foolish and outlawed deeds, do you
think I cannot remember my own foolish and
out-
lawed deeds?
If you carouse at the
table, I carouse at the opposite side
of the table;
If you meet some
stranger in the streets, and love him or
her—why I often meet strangers in
the street, and
love them.
Why, what have you thought of yourself?
Is it you
then that thought of yourself less?
Is it you that thought
the President greater than you?
Or the rich better off than
you? or the educated wiser
than you?
Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once
drunk, or a theif,
Or diseased, or
rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now;
Or from
frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar,
and never saw your name in print,
Do
you give in that you are any less immortal?
3.
Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, un-
heard, untouchable and untouching;
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle
whether you are alive or no;
I own
publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.
Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every
country, indoors and outdoors, one just as
much as
the other, I see,
And all else behind
or through them.
The wife—and she is not one jot less than the
husband;
The daughter—and she is just as good as
the son;
The mother—and she is every bit as much
as the father.
Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to
trades,
Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working
on farms,
Sailor-men, merchant-men,
coasters, immigrants,
All these I see—but nigher
and farther the same I see;
None shall escape me, and none
shall wish to escape me.
I bring what you much need, yet always have,
Not
money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;
I send no agent
or medium, offer no representative of
value, but offer the value itself.
There is something that comes home to one now and per-
petually;
It is not what is printed, preached, discussed—it eludes
discussion and print;
It is not to be
put in a book—it is not in this book;
It is for
you, whoever you are—it is no farther from you
than your hearing and sight are from
you;
It is hinted by nearest, commonest,
readiest—it is ever
provoked by them.
You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about
it;
You may read the
President’s Message, and read nothing
about it there;
Nothing in the
reports from the State department or
Treasury department, or in the daily
papers or the
weekly papers,
Or in the census or
revenue returns, prices current, or any
accounts of stock.
4.
The sun and stars that float in the open air;
The
apple-shaped earth, and we upon it—surely the drift
of them is something grand!
I do not
know what it is, except that it is grand, and that
it is happiness,
And that the
enclosing purport of us here is not a specula-
tion, or bon-mot, or reconnoissance,
And that it is not something which by luck may turn out
well for us, and without luck must be a
failure for
us,
And not something which may yet
be retracted in a cer-
tain contingency.
The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity,
the greed that with perfect complaisance
devours
all things, the endless pride and
out-stretching of
man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and
the wonders that fill each minute of time
forever,
What have you reckoned them for, camerado?
Have you reckoned them for a trade, or farm-work? or
for the profits of a store?
Or to
achieve yourself a position? or to fill a
gentleman’s
leisure, or a lady’s
leisure?
Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form
that it might be painted in a
picture?
Or men and women that they might be written of,
and
songs sung?
Or the attraction of
gravity, and the great laws and har-
monious combinations, and the fluids of
the air, as
subjects for the savans?
Or the brown
land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy
names?
Or that the growth of seeds is
for agricultural tables, or
agriculture itself?
Old institutions—these arts, libraries, legends, collections,
and the practice handed along in
manufactures—
will we rate them so high?
Will we
rate our cash and business high?—I have no
objection;
I rate them as high as the
highest—then a child born of
a woman and man I rate beyond all
rate.
We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution
grand;
I do not say they are not
grand and good, for they are;
I am this day just as much
in love with them as you,
Then I am in love with you, and
with all my fellows upon
the earth.
We consider bibles and religious divine—I do not say
they are not divine;
I say they have
all grown out of you, and may grow out
of you still;
It is not they who give
the life—it is you who give the
life;
Leaves are not more shed from
the trees, or trees from
the earth, than they are shed out of
you.
5.
When the psalm sings instead of the singer;
When the
script preaches, instead of the preacher;
When the pulpit
descends and goes, instead of the carver
that carved the supporting desk;
When
I can touch the body of books, by night or by day,
and when they touch my body back
again;
When a university course convinces, like a
slumbering
woman and child convince;
When the
minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-
watchman’s daughter;
When
warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are
my friendly companions;
I intend to
reach them my hand, and make as much of
them as I do of men and women like
you.
The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, who-
ever you are;
The President is there
in the White House for you—it is
not you who are here for him;
The
Secretaries act in their bureaus for you—not you
here for them;
The Congress convenes
every twelfth-month for you;
Laws, courts, the forming of
States, the charters of cities,
the going and coming of commerce and
mails, are
all for you.
List close, my scholars dear!
All doctrines, all
politics and civilizations, exsurge from
you;
All sculpture and monuments, and
anything inscribed
anywhere, are tallied in you;
The
gist of histories and statistics, as far back as the
records reach, is in you this hour, and
myths and
tales the same;
If you were not
breathing and walking here, where would
they all be?
The most renowned poems
would be ashes, orations and
plays would be vacuums.
All architecture is what you do to it when you look
upon it;
Did you think it was in the
white or grey stone? or the
lines of the arches and cornices?
All music is what awakes from you, when you are re-
minded by the instruments;
It is not
the violins and the cornets—it is not the oboe
nor the beating drums, nor the score or
the bary-
tone singer singing his sweet
romanza—nor that of
the men’s chorus, nor that of
the women’s chorus,
It is nearer and farther
than they.
6.
Will the whole come back then?
Can each see signs of
the best by a look in the looking-
glass? is there nothing greater or
more?
Does all sit there with you, with the mystic, unseen
soul?
Strange and hard that paradox true I give;
Objects
gross and the unseen Soul are one.
House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;
Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-
roofing, shingle-dressing,
Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying,
flagging
of side-walks by flaggers,
The pump,
the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-
kiln and brick-kiln,
Coal-mines, and
all that is down there,—the lamps in the
darkness, echoes, songs, what meditations,
what vast
native thoughts looking through smutched
faces,
Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the
river-
banks—men around feeling the melt
with huge
crowbars—lumps of ore, the due
combining of ore,
limestone, coal—the blast-furnace
and the puddling-
furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of
the melt at
last—the rolling-mill, the stumpy
bars of pig-iron,
the strong, clean-shaped T-rail for
railroads;
Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the
sugar-house,
steam-saws, the great mills and
factories;
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades,
or window
or door lintels—the mallet, the
tooth-chisel, the
jib to protect the thumb,
Oakum, the
oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle
of boiling vault-cement, and the fire
under the
kettle,
The cotton-bale, the
stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck
of the sawyer, the mould of the moulder,
the
working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw,
and all
the work with ice,
The implements for
daguerreotyping—the tools of the
rigger, grappler, sail-maker,
block-maker,
Goods of gutta-percha,
papier-mâché, colours, brushes,
brush-making, glazier’s
implements,
The veneer and glue-pot, the
confectioner’s ornaments,
the decanter and glasses, the shears and
flat-iron,
The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and
quart
measure, the counter and stool, the
writing-pen
of quill or metal—the making of
all sorts of edged
tools,
The brewery, brewing, the
malt, the vats, every thing that
is done by brewers, also by wine-makers,
also
vinegar-makers,
Leather-dressing,
coach-making,
boiler-making, rope-
twisting, distilling, sign-painting,
lime-burning,
cotton-picking—electro-plating,
electrotyping,
stereotyping,
Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,
ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines,
steam
wagons,
The cart of the carman, the
omnibus, the ponderous
dray;
Pyrotechny, letting off
coloured fire-works at night, fancy
figures and jets,
Beef on the
butcher’s stall, the slaughter-house of the
butcher, the butcher in his
killing-clothes,
The pens of live pork, the
killing-hammer, the hog-hook,
the scalder’s tub, gutting, the
cutter’s cleaver, the
packer’s maul, and the plenteous
winter-work of
pork-packing,
Flour-works, grinding
of wheat, rye, maize, rice—the
barrels and the half and quarter barrels,
the loaded
barges, the high piles on wharves and
levees,
The men, and the work of the men, on railroads,
coasters,
fish-boats, canals;
The daily routine
of your own or any man’s life—the
shop, yard, store, or factory;
These
shows all near you by day and night—workmen!
whoever you are, your daily life!
In
that and them the heft of the heaviest—in them
far
more than you estimated, and far less
also;
In them realities for you and me—in them
poems for you
and me;
In them, not yourself—you and your soul enclose all
things, regardless of estimation;
In
them the development good—in them, all themes and
hints.
I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile—I
do not
advise you to stop;
I do not say
leadings you thought great are not great;
But I say that
none lead to greater than these lead to.
7.
Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
In things best known to you finding the best, or as good
as the best,
In folks nearest to you
finding the sweetest, strongest,
lovingest;
Happiness, knowledge, not
in another place, but this place
—not for another hour, but this
hour;
Man in the first you see or touch—always in
friend,
brother, nighest neighbor—Woman
in mother,
sister, wife;
The popular tastes and
employments taking precedence in
poems or any where,
You workwomen and
workmen of these States having your
own divine and strong life,
And all
else giving place to men and women like you.
SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE.
I.
WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan,
Head from the
mother’s bowels drawn!
Wooded flesh and metal
bone! limb only one, and lip only
one!
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat
grown! helve produced from a
little seed sown!
Resting the grass
amid and upon,
To be leaned, and to lean on.
Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes—masculine
trades, sights and sounds;
Long
varied train of an emblem, dabs of music;
Fingers of the
organist skipping staccato over the keys of
the great organ.
2.
Welcome are all earth’s lands, each for its
kind;
Welcome are lands of pine and oak;
Welcome are
lands of the lemon and fig;
Welcome are lands of gold;
Welcome are lands of wheat
and maize—welcome those of
the grape;
Welcome are lands of sugar
and rice;
Welcome the cotton-lands—welcome those
of the white
potato and sweet potato;
Welcome are
mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies;
Welcome the
rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings;
Welcome the
measureless grazing-lands—welcome the
teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey,
hemp;
Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced
lands;
Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit
lands;
Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged
ores;
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc;
LANDS OF IRON! lands of
the make of the axe!
3.
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;
The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space
cleared for a garden,
The irregular
tapping of rain down on the leaves, after
the storm is lulled,
The wailing and
moaning at intervals, the thought of the
sea,
The thought of ships struck in
the storm, and put on their
beam-ends, and the cutting away of
masts;
The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned houses
and barns;
The remembered print or
narrative, the voyage at a ven-
ture of men, families, goods,
The
disembarkation, the founding of a new city,
The voyage of
those who sought a New England and found
it—the outset anywhere,
The
settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa,
Willamette,
The slow progress, the
scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-
bags;
The beauty of all adventurous
and daring persons,
The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men,
with their clear
untrimmed faces,
The beauty of
independence, departure, actions that rely
on themselves,
The American contempt
for statutes and ceremonies, the
boundless impatience of restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling through random
types, the solidification;
The
butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard
schooners and sloops, the raftsman, the
pioneer,
Lumbermen in their winter camp, day-break in the
woods,
stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the
occasional
snapping,
The glad clear sound of
one’s own voice, the merry song,
the natural life of the woods, the strong
day’s work,
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the
talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the
bear-
skin;
—The house-builder at
work in cities or anywhere,
The preparatory jointing,
squaring, sawing, mortising,
The hoist-up of beams, the
push of them in their places,
laying them regular,
Setting the
studs by their tenons in the mortises, according
as they were prepared,
The blows of
mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the
men, their curved limbs,
Bending,
standing, astride the beams, driving in pins,
holding on by posts and braces,
The
hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding
the axe,
The floor-men forcing the
planks close, to be nailed,
Their postures bringing their
weapons downward on the
bearers,
The echoes resounding
through the vacant building;
The huge store-house carried
up in the city, well under
way,
The six framing men, two in the
middle, and two at each
end, carefully bearing on their shoulders
a heavy
stick for a cross-beam,
The crowded
line of masons with trowels in their right
hands, rapidly laying the long side-wall,
two hun-
dred feet from front to rear,
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of
the trowels striking the bricks,
The
bricks, one after another, each laid so workmanlike
in its place, and set with a knock of the
trowel-
handle,
The piles of materials, the
mortar on the mortar-boards,
and the steady replenishing by the
hod-men;
—Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the
swarming row of
well-grown apprentices,
The swing of
their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping
it toward the shape of a mast,
The
brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into
the pine,
The butter-coloured chips
flying off in great flakes and
slivers,
The limber motion of brawny
young arms and hips in
easy costumes;
The constructor of
wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads,
floats, stays against the sea;
—The city fireman—the fire that suddenly
bursts forth in
the close-packed square,
The arriving
engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble step-
ping and daring,
The strong command
through the fire-trumpets, the falling
in line, the rise and fall of the arms
forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic, blue-white
jets—the bringing to
bear of the hooks and ladders, and their
execution,
The crash and cut-away of connecting wood-work, or
through floors, if the fire smoulders
under them,
The crowd with their lit faces,
watching—the glare and
dense shadows;
—The forger
at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron
after him,
The maker of the axe large
and small, and the welder and
temperer,
The chooser breathing his
breath on the cold steel, and
trying the edge with his thumb,
The
one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in
the socket;
The shadowy processions
of the portraits of the past users
also,
The primal patient mechanics,
the architects and engi-
neers,
The far-off Assyrian edifice
and Mizra edifice,
The Roman lictors preceding the
consuls,
The antique European warrior with his axe in
combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the
helmeted
head,
The death-howl, the limpsy
tumbling body, the rush of
friend and foe thither,
The siege of
revolted lieges determined for liberty,
The summons to
surrender, the battering at castle-gates,
the truce and parley;
The sack of an
old city in its time,
The bursting-in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously
and disorderly,
Roar, flames, blood,
drunkenness, madness,
Goods freely rifled from houses and
temples, screams of
women in the gripe of brigands,
Craft
and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old
persons despairing,
The hell of war,
the cruelties of creeds,
The list of all executive deeds
and words, just or unjust,
The power of personality, just
or unjust.
4.
Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life
invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the
living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than
the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man
encloses as
much as the delicatesse of the earth and
of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures?
Do you think a great city
endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared consti-
tution? or the best built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any
chef-d’œuvres of en-
gineering, forts, armaments?
Away! these are not to be cherished for themselves;
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play
for them;
The show passes, all does
well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash
of defiance.
A great city is that which has the greatest man or
woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it
is still the greatest city in the
whole world.
5.
The place where the great city stands is not the place of
stretched wharves, docks, manufactures,
deposits of
produce,
Nor the place of ceaseless
salutes of new comers, or the
anchor-lifters of the departing,
Nor
the place of the tallest and costliest buildings, or shops
selling goods from the rest of the
earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and
schools—nor the
place where money is plentiest,
Nor
the place of the most numerous population.
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators
and bards;
Where the city stands that
is beloved by these, and loves
them in return and understands them;
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common
words and deeds;
Where thrift is in
its place, and prudence is in its place;
Where the men and
women think lightly of the laws;
Where the slave ceases,
and the master of slaves ceases;
Where the populace rise
at once against the never-ending
audacity of elected persons;
Where
fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the
whistle of death pours its sweeping and
unripped
waves;
Where outside authority enters
always after the precedence
of inside authority;
Where the
citizen is always the head and ideal—and
President, Mayor, Governor, and what not,
are
agents for pay;
Where children are
taught to be laws to themselves, and
to depend on themselves;
Where
equanimity is illustrated in affairs;
Where speculations
on the Soul are encouraged;
Where women walk in public
processions in the streets,
the same as the men;
Where they enter
the public assembly and take places the
same as the men;
Where the city of
the faithfulest friends stands;
Where the city of the
cleanliness of the sexes stands;
Where the city of the
healthiest fathers stands;
Where the city of the
best-bodied mothers stands,—
There the great city
stands.
6.
How beggarly appear arguments, before a defiant deed!
How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before
a man’s or woman’s
look!
All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being
appears;
A strong being is the proof of the race, and of
the ability
of the universe;
When he or she
appears, materials are overawed,
The dispute on the Soul
stops,
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned
back,
or laid away.
What is your money-making now? What can it do now?
What is your respectability now?
What are your theology,
tuition, society, traditions, statute-
books, now?
Where are your jibes of
being now?
Where are your cavils about the Soul now?
Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid?
Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obediently
from the path of one man or woman!
The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under the
foot-soles of one man or woman!
7.
A sterile landscape covers the ore—there is as
good as the
best, for all the forbidding
appearance;
There is the mine, there are the miners;
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplished; the
hammersmen are at hand with their tongs
and
hammers;
What always served and
always serves is at hand.
Than this nothing has better served—it has served
all:
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and
long ere the Greek:
Served in
building the buildings that last longer than any;
Served
the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hin-
dostanee;
Served the mound-raiser on
the Mississippi—served those
whose relics remain in Central
America;
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with
unhewn
pillars, and the druids;
Served the
artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-
covered hills of Scandinavia;
Served
those who, time out of mind, made on the granite
walls rough sketches of the sun, moon,
stars, ships,
ocean-waves;
Served the paths of the
irruptions of the Goths—served
the pastoral tribes and nomads;
Served the long long distant Kelt—served the hardy
pirates of the Baltic;
Served, before
any of those, the venerable and harmless
men of Ethiopia;
Served the making of
helms for the galleys of pleasure,
and the making of those for war;
Served all great works on land and all great works on the
sea;
For the mediæval ages,
and before the mediæval ages;
Served not the
living only, then as now, but served the
dead.
8.
I see the European headsman;
He stands masked,
clothed in red, with huge legs, and
strong naked arms,
And leans on a
ponderous axe.
Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman?
Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?
I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs;
I see from
the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords,
uncrowned ladies, impeached
ministers, rejected kings,
Rivals,
traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the
rest.
I see those who in any land have died for the good
cause;
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run
out;
(Mind you, O foreign kings, O
priests, the crop shall never
run out.)
I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe;
Both blade and helve are clean;
They spirt no more the
blood of European nobles—they
clasp no more the necks of queens.
I see the headsman withdraw and become useless;
I see
the scaffold untrodden and mouldy—I see no longer
any axe upon it;
I see the mighty and
friendly emblem of the power of my
own race—the newest, largest
race.
9.
America! I do not vaunt my love for you;
I have what
I have.
The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid
utterances;
They tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flai plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel,
gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house,
library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster,
balcony, window, shutter, turret,
porch,
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil,
wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane,
mallet, wedge, rounce,
Chair, tub,
hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest,
stringed instrument, boat, frame, and
what not,
Capitols of States, and
capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in
avenues, hospitals for orphans, or
for the poor or sick,
Manhattan
steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of
all seas.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow,
and the users, and
all that neighbours them,
Cutters
down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot
or Kennebec,
Dwellers in cabins among
the Californian mountains, or by
the little lakes, or on the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande
—friendly gatherings, the
characters and fun,
Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by
the Yellowstone
river—dwellers on coasts and off
coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages
through the ice.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals,
foundries, markets;
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of
railroads;
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast
frameworks, girders,
arches;
Shapes of the fleets of
barges, tows, lake craft, river
craft,
The shapes arise!
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the
Eastern and Western
Seas, and in many a bay and by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the
hack-
matack-roots for knees,
The ships
themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds,
the workmen busy outside and inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger,
the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and
bead-plane.
10.
The shapes arise!
The shape measured, sawed, jacked,
joined, stained,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie
within in his shroud;
The shape got out in posts, in the
bedstead posts, in the
posts of the bride’s bed;
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers
beneath, the shape of the babe’s
cradle;
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks
for dancers’
feet;
The shape of the planks of the
family home, the home of
the friendly parents and children,
The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young
man and woman, the roof over the
well-married
young man and woman,
The roof over
the supper joyously cooked by the chaste
wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste
husband,
content after his day’s
work.
The shapes arise!
The shape of the
prisoner’s place in the court-room, and
of him or her seated in the place;
The shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the young
rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker;
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneak-
ing footsteps;
The shape of the sly
settee, and the adulterous unwhole-
some couple;
The shape of the
gambling-board with its devilish win-
nings and losings;
The shape of the
step-ladder for the convicted and sen-
tenced murderer, the murderer with haggard
face
and pinioned arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and
white-lipped crowd, the sickening dangling
of the
rope.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits
and entrances;
The door passing the dissevered friend,
flushed and in
haste;
The door that admits good news
and bad news;
The door whence the son left home, confident
and puffed
up;
The door he entered again from a
long and scandalous
absence, diseased, broken down, without
innocence,
without means.
11.
Her shape arises,
She less guarded than ever, yet
more guarded than ever;
The gross and soiled she moves
among do not make her
gross and soiled;
She knows the
thoughts as she passes—nothing is con-
cealed from her;
She is none the less
considerate or friendly therefor;
She is the best
beloved—it is without exception—she has
no reason to fear and she does not
fear;
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, smutty
expressions, are
idle to her as she passes;
She is silent—she is possessed of
herself—they do not
offend her;
She receives them as the
laws of nature receive them—
she is strong,
She too is a law of
nature—there is no law stronger than
she is.
12.
The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy, total
result of centuries;
Shapes, ever projecting other
shapes;
Shapes of a hundred Free States, begetting another
hundred;
Shapes of turbulent manly
cities;
Shapes of the women fit for these States;
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth, and braced with the whole
earth.
___________
ANTECEDENTS.
I.
WITH antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and
the accumu-
lations of past ages:
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here,
as I am;
With Egypt, India,
Phœnicia, Greece and Rome;
With the Kelt, the
Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique
maritime ventures,—with laws, artizanship,
wars, and journeys;
With the poet,
the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;
With the
sale of slaves—with enthusiasts—with the
trou-
badour, the crusader, and the monk;
With those old continents whence we have come to this
new continent;
With the fading
kingdoms and kings over there;
With the fading religions
and priests;
With the small shores we look back to from
our own large
and present shores;
With countless
years drawing themselves onward, and
arrived at these years;
You and Me
arrived—America arrived, and making this
year;
This year! sending itself ahead
countless years to come.
2.
O but it is not the years—it is I—it is
You;
We touch all laws, and tally all antecedents;
We
are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight—
we easily include them, and more;
We stand amid time, beginningless and endless—we stand
amid evil and good;
All swings around
us—there is as much darkness as
light;
The very sun swings itself and
its system of planets
around us:
Its sun, and its again,
all swing around us.
3.
As for me, (torn, stormy, even as I, amid these vehement
days;)
I have the idea of all, and am
all, and believe in all;
I believe materialism is true,
and spiritualism is true—I
reject no part.
Have I forgotten any part?
Come to me, whoever and
whatever, till I give you re-
cognition.
I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews;
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god;
I see that
the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true,
without exception;
I assert that all
past days were what they should have
been;
And that they could no-how have
been better than they
were,
And that to-day is what it should be, and that America
is,
And that to-day and America could
no-how be better
than they are.
4.
In the name of these States, and in your and my name,
the Past,
And in the name of these
States, and in your and my
name, the Present time.
I know that the past was great, and the future will be
great,
And I know that both curiously
conjoint in the present
time,
For the sake of him I
typify—for the common average
man’s sake—your sake,
if you are he;
And that where I am, or you are, this
present day, there
is the centre of all days, all races,
And there is the meaning, to us, of all that has ever come
of races and days, or ever will come.
SALUT AU MONDE!
I.
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.
What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and
soils exuding?
What climes? what persons and cities are
here?
Who are the infants? some playing, some
slumbering?
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?
2.
Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens;
Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided
for in the west;
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, plants,
volcanoes, groups,
Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West
Indian islands.
3.
What do you hear Walt Whitman?
I hear the workman singing, and the farmer’s
wife sing-
ing;
I hear in the distance the
sounds of children, and of
animals early in the day;
I hear the
quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Ten-
nessee and Kentucky, hunting on
hills;
I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the
wild
horse;
I hear the Spanish dance, with
castanets, in the chestnut
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 Virginian
plantation chorus of negroes, of a
harvest night, in the glare of pine
knots;
I hear the strong barytone of the
’long-shore-men of
Mannahatta;
I hear the stevedores
unlading the cargoes, and singing;
I hear the screams of
the water-fowl of solitary north-
west lakes;
I hear the rustling
patterning 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 Canada;
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 the 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
grandson;
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;
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.
4.
What do you see, Walt Whitman?
Who are they you
salute, and that one after another salute
you?
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.
I see plenteous waters;
I see
mountain-peaks—I see the sierras of Andes and
Alleghanies, where they range;
I see
plainly the Himilayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts;
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
Mountains,
and the Red Mountains of Madagascar;
I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of
Cordilleras;
I see the vast deserts of Western
America;
I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic
deserts;
I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic
icebergs;
I see the superior oceans and the inferior
ones—the At-
lantic and Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the
Brazilian
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 another
of its islands,
The inland
fresh-tasted seas of North America,
The White Sea, and the
sea around Greenland.
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.
I behold the sail and steam ships of the world, some in
clusters in port, some on their
voyages;
Some double the Cape of Storms—some Cape
Verde,—
others Cape Guardafui, Bon, or
Bajadore;
Others Dondra Head—others pass the
Straits of Sunda—
others Cape Lopatka—others
Behring’s Straits;
Others Cape
Horn—others sail 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;
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 Dar-
danelles;
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 Manhattan, steamed up,
ready to start;
Wait, swift and
swarthy, in the ports of Australia;
Wait at Liverpool,
Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon,
Naples, Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the
Hague,
Copenhagen;
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio
Janeiro, Panama;
Wait at their moorings at Boston,
Philadelphia, Balti-
more, Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston,
San
Francisco.
5.
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.
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.
I see the long river-stripes of the earth;
I see
where the Mississippi flows—I see where the Columbia
flows;
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 Venetian
along the Po;
I see the Greek seaman
sailing out of Egina bay.
6.
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.
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.
I see Christ once more eating the bread of his last supper,
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 Bac-
chus,
I see Kneph, blooming, drest 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.
7.
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.
I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the
unknown events, heroes, records, of the
earth.
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 rest-
less 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.
I see the steppes of Asia;
I see the tumuli of
Mongolia—I see the tents of Kalmucks
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;
I see the camel,
the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tailed
sheep, the antelope, and the burrowing
wolf.
I see the highlands of Abyssinia;
I see flocks of
goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tama-
rind, date,
And see fields of
teff-wheat and places of verdure
and gold.
I see the Brazilian vaquero;
I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata;
I see the
Wacho crossing the plains—I see the incom-
parable rider of horses with his lasso on
his arm;
I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle
for their
hides.
8.
I see little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some unin-
habited;
I see two boats with nets,
lying off the shore of Pauma-
nok, quite still;
I see ten fishermen
waiting—they discover now a thick
school of mossbonkers—they drop
the joined sein-
ends in the water,
The boats
separated—they diverge and row off, each on its
rounding course to the beach, enclosing
the moss-
bonkers;
The net is drawn in by a
windlass by those who stop
ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge
in their boats—others stand
negligently ankle-deep in the water,
poised on
strong legs;
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.
9.
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.
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
porpess-hunters—I see the whale-crews of the
South Pacific and the North Atlantic;
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of
Switzerland—
I mark the long winters, and the
isolation.
I see the cities of the earth, and make myself at random
a part of them;
I am a real
Parisian;
I am a habitant of Vienna, St. Petersburg,
Berlin, Con-
stantinople;
I am of Adelaide,
Sidney, Melbourne;
I am of London, Manchester, Bristol,
Edinburgh, Lime-
rick,
I am of Madrid, Cadiz,
Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brus-
sels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin,
Florence;
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.
10.
I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries;
I
see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned
splint, the fetich, and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns;
I see Algiers,
Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Mon-
rovia;
I see the swarms of Pekin,
Canton, Benares, Delhi, Cal-
cutta, 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 inter-
vening 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, em-
balmed, swathed in linen cloth, lying
there many
centuries;
I look on the fallen
Theban, the large-balled eyes, the
side-drooping neck, the hands folded
across the
breast.
I see the menials of the earth, labouring;
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, hunchbacks,
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.
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, colours,
barbarisms, civilizations—I go among
them—I mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
11.
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
destined, 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! Bohemian!
farmer of Styria!
You neighbour of
the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the
Weser!
you working-woman too!
You Sardinian!
you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon!
Wallachian! Bulgarian!
You citizen of
Prague! 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 stallions
feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle
shooting arrows to the mark!
You
Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar 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 Babelmandeb,
ruling your families and tribes!
You
olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth,
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 Madagascar,
Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!
All you
continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia,
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.
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 purports of the earth;
Each of us here as
divinely as any is here.
12.
You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired
hordes!
You owned persons, dropping
sweat-drops or blood-
drops!
You human forms with the
fathomless ever-impressive
countenances of brutes!
I dare not
refuse you—the scope of the world, and of time
and space, are upon me.
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,
groveling, seeking your food!
You
Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
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 Fejee-man!
You peon of Mexico!
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.
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.
13.
You 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.
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 high embedded rocks, to cry
thence.
Salut au Monde!
What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate
those cities myself;
All islands to
which birds wing their way, I wing my way
myself.
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.
A BROADWAY PAGEANT.
(RECEPTION OF THE JAPANESE EMBASSY, JUNE 16, 1860.)
I.
OVER sea, hither from Niphon,
Courteous, the Princes
of Asia, swart-cheeked
princes,
First-comers, guests,
two-sworded princes,
Lesson-giving princes, leaning back
in their open ba-
rouches, bare-headed, impassive,
This
day they ride through Manhattan.
2.
Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I
behold,
In the procession along with the Princes of Asia, the
errand-bearers,
Bringing up the rear,
hovering above, around, or in the
ranks marching;
But I will sing you a
song of what I behold, Libertad.
3.
When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its
pavements;
When the thunder-cracking
guns arouse me with the
proud roar I love;
When the
round-mouthed guns, out of the smoke and
smell I love, spit their salutes;
When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted
me—when
heaven-clouds canopy my city with a
delicate thin
haze;
When, gorgeous, the countless
straight stems, the forests
at the wharves, thicken with colours;
When every ship, richly dressed, carries her flag at the
peak;
When pennants trail, and
street-festoons hang from the
windows;
When Broadway is entirely
given up to foot-passengers
and foot-standers—when the mass
is densest;
When the façades of the houses are
alive with people—
when eyes gaze, riveted, tens of thousands
at a
time;
When the guests from the
islands advance—when the
pageant moves forward, visible;
When
the summons is made—when the answer, that waited
thousands of years, answers;
I too, arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge
with the crowd, and gaze with them.
4.
Superb-faced Manhattan!
Comrade
Americanos!—to us, then, at last, the Orient
comes.
To us, my city,
Where our tall-topt marble and iron
beauties range on
opposite sides—to walk in the
space between,
To-day our Antipodes comes.
The Originatress comes,
The land of
Paradise—land of the Caucasus—the nest of
birth,
The nest of languages, the
bequeather of poems, the race
of eld,
Florid with blood, pensive,
rapt with musings, hot with
passion,
Sultry with perfume, with
ample and flowing garments,
With sunburnt visage, with
intense soul and glittering
eyes,
The race of Brahma comes!
See, my cantabile! these, and more, are flashing to us
from the procession;
As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves
changing, before us.
Not the errand-bearing princes, nor the tanned Japanee
only;
Lithe and silent, the Hindoo
appears—the whole Asiatic
continent itself appears—the
Past, the dead,
The murky night-morning of wonder and
fable, inscrutable,
The enveloped mysteries, the old and
unknown hive-bees,
The North—the sweltering
South—Assyria—the Hebrews
—the Ancient of ancients,
Vast desolated cities—the gliding Present—all
of these,
and more, are in the
pageant-procession.
Geography, the world, is in it;
The Great Sea, the
brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast
beyond;
The coast you henceforth are
facing—you Libertad! from
your Western golden shores;
The
countries there, with their populations—the
millions
en-masse, are curiously here;
The
swarming market-places—the temples, with idols
ranged along the sides, or at the
end—bonze,
brahmin, and lama;
The mandarin,
farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisher-
man;
The singing-girl and the dancing-girl—the
ecstatic person
—the divine Buddha;
The
secluded Emperors—Confucius himself—the
great
poets and heroes—the warriors,
the castes, all,
Trooping up, crowding from all
directions—from the Altay
mountains,
From Thibet—from
the four winding and far-flowing
rivers of China,
From the Southern
peninsulas, and the demi-continental
islands—from Malaysia;
These, and whatever belongs to them, palpable, show forth
to me, and are seized by me,
And I am
seized by them, and friendlily held by them,
Till, as
here, them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves
and for you.
5.
For I too, raising my voice, join the ranks of this
pageant;
I am the chanter—I chant aloud over the
pageant;
I chant the world on my Western sea;
I chant,
copious, the islands beyond, thick as stars in the
sky;
I chant the new empire, grander
than any before—As in
a vision it comes to me;
I chant
America, the Mistress—I chant a greater supre-
macy;
I chant, projected, a thousand blooming cities yet, in time,
on those groups of sea-islands;
I
chant my sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archi-
pelagoes;
I chant my stars and
stripes fluttering in the wind;
I chant commerce opening,
the sleep of ages having done
its work—races reborn,
refreshed;
Lives, works, resumed—The object I
know not—but the
old, the Asiatic, resumed, as it must
be,
Commencing from this day, surrounded by the
world.
And you, Libertad of the world!
You shall sit in the
middle, well-poised, thousands of
years;
As to-day, from one side, the
Princes of Asia come to
you;
As to-morrow, from the other
side, the Queen of England
sends her eldest son to you.
The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,
The ring
is circled, the journey is done;
The box-lid is but
perceptibly opened—nevertheless the
perfume pours copiously out of the whole
box.
6.
Young Libertad!
With the venerable Asia, the all-mother,
Be considerate with her, now and ever, hot Libertad—for
you are all;
Bend your proud neck to
the long-off mother, now send-
ing messages over the archipelagoes to
you:
Bend your proud neck low for once, young
Libertad.
7.
Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the
tramping?
Were the precedent dim ages
debouching westward from
Paradise so long?
Were the centuries
steadily footing it that way, all the
while unknown, for you, for reasons?
They are justified—they are accomplished—they
shall
now be turned the other way also, to
travel toward
you thence;
They shall now also march
obediently eastward, for your
sake, Libertad.
___________
OLD IRELAND
I.
FAR hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching
over a grave, an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a
queen—now lean and tattered, seated on the
ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevelled round her
shoulders;
At her feet fallen an
unused royal harp,
Long silent—she too long
silent—mourning her shrouded
hope and heir;
Of all the earth her
heart most full of sorrow, because
most full of love.
2.
Yet a word, ancient mother;
You need crouch there no
longer on the cold ground, with
forehead between your knees;
O you
need not sit there, veiled in your old white hair,
so dishevelled;
For know you, the one
you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an
illusion—the heir, the son you love, was not
really dead;
The Lord is not
dead—he is risen again, young and strong
in another country;
Even while you
wept there by your fallen harp, by the
grave,
What you wept for was
translated, passed from the
grave,
The winds favored, and the sea
sailed it,
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves
to-day in a new country.
BOSTON TOWN.
I.
TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning
early;
Here’s a good place
at the corner—I must stand and see
the show.
2.
Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the
President’s marshal! Way for the govern-
ment cannon!
Way for the Federal foot
and dragoons—and the appari-
tions copiously tumbling.
I love to look on the stars and stripes—I hope
the fifes will
play Yankee Doodle.
How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost
troops!
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through
Boston town.
3.
A fog follows—antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged
and bloodless.
Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of
the earth!
The old graveyards of the
hills have hurried to see!
Phantoms! phantoms countless by
flank and rear!
Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made
of mist!
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young
men’s shoulders!
What troubles you Yankee phantoms? What is all this
chattering of bare gums?
Does the
ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake
your crutches for fire-locks, and level
them?
If you blind your eyes with tears, you will not see the
President’s marshal;
If you
groan such groans, you might balk the government
cannon.
For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms,
and let your white hair be;
Here gape
your great grandsons—their wives gaze at
them from the windows,
See how
well-dressed, see how orderly they conduct them-
selves.
Worse and worse! Can’t you stand it? Are you re-
treating?
Is this hour with the
living too dead for you?
Retreat then! Pell-mell!
To your graves! Back! back
to the hills, old limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.
4.
But there is one thing that belongs here—shall I
tell you
what it is, gentlemen of Boston?
I will whisper it to the Mayor—He shall send a committee
to England;
They shall get a grant
from the Parliament, go with a cart
to the royal vault—haste!
Dig out King George’s coffin, unwrap him quick from
the
grave-clothes, box up his bones for a
journey;
Find a swift Yankee clipper—here is
freight for you,
black-bellied clipper,
Up with your
anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight
toward Boston bay.
5.
Now call for the President’s marshal again,
bring out the
government cannon,
Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another
procession, guard it with foot and
dragoons.
This centre-piece for them!
Look, all orderly
citizens! Look from the windows,
women!
The committee open the box; set up the regal ribs; glue
those that will not stay;
Clap the
skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top
of the skull.
You have got your revenge, old buster! The crown is
come to its own and more than its
own.
6.
Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan—you
are a
made man from this day;
You are
mighty ’cute—and here is one of your
bargains.
FRANCE,
THE 18TH YEAR OF THESE STATES.*
I.
A GREAT year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal
scream out-sounding, to
touch the mother’s heart closer
than any yet.
2.
I walked the shores of my Eastern Sea,
Heard over the
waves the little voice,
Saw the divine infant, where she
woke, mournfully wailing,
amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts,
crash of
falling buildings;
Was not so sick
from the blood in the gutters running,
—nor from the single corpses, nor
those in heaps,
nor those borne away in the tumbrils;
* 1793-
4. The great poet
of Democracy is "not so shocked" at
the great European
year of Democracy.
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was
not so
shocked at the repeated fusillades of the
guns.
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued
retribution?
Could I wish humanity
different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and
stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or
time?
3.
O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the
bullet, and the axe, in reserve, to
fetch them out in case of need,
Here
too, though long repressed, can never be destroyed;
Here
too could rise at last, murdering and ecstatic;
Here too
demanding full arrears of vengeance.
Hence I sign this salute over the sea,
And I do not
deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the
little voice that I heard wailing—and
wait with perfect trust, no matter how
long;
And from to-day, sad and cogent, I maintain the
be-
queathed cause, as for all lands,
And
I send these words to Paris with my love,
And I guess some
chansonniers there will understand
them,
For I guess there is latent music yet in France—floods
of it.
O I hear already the bustle of
instruments—they will
soon be drowning all that would interrupt
them;
O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and
free
march,
It reaches hither—it
swells me to joyful madness,
I will run transpose it in
words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you, ma
femme!
___________
EUROPE,
THE 72ND AND 73RD YEARS OF THESE STATES.*
I.
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of
slaves,
Like lightning it leaped
forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes
and the rags—its hands tight to
the throats of kings.
O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled
patriots’ lives!
* The years 1848 and 1849.
O many a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and
make yourselves afresh.
2.
And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court
thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming
from his simplicity the poor
man’s wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal
lips, and broken, and
laughed at in the breaking,
Then in
their power, not for all these did the blows strike
revenge, or the heads of the nobles
fall;
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.
3.
But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and
the frightened rulers come back;
Each
comes in state with his train—hangman, priest,
tax-
gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord,
jailer, and sycophant.
4.
Yet behind all, lowering, stealing—lo, a
Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head,
front, and
form, in scarlet folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see:
Out of its robes
only this—the red robes, lifted by the
arm—
One finger crooked,
pointed high over the top, like the
head of a snake appears.
5.
Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves—bloody
corpses of young men;
The rope of the
gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of
princes are flying, the creatures of power
laugh
aloud,
And all these things bear
fruits—and they are good.
Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang
from the gibbets—those hearts
pierced by the gray lead,
Cold and
motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with
unslaughtered vitality.
They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in
brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by
death—they were taught and
exalted.
Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed
for freedom, in its turn to bear
seed,
Which the winds carry afar and resow, and the rains
and
the snows nourish.
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let
loose,
But it stalks invisibly over
the earth, whispering, coun-
selling, cautioning.
6.
Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of
you.
Is the house shut? Is the master away?
Nevertheless,
be ready—be not weary of watching:
He will soon
return—his messengers come anon.
___________
TO A FOILED REVOLTER OR
REVOLTRESS.
I.
COURAGE! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is
to be subserved, whatever
occurs;
That is nothing that is quelled by one or two failures, or
any number of failures,
Or by the
indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by
any unfaithfulness,
Or the show of
the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon,
penal statutes.
2.
What we believe in waits latent forever through all the
continents, and all the islands and
archipelagoes of
the sea.
What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits
in calmness and light, is positive and
composed,
knows no discouragement,
Waiting
patiently, waiting its time.
3.
The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent
advance and retreat,
The infidel
triumphs—or supposes he triumphs,
The prison,
scaffold, garrote, hand-cuffs, iron necklace and
anklet, lead-balls, do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled—they
lie sick in
distant lands,
The cause is
asleep—the strongest throats are still, choked
with their own blood,
The young men
droop their eyelashes toward the ground
when they meet;
But for all this,
Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor
the infidel entered into full
possession.
When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go,
nor the second or third to go,
It
waits for all the rest to go—it is the last.
When there are no more memories of heroes and
martyrs,
And when all life, and all the souls of men and
women are
discharged from any part of the
earth,
Then only shall Liberty be discharged from that
part of the
earth,
And the infidel and the tyrant
come into possession.
4.
Then courage! revolter! revoltress!
For till all
ceases, neither must you cease.
5.
I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am
for myself, nor what any thing is
for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being
foiled,
In defeat, poverty, imprisonment—for they
too are great.
Did we think victory great?
So it is—but now
it seems to me, when it cannot be helped,
that defeat is great,
And that death
and dismay are great.
DRUM-TAPS.
MANHATTAN ARMING.
I.
FIRST, O songs, for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the
stretched tympanum, pride
and joy in my city,
How she led the
rest to arms—how she gave the cue,
How at once
with lithe limbs, unwaiting a moment, she
sprang;
O superb! O Manhattan, my
own, my peerless!
O strongest you in the hour of danger,
in crisis! O truer
than steel!
How you sprang! how you
threw off the costumes of
peace with indifferent hand;
How your
soft opera-music changed, and the drum and
fife were heard in their stead;
How
you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude,
songs of soldiers,)
How Manhattan
drum-taps led.
2.
Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading;
Forty years as a pageant—till unawares, the Lady
of this
teeming and turbulent city,
Sleepless, amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable
wealth,
With her million children
around her—suddenly,
At dead of night, at news
from the South,
Incensed, struck with clenched hand the
pavement.
A shock electric—the night sustained it;
Till, with ominous hum, our hive at day-break poured
out its myriads.
From the houses then, and the workshops, and through all
the doorways,
Leapt they
tumultuous—and lo! Manhattan arming.
3.
To the drum-taps prompt,
The young men falling in and
arming;
The mechanics arming, the trowel, the jack-plane, the
blacksmith’s hammer, tossed
aside with precipitation;
The lawyer leaving his office,
and arming—the judge
leaving the court;
The driver
deserting his wagon in the street, jumping
down, throwing the reins abruptly down on
the
horses’ backs;
The salesman leaving the store—the boss, book-keeper,
porter, all leaving;
Squads gather
everywhere by common consent, and
arming;
The new recruits, even
boys—the old men show them
how to wear their
accoutrements—they buckle the
straps carefully;
Outdoors
arming—indoors arming—the flash of the
musket-barrels;
The white tents
cluster in camps—the armed sentries
around—the sunrise cannon, and
again at sunset;
Armed regiments arrive every day, pass
through the city,
and embark from the wharves;
How good
they look, as they tramp down to the river,
sweaty, with their guns on their
shoulders!
How I love them! how I could hug them, with
their
brown faces, and their clothes and
knapsacks
covered with dust!
The blood of the
city up—armed! armed! the cry every-
where;
The flags flung out from the
steeples of churches, and
from all the public buildings and
stores;
The tearful parting—the mother kisses her
son—the son
kisses his mother;
Loth is the mother
to part—yet not a word does she speak
to detain him;
The tumultuous escort—the ranks of policemen preceding,
clearing the way;
The unpent
enthusiasm—the wild cheers of the crowd for
their favourites;
The
artillery—the silent cannons, bright as gold,
drawn
along, rumble lightly over the
stones;
Silent cannons—soon to cease your
silence,
Soon, unlimbered, to begin the red business!
All the mutter of preparation—all the determined
arming;
The hospital service—the lint, bandages
and medicines;
The women volunteering for
nurses—the work begun for,
in earnest—no mere parade
now;
War! an armed race is advancing!—the welcome
for
battle—no turning away;
War!
be it weeks, months, or years—an armed race is
advancing to welcome it.
4.
Mannahatta a-march—and it’s O to sing
it well!
It’s O for a manly life in the camp!
5.
And the sturdy artillery!
The guns, bright as
gold—the work for giants—to serve
well the guns:
Unlimber them! no more, as the past forty years, for
salutes for courtesies merely;
Put in
something now besides powder and wadding.
6.
And you, Lady of Ships! you Mannahatta!
Old matron of
the city! this proud, friendly, turbulent
city!
Often in peace and wealth you
were pensive, or covertly
frowned amid all your children;
But
now you smile with joy, exulting old Mannahatta!
___________
1861.
ARMED year! year of the struggle!
No dainty rhymes or
sentimental love verses for
you, terrible year!
Not you as some
pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping
cadenzas piano;
But as a strong man,
erect, clothed in blue clothes,
advancing, carrying rifle on your
shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and
hands—
with a knife in the belt at your
side,
As I heard you shouting loud—your sonorous voice
ringing across the continent;
Your
masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great
cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I
saw you, as one of the
workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan;
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois
and
Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West
with springy gait, and descending
the Alleghanies;
Or down from the
great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on
deck along the Ohio river;
Or
southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers,
or at Chattanooga on the mountain
top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed
in
blue, bearing weapons, robust year;
Heard your determined voice, launched forth again and
again;
Year that suddenly sang by the
mouths of the round-lipped
cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying,
crashing, sad, distracted year.
___________
THE UPRISING.
I.
RISE, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you
loftier and fiercer sweep!
Long for
my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devoured what
the earth gave me;
Long I roamed amid
the woods of the north—long I watched
Niagara pouring;
I traveled the
prairies over, and slept on their breast—I
crossed the Nevadas, I crossed the
plateaus;
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific,
I sailed
out to sea;
I sailed through the
storm, I was refreshed by the storm;
I watched with joy
the threatening maws of the waves;
I marked the white
combs where they careered so high,
curling over;
I heard the wind
piping, I saw the black clouds;
Saw from below what arose
and mounted, (O superb! O
wild as my heart, and powerful!)
Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellowed after the
lightning;
Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden
and fast amid the din they chased each
other across
the sky;
—These, and such as
these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder,
yet pensive and masterful;
All the
menacing might of the globe uprisen around me;
Yet there
with my soul I fed—I fed content, supercilious.
2.
’Twas well, O soul! ’twas a good
preparation you gave
me!
Now we advance our latent and
ampler hunger to fill;
Now we go forth to receive what the
earth and the sea
never gave us;
Not through the mighty
woods we go, but through the
mightier cities;
Something for us is
pouring now, more than Niagara
pouring;
Torrents of men, (sources
and rills of the Northwest, are
you indeed inexhaustible?)
What, to
pavements and homesteads here—what were
those storms of the mountains and
sea?
What, to passions I witness around me to-day, was
the
sea risen?
Was the wind piping the
pipe of death under the black
clouds?
Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more
deadly and savage;
Manhattan, rising,
advancing with menacing front—Cin-
cinnati, Chicago, unchained;
—What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold
what
comes here!
How it climbs with daring
feet and hands! how it dashes!
How the true thunder
bellows after the lightning! how
bright the flashes of lightning!
How
DEMOCRACY with desperate vengeful port
strides on,
shown through the dark by those flashes
of
lightning!
Yet a mournful wail and
low sob I fancied I heard through
the dark,
In a lull of the deafening
confusion.
3.
Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful
stroke!
And do you rise higher than
ever yet, O days, O cities!
Crash heavier, heavier yet, O
storms! you have done me
good;
My soul, prepared in the
mountains, absorbs your immortal
strong nutriment,
Long had I walked
my cities, my country roads through
farms, only half satisfied;
One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawled on
the ground before me,
Continually
preceding my steps, turning upon me oft,
ironically hissing low;
—The
cities I loved so well I abandoned and left—I
sped
to the certainties suitable to me;
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and
Nature’s dauntlessness,
I
refreshed myself with it only, I could relish it only;
I
waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the
water
and air I waited long.
—But
now I no longer wait—I am fully satisfied—I
am
glutted;
I have witnessed the true
lightning—I have witnessed my
cities electric;
I have lived to
behold man burst forth, and warlike
America rise;
Hence I will seek no
more the food of the northern solitary
wilds,
No more the mountains roam, or
sail the stormy sea.
___________
BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!
I.
BEAT! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like
a force of ruthless men,
Into the
solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the
school where the scholar is studying:
Leave not the
bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he
have now with his bride;
Nor the
peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or
gathering his grain;
So fierce you
whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you
bugles blow.
2.
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Over
the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the
streets:
Are beds prepared for
sleepers at night in the houses?
No sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers’ bargains by day—no
brokers or speculators
—Would they continue?
Would
the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt
to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the
court to state his case before
the judge?
Then rattle quicker,
heavier, drums—you bugles wilder
blow.
3.
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Make
no parley—stop for no expostulation;
Mind not the
timid—mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind not the
old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the
child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s
entreaties;
Make even the trestles to
shake the dead, where they lie
awaiting the hearses,
So strong you
thump, O terrible drums—so loud you
bugles blow.
SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK.
POET.
O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping,
flapping, flapping, by sounds, by
voices clearer,
By the
wind’s voice and that of the drum,
By the
banner’s voice, and child’s voice, and
sea’s voice,
and father’s voice,
Low on
the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father
and child stand,
In the upward air where their eyes
turn,
Where the banner at day-break is flapping.
Words! book-words! what are you?
Words no more, for
hearken and see,
My song is there in the open
air—and I must sing,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
I’ll weave the chord and twine in,
Man’s desire and babe’s
desire—I’ll twine them in, I’ll put
in life;
I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing
point—I’ll let bullets and
slugs whizz;
I’ll pour the
verse with streams of blood, full of volition,
full of joy;
Then loosen, launch
forth, to go and compete,
With the banner and pennant
a-flapping.
BANNER AND PENNANT.
Come up here, bard, bard;
Come up here, soul,
soul;
Come up here, dear little child,
To fly in the
clouds and winds with me, and play with the
measureless light.
CHILD.
Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long
finger?
And what does it say to me
all the while?
FATHER.
Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky;
And nothing at
all to you it says. But look you, my
babe,
Look at these dazzling things
in the houses, and see you
the money-shops opening;
And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the
streets with goods:
These! ah, these!
how valued and toiled for, these!
How envied by all the
earth!
POET.
Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high;
On
floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its
channels;
On floats the wind over the
breast of the sea, setting in
toward land;
The great steady wind
from west or west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant, with
milk-white foam on the waters.
But I am not the sea, nor the red sun;
I am not the
wind, with girlish laughter;
Not the immense wind which
strengthens—not the wind
which lashes;
Not the spirit that
ever lashes its own body to terror and
death:
But I am that which unseen
comes and sings, sings,
sings,
Which babbles in brooks and
scoots in showers on the
land;
Which the birds know in the
woods, mornings and
evenings,
And the shore-sands know, and the hissing wave, and
that banner and pennant,
Aloft there
flapping and flapping.
CHILD.
O father, it is alive—it is full of
people—it has children!
O now it seems to me it is
talking to its children!
I hear it—it talks to
me—O it is wonderful!
O it stretches—it
spreads and runs so fast! O my father,
It is so broad it
covers the whole sky!
FATHER.
Cease, cease, my foolish babe,
What you are saying is
sorrowful to me—much it dis-
pleases me;
Behold with the rest,
again I say—behold not banners and
pennants aloft;
But the well-prepared
pavements behold—and mark the
solid-walled houses.
BANNER AND PENNANT.
Speak to the child, O bard, out of Manhattan;
To our
children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Where our
factory-engines hum, where our miners delve
the ground,
Where our hoarse Niagara rumbles, where our prairie-
ploughs are ploughing;
Speak, O bard!
point this day, leaving all the rest, to us
over all—and yet we know not
why;
For what are we, mere strips of cloth, profiting
nothing,
Only flapping in the wind?
POET.
I hear and see not strips of cloth alone;
I hear the
tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry;
I hear the
jubilant shouts of millions of men—I hear
LIBERTY!
I
hear the drums beat, and the trumpets blowing;
I myself
move abroad, swift-rising, flying then;
I use the wings of
the land-bird, and use the wings of the
sea-bird, and look down as from a
height,
I do not deny the precious results of
peace—I see populous
cities, with wealth incalculable;
I
see numberless farms—I see the farmers working in
their
fields or barns;
I see mechanics
working—I see buildings everywhere
founded, going up, or finished;
I see
trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks,
drawn by the locomotives;
I see the
stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston,
New Orleans;
I see far in the west the immense area of grain—I dwell
awhile, hovering;
I pass to the
lumber forests of the north, and again to the
southern plantation, and again to
California;
Sweeping the whole, I see the countless
profit, the busy
gatherings, earned wages;
See the
identity formed out of thirty-six spacious and
haughty States, (and many more to
come;)
See forts on the shores of harbours—see
ships sailing in
and out;
Then over all, (aye! aye!)
my little and lengthened
pennant shaped like a sword
Runs
swiftly up, indicating war and defiance—And now
the halyards have raised it,
Side of
my banner broad and blue—side of my starry
banner,
Discarding peace over all the
sea and land.
BANNER AND PENNANT.
Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider
cleave!
No longer let our children
deem us riches and peace
alone;
We can be terror and carnage
also, and are so now.
Not now are we any one of these
spacious and haughty States,
(nor any five, nor ten;)
Nor market nor depot are we, nor money-bank in the
city;
But these, and all, and the
brown and spreading land, and
the mines below, are ours;
And the
shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great
and small;
And the fields they
moisten are ours, and the crops and
the fruits are ours;
Bays and
channels, and ships sailing in and out, are ours
—and we over all,
Over the
area spread below, the three millions of square
miles—the capitals,
The
thirty-five millions of people—O bard! in life
and
death supreme,
We, even we, from this
day flaunt out masterful, high up
above,
Not for the present alone, for
a thousand years, chanting
through you
This song to the soul of
one poor little child.
CHILD.
O my father I like not the houses;
They will never to
me be anything—nor do I like money;
But to mount
up there I would like, O father dear—that
banner I like;
That pennant I would
be, and must be.
FATHER.
Child of mine, you fill me with anguish;
To be that
pennant would be too fearful;
Little you know what it is
this day, and henceforth for
ever;
It is to gain nothing, but risk
and defy everything;
Forward to stand in front of
wars—and O, such wars!—
what have you to do with them?
With
passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?
POET.
Demons and death then I sing;
Put in all, aye all,
will I—sword-shaped pennant for war,
and banner so broad and blue,
And a
pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning
of children,
Blent with the sounds of
the peaceful land, and the liquid
wash of the sea;
And the icy cool of
the far, far north, with rustling cedars
and pines;
And the whirr of drums,
and the sound of soldiers
marching, and the hot sun shining
south;
And the beach-waves combing over the beach on
my
eastern shore, and my western shore the
same;
And all between those shores, and my ever running
Mis-
sissippi, with bends
and chutes;
And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields
of Missouri;
The CONTINENT—devoting the whole identity without
re-
serving an atom,
Pour in! whelm that
which asks, which sings, with all,
and the yield of all,
BANNER AND PENNANT.
Aye for all! for ever, for all!
From sea to sea,
north and south, east and west,
Fusing and holding,
claiming, devouring the whole;
No more with tender lip, nor
musical labial sound,
But, out of the night emerging for
good, our voice per-
suasive no more,
Croaking like crows
here in the wind.
POET.
My limbs, my veins dilate;
The blood of the world has
filled me full—my theme is
clear at last.
—Banner so
broad, advancing out of the night, I sing you
haughty and resolute;
I burst through
where I waited long, too long, deafened
and blinded;
My sight, my hearing and
tongue, are come to me, (a little
child taught me;)
I hear from above, O pennant of war, your ironical call
and demand;
Insensate! insensate! yet
I at any rate chant you, O
banner!
Not houses of peace are you,
nor any nor all their pros-
perity; if need be, you shall have every
one of
those houses to destroy them;
You
thought not to destroy those valuable houses, stand-
ing fast, full of comfort, built with
money;
May they stand fast, then? Not an hour, unless
you,
above them and all, stand fast.
—O banner! not money so precious are you, not
farm
produce you, nor the material good
nutriment,
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves
from the ships;
Not the superb ships, with sail-power or
steam-power,
fetching and carrying cargoes,
Nor
machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues,—But
you,
as henceforth I see you,
Running up
out of the night, bringing your cluster of
stars, ever-enlarging stars;
Divider
of daybreak you, cutting the air, touched by the
sun, measuring the sky,
Passionately
seen and yearned for by one poor little child,
While
others remain busy, or smartly talking, forever
teaching thrift, thrift;
O you up
there! O pennant! where you undulate like a
snake, hissing so curious,
Out of reach—an idea only—yet furiously
fought for,
risking bloody death—loved by
me!
So loved! O you banner, leading the day, with
stars
brought from the night!
Valueless,
object of eyes, over all and demanding all—O
banner and pennant!
I too leave the
rest—great as it is, it is
nothing—houses,
machines are nothing—I see them
not;
I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so
broad,
with stripes, I sing you only,
Flapping up there in the wind.
___________
THE BIVOUAC’S FLAME.
BY the bivouac’s fitful flame,
A procession
winding around me, solemn and sweet
and slow;—but first I note
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and
woods’
dim outline,
The darkness, lit by
spots of kindled fire—the silence;
Like a phantom
far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and
trees (as I lift my eyes they seem to be
stealthily watching me;)
While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and won-
drous thoughts,
Of life and
death—of home and the past and loved, and
of those that are far away;
A solemn
and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,
By the
bivouac’s fitful flame.
___________
BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE.
I SEE before me now a travelling army halting;
Below,
a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the
orchards of summer;
Behind, the
terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places,
rising high;
Broken, with rocks, with
clinging cedars, with tall shapes
dingily seen;
The numerous camp-fires
scattered near and far, some
away up on the mountain;
The shadowy
forms of men and horses, looming, large-
sized, flickering;
And over all the
sky—the sky! far, far out of reach,
studded with the eternal stars.
CITY OF SHIPS.
CITY of ships!
(O the black ships! O the fierce
ships!
O the beautiful sharp-bowed steam-ships and
sail-ships!)
City of the world! (for all races are
here;
All the lands of the earth make contributions
here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering
tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirl-
ing in and out with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of
marble
and iron!
Proud and passionate city!
mettlesome, mad, extravagant
city!
Spring up, O city! not for
peace alone, but be indeed
yourself, warlike!
Fear not! submit
to no models but your own, O city!
Behold me! incarnate
me, as I have incarnated you!
I have rejected nothing you
offered me—whom you
adopted, I have adopted;
Good or bad,
I never question you—I love all—I do not
condemn anything,
I chant and
celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no
more;
In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is
mine;
War, red war, is my song
through your streets, O city!
___________
VIGIL ON THE FIELD.
VIGIL strange I kept on the field one night,
When
you, my son and my comrade, dropped at my
side that day.
One look I but gave,
which your dear eyes returned with
a look I shall never forget;
One
touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reached up as
you lay on the ground.
Then onward I
sped in the battle, the even-contested
battle;
Till, late in the night
relieved, to the place at last again I
made my way;
Found you in death so
cold, dear comrade—found your
body, son of responding kisses, (never
again on
earth responding;)
Bared your face in
the starlight—curious the scene—cool
blew the moderate night-wind.
Long
there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me
the battle-field spreading;
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant
silent night.
But not a tear fell,
not even a long-drawn sigh—Long,
long I gazed;
Then on the earth
partially reclining, sat by your side,
leaning my chin in my hands;
Passing
sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours, with
you, dearest comrade—Not a tear,
not a word;
Vigil of silence, love, and
death—vigil for you, my son
and my soldier,
As onward silently
stars aloft, eastward new ones upward
stole;
Vigil final for you, brave
boy, (I could not save you, swift
was your death,
I faithfully loved
you and cared for you living—I think
we shall surely meet again;)
Till at
latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the
dawn appeared,
My comrade I wrapped
in his blanket, enveloped well his
form,
Folded the blanket well,
tucking it carefully over head,
and carefully under feet;
And there
and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my
son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave, I
de-
posited;
Ending my vigil strange with
that—vigil of night and
battle-field dim;
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, never again on earth
responding;
Vigil for comrade swiftly
slain, vigil I never forget—how
as day brightened
I rose from the
chill ground, and folded my soldier well in
his blanket,
And buried him where he
fell.
___________
THE FLAG.
BATHED in war’s perfume—delicate
flag!
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers!
flag like a beautiful woman!
O to
hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men!
O the ships they arm with joy!
O to
see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of
ships!
O to see you peering down on
the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the eyes of
women.
___________
THE WOUNDED.
A MARCH in the ranks hard-pressed, and the road un-
known;
A route through a heavy wood,
with muffled steps in the
darkness;
Our army foiled with loss
severe, and the sullen remnant
retreating;
Till after midnight
glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-
lighted building.
We come to an open
space in the woods, and halt by the
dim-lighted building;
’Tis
a large old church, at the crossing
roads—’tis now
an impromptu hospital;
—Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all
the
pictures and poems ever made:
Shadows
of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving
candles and lamps,
And by one great
pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red
flame and clouds of smoke;
By these,
crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the
floor, some in the pews laid down;
At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in
danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot
in the
abdomen;)
I stanch the blood
temporarily, (the youngster’s face is
white as a lily;)
Then before I
depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain
to absorb it all;
Faces, varieties,
postures beyond description, most in ob-
scurity, some of them dead;
Surgeons
operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of
ether, the odour of blood;
The crowd,
O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—
the yard outside also filled;
Some on
the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers,
some in the death-spasm sweating;
An
occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted
orders
or calls;
The glisten of the little
steel instruments catching the
glint of the torches;
These I resume
as I chant—I see again the forms, I smell
the odour;
Then hear outside the
orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall
in.
But first I bend to the dying lad—his eyes
open—a half-
smile gives he me;
Then the eyes
close, calmly close: and I speed forth to the
darkness,
Resuming, marching, as ever in darkness marching, on in
the ranks,
The unknown road still
marching.
___________
A SIGHT IN CAMP.
I.
A SIGHT in camp in the day-break gray and dim.
As
from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless,
As slow I walk
in the cool fresh air the path near by the
hospital tent,
Three forms I see on
stretchers lying, brought out there,
untended lying;
Over each the blanket
spread, ample brownish woollen
blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket,
folding, covering all.
2.
Curious, I halt, and silent stand;
Then with light
fingers I from the face of the nearest, the
first, just lift the blanket:
Who are
you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-
grayed hair, and flesh all sunken about
the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step—and who are you, my child
and darling?
Who are you, sweet boy,
with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm,
as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I know you—I think this face of
yours
is the face of the Christ himself;
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he
lies.
___________
A GRAVE.
I.
AS toilsome I wandered Virginia’s woods,
To
the music of rustling leaves kicked by my feet
—for ’twas
autumn—
I marked at the foot of a tree the grave
of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he, and buried on the
retreat—easily
all could I understand;
The halt of a
mid-day hour—when, Up! no time to
lose! Yet this sign left
On a tablet
scrawled and nailed on the tree by the grave,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
2.
Long, long I muse,—then on my way go
wandering,
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a
scene of
life.
Yet at times through changeful
season and scene, abrupt,
—alone, or in the crowded
street,—
Comes before me the unknown
soldier’s grave, comes the
inscription rude in Virginia’s
woods,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
___________
THE DRESSER.
I.
AN old man bending I come among new faces,
Years,
looking backward, resuming, in answer to
children,
"Come tell us, old man,"
(as from young men and maidens
that love me,
Years hence "of these
scenes, of these furious passions,
these chances,
Of unsurpassed
heroes—(was one side so brave? the other
was equally brave)
Now be witness
again—paint the mightiest armies of
earth;
Of those armies, so rapid, so wondrous, what saw you to
tell us?
What stays with you latest
and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought
engagements, or sieges tremendous, what
deepest remains?"
2.
O maidens and young men I love, and that love me,
What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden
your talking recalls.
Soldier alert I
arrive, after a long march, covered with
sweat and dust;
In the nick of time I
come, plunge in the fight, loudly
shout in the rush of successful
charge;
Enter the captured works . . . . yet lo! like a
swift-
running river, they fade,
Pass, and
are gone; they fade—I dwell not on
soldiers’
perils or soldiers’ joys;
(Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the
joys,
yet I was content.)
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes
on,
So soon what is over forgotten,
and waves wash the im-
prints off the sand,
In nature’s reverie sad, with hinged knees
returning, I
enter the doors—(while for you up
there,
Whoever you are, follow me without noise, and be
of
strong heart.)
Bearing the bandages,
water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I
go,
Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought
in;
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the
ground;
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the
roofed
hospital;
To the long rows of cots,
up and down, each side I return;
To each and all, one
after another, I draw near—not one
do I miss;
An attendant follows,
holding a tray—he carries a refuse
pail,
Soon to be filled with clotted
rags and blood, emptied, and
filled again.
I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady
hand, to dress wounds;
I am firm with each—the
pangs are sharp, yet unavoid-
able;
One turns to me his appealing
eyes—poor boy! I never
knew you,
Yet I think I could not
refuse this moment to die for you,
if that would save you.
On, on I go—(open, doors of time! open, hospital
doors!)
The crushed head I dress (poor crazed hand, tear
not the
bandage away;)
The neck of the
cavalry-man, with the bullet through and
through, I examine;
Hard the
breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye,
yet life struggles hard;
Come, sweet
death! be persuaded, O beautiful death!
In mercy come
quickly.
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo
the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the
matter and blood;
Back on his pillow
the soldier bends, with curved neck, and
side-falling head;
His eyes are
closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on
the bloody stump,
And has not yet
looked on it.
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep;
But a day or
two more—for see, the frame all wasted and
sinking,
And the yellow-blue
countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet
wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so
sickening, so offensive,
While the
attendant stands behind aside me, holding the
tray and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out;
The fractured
thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I
dress with impassive hand—yet deep in
my breast a fire, a burning flame.
3.
Thus in silence, in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hos-
pitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify
with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark
night—some are so young,
Some suffer so
much—I recall the experience sweet and
sad.
Many a soldier’s
loving arms about this neck have crossed
and rested,
Many a
soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.
___________
A LETTER FROM CAMP.
I.
"COME up from the fields, father, here’s a
letter from
our Pete;
And come to the front door,
mother—here’s a letter from
thy dear son."
2.
Lo, ’tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees,
deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten
Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in
the moderate wind;
Where apples ripe
in the orchards hang, and grapes on the
trellised vines;
Smell you the smell
of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where
the bees were lately
buzzing?
Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the
rain, and with wondrous clouds;
Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful—and the
farm
prospers well.
3.
Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from
the fields come, father—come at the
daughter’s call;
And come
to the entry, mother—to the front door come,
right away.
Fast as she can she hurries—something
ominous—her steps
trembling;
She does not tarry to
smooth her white hair, nor adjust her
cap.
4.
Open the envelope quickly;
O this is not our
son’s writing, yet his name is signed;
O a
strange hand writes for our dear son—O stricken
mother’s soul!
All swims
before her eyes—flashes with black—she
catches
the main words only;
Sentences
broken—gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry
skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will
soon be better.
5.
Ah, now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and
wealthy Ohio, with all its cities and
farms,
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very
faint,
By the jamb of a door leans.
6.
"Grieve not so, dear mother" (the just-grown daughter
speaks through her sobs;
The little
sisters huddle around, speechless and dismayed);
"See,
dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be
better."
7.
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor may-be needs
to be better, that brave and simple
soul);
While they stand at home at the door, he is dead
already;
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better;
She, with thin
form, presently dressed in black;
By day her meals
untouched—then at night fitfully sleep-
ing, often waking,
In the midnight
waking, weeping, longing with one deep
longing,
O that she might withdraw
unnoticed—silent from life
escape and withdraw,
To follow, to
seek, to be with her dear dead son!
WAR DREAMS.
I.
IN clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face
in battle,
Of the look at first of
the mortally wounded, (of that inde-
scribable look,)
Of the dead on their
backs with arms extended wide—
I dream, I dream, I dream.
2.
Of scenes of nature, the fields and the mountains,
Of
the skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the
moon so unearthly bright,
Shining
sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches
and gather the heaps—
I
dream, I dream, I dream.
3.
Long have they passed, long lapsed—faces, and trenches,
and fields:
Long through the carnage
I moved with a callous compo-
sure, or away from the fallen
Onward
I sped at the time. But now of their faces and
forms at night,
I dream, I dream, I
dream.
THE VETERAN’S VISION.
WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the
wars are over long,
And my head on
the
pillow rests at home, and the mystic
midnight passes,
And through the
stillness, through the dark, I hear, just
hear, the breath of my infant,
There
in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision
presses upon me.
The engagement opens
there and then, in my busy brain
unreal;
The skirmishers
begin—they crawl cautiously ahead—I
hear the irregular snap! snap!
I hear
the sounds of the different missiles—the short
t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle-balls;
I see the shells
exploding, leaving small white clouds—I
hear the great shells shrieking as they
pass;
The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through
the
trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest
rages!)
All the scenes at the batteries rise in
detail
before me again;
The crashing and smoking—the pride of the men in their
pieces;
The chief gunner ranges and
sights his piece, and selects
a fuse of the right time;
After
firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to
note the effect;
—Elsewhere
I hear the cry of a regiment charging—the
young colonel leads himself this time,
with bran-
dished sword;
I see the gaps cut by
the enemy’s volleys, quickly filled
up—no delay;
I breathe the
suffocating smoke—then the flat clouds
hover low, concealing all;
Now a
strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot
fired on either side;
Then resumed,
the chaos louder than ever, with eager
calls, and orders of officers;
While
from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to
my ears a shout of applause, (some special
success;)
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near,
rousing,
even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and
all the
old mad joy, in the depths of my
soul;
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting
positions—
batteries, cavalry, moving hither and
thither;
The falling, dying, I heed not—the
wounded, dripping
and red, I heed not—some to the
rear are
hobbling;
Grime, heat, rush—aide-de-camps galloping by or
on a
full run:
With the patter of small
arms, the warning s-s-t of the
rifles, (these in my vision I hear or
see,)
And bombs bursting in air, and at night the
vari-coloured
rockets.
___________
O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY.
O TAN-FACED prairie-boy!
Before you came to camp came
many a welcome
gift;
Praises and presents came, and
nourishing food—till at
last, among the recruits,
You came,
taciturn, with nothing to give—we but looked
on each other,
When lo! more than all
the gifts of the world you gave
me.
___________
MANHATTAN FACES.
I.
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams
full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal
fruit, ripe and red from the
orchard;
Give me a field where the
unmowed grass grows;
Give me an arbour, give me the
trellised grape;
Give me fresh corn and
wheat—give me serene-moving
animals, teaching content;
Give me
nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of
the Mississippi, and I looking up at the
stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful
flowers,
where I can walk undisturbed;
Give me
for marriage a sweet-breathed woman, of whom
I should never tire;
Give me a
perfect child—give me, away, aside from the
noise of the world, a rural domestic
life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, relieved,
recluse by
myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again,
O Nature, your primal sanities!
—These, demanding to have them, tired with
ceaseless
excitement, and racked by the
war-strife,
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in
cries from
my heart,
While yet incessantly
asking, still I adhere to my city;
Day upon day, and year
upon year, O city, walking your
streets,
Where you hold me enchained
a certain time, refusing to
give me up,
Yet giving to make me
glutted, enriched of soul—you
give me for ever faces;
O I see what
I sought to escape, confronting, reversing
my cries;
I see my own soul trampling
down what it asked for.
2.
Keep your splendid silent sun;
Keep your woods, O
Nature, and the quiet places by the
woods;
Keep your fields of clover and
timothy, and your corn-
fields and orchards;
Keep the
blossoming buckwheat fields, where the ninth-
month bees hum.
Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms in-
cessant and endless along the
trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give
me
comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by
the hand every day!
Give me such
shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway,
with the soldiers marching—give me
the sound of the trumpets and drums!
The soldiers in companies or regiments—some
starting
away, flushed and reckless;
Some,
their time up, returning, with thinned ranks—
young, yet very old, worn, marching,
noticing
nothing;
—Give me the shores
and the wharves heavy-fringed
with the black ships!
O such for me!
O an intense life! O full to repletion,
and varied!
The life of the theatre,
bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer,
the crowded excursion, for me!
the torch-light procession!
The dense
brigade, bound for the war, with high piled
military wagons following;
People,
endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions,
pageants;
Manhattan streets, with
their powerful throbs, with the
beating drums, as now;
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of
muskets, even the sight of the
wounded;
Manhattan crowds with their turbulent musical
chorus—
with varied chorus and light of the
sparkling eyes;
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for
me!
___________
OVER THE CARNAGE.
I.
OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice,—
Be
not disheartened—Affection shall solve the
problems of Freedom yet;
Those who
love each other shall become invincible—they
shall yet make Columbia victorious.
Sons of the Mother of all! you shall yet be
victorious!
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all
the re-
mainder of the earth.
No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers;
If
need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves
for one.
One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian’s comrade;
From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Ore-
gonese, shall be friends triune,
More
precious to each other than all the riches of the
earth.
To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come;
Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted be-
yond death.
It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly
affection;
The most dauntless and
rude shall touch face to face
lightly;
The dependence of Liberty
shall be lovers,
The continuance of Equality shall be
comrades.
These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops
of iron;
I, ecstatic, O partners! O
lands! with the love of lovers tie
you.
2.
Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or
by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?
—Nay—nor the world nor any living thing will so
cohere.
THE MOTHER OF ALL.
PENSIVE, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of
all,
Desperate, on the torn bodies,
on the forms covering the
battle-fields, gazing;
As she called
to her earth with mournful voice while she
stalked,
"Absorb them well, O my
earth," she cried—"I charge
you, lose not my sons! lose not an
atom;
And you, streams, absorb them well, taking their
dear
blood;
And you local spots, and you
airs that swim above lightly,
And all you essences of soil
and growth—and you, O my
rivers’ depths;
And you
mountain-sides—and the woods where my dear
children’s blood, trickling,
reddened;
And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath
to all
future trees,
My dead
absorb—my young men’s beautiful bodies
ab-
sorb—and their precious,
precious, precious blood;
Which holding in trust for me,
faithfully back again give
me, many a year hence,
In unseen essence and odour of surface and grass, centuries
hence;
In blowing airs from the
fields, back again give me my
darlings—give my immortal
heroes;
Exhale me them centuries hence—breathe me
their breath
—let not an atom be lost.
O
years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma
sweet!
Exhale them perennial, sweet
death, years, centuries
hence."
___________
CAMPS OF GREEN.
I.
NOT alone our camps of white, O soldiers,
When, as
ordered forward, after a long march,
Footsore and weary,
soon as the light lessens, we halt for
the night;
Some of us so fatigued,
carrying the gun and knapsack,
dropping asleep in our tracks;
Others
pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up begin
to sparkle;
Outposts of pickets
posted, surrounding, alert through the
dark,
And a word provided for countersign, careful for
safety;
Till to the call of the
drummers at daybreak loudly beating
the drums,
We rise up refreshed, the
night and sleep passed over, and
resume our journey,
Or proceed to
battle.
2.
Lo! the camps of the tents of green,
Which the days
of peace keep filling, and the days of war
keep filling,
With a mystic army, (is
it too ordered forward? is it too
only halting awhile,
Till night and
sleep pass over?)
Now in those camps of green—in their tents
dotting the
world;
In the parents, children,
husbands, wives, in them—in the
old and young,
Sleeping under the
sunlight, sleeping under the moon-
light, content and silent there at
last;
Behold the mighty bivouac-field and waiting-camp of
us
and ours and all,
Of the corps and
generals all, and the President over the
corps and generals all,
And of each of us, O soldiers, and of each and all in the
ranks we fight,
There without hatred
we all meet.
For presently, O soldiers, we too camp in our place in the
bivouac-camps of green;
But we need
not provide for outposts, nor word for the
countersign,
Nor drummer to beat the
morning drum.
___________
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS.
I.
THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from
the finished Sabbath
On the pavement here—and
there beyond, it is looking
Down a new-made double grave.
2.
Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the
east, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the
house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon;
Immense and silent moon.
3.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear
the sound of coming full-keyed bugles;
All the channels of
the city streets they’re flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
4.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And
the small drums steady whirring;
And every blow of the
great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
5.
For the son is brought with the
father;
In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they
fell;
Two veterans, son and father, dropped together,
And the double grave awaits them.
6.
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the
drums strike more convulsive;
And the daylight
o’er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
7.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The
sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined;
’Tis
some mother’s large, transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.
8.
O strong dead-march, you please me!
O
moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my
soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
9.
The moon gives you light,
And the
bugles and the drums give you music;
And my heart, O my
soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
___________
SURVIVORS.
HOW solemn, as one by one,
As the ranks returning,
all worn and sweaty—as
the men file by where I stand;
As the faces, the masks appear—as I glance at the faces,
studying the masks;
As I glance
upward out of this page, studying you, dear
friend, whoever you are;—
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul, to each in
the ranks, and to you!
I see, behind
each mask, that wonder, a kindred soul.
O the bullet could
never kill what you really are, dear
friend,
Nor the bayonet stab what you
really are.
—The soul, yourself, I see, great as
any, good as the best,
Waiting secure and
content,—which the bullet could never
kill,
Nor the bayonet stab, O friend!
___________
HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS.
I.
ONE breath, O my silent soul,
A perfumed
thought—no more I ask, for the sake
of all dead soldiers.
2.
Buglers off in my armies!
At present I ask not you to
sound;
Not at the head of my cavalry, all on their spirited
horses,
With their sabres drawn and
glistening, and carbines
clanking by their thighs—(ah, my
brave horse-
men!
My handsome, tan-faced horsemen!
what life, what joy
and pride,
With all the perils, were
yours!)
Nor you drummers—neither at reveillé,
at dawn,
Nor the long roll alarming the camp—nor
even the muffled
beat for a burial;
Nothing from you,
this time, O drummers, bearing my
warlike drums.
3.
But aside from these, and the crowd’s hurrahs,
and the
land’s congratulations,
Admitting around me comrades close, unseen by the rest,
and voiceless,
I chant this chant of
my silent soul, in the name of all
dead soldiers.
4.
Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather
closer yet;
Draw close, but speak
not.
Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender!
Invisible
to the rest, henceforth become my companions;
Follow me
ever! desert me not, while I live!
Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living, sweet are
the musical voices sounding;
But
sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes.
Dearest comrades! all now is over;
But love is not
over—and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from
battle-fields rising—up from fœtor arising.
Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal love!
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers.
Perfume all! make all wholesome!
O love! O chant!
solve all with the last chemistry.
Give me exhaustness—make me a fountain,
That
I exhale love from me wherever I go,
For the sake of all
dead soldiers.
SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE.
SPIRIT whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of
bayonets—
Spirit of
gloomiest fears and doubts, yet onward ever
unfaltering pressing!
Spirit of many
a solemn day, and many a savage scene!
Electric spirit!
That with muttering
voice, through the years now closed,
like a tireless phantom flitted,
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and
beat the drum;
—Now, as the
sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the
last, reverberates round me;
As your
ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from
the battles;
While the muskets of the
young men yet lean over their
shoulders;
While I look on the
bayonets bristling over their shoulders;
While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, ap-
pearing in the distance, approach and pass
on, re-
turning homeward,
Moving with steady
motion, swaying to and fro, to the right
and left,
Evenly, lightly, rising and
falling, while the steps keep time:
—Spirit of
hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale
as death next day;
Touch my mouth,
ere you depart—press my lips close!
Leave me your
pulses of rage! bequeath them to me! fill
me with currents convulsive!
Let them
scorch and blister out of my chants, when you are
gone;
Let them identify you to the
future in these songs!
___________
RECONCILIATION.
WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that
war, and all its deeds of carnage,
must in time be utterly lost;
That
the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly,
softly wash again, and ever again, this
solid world.
For my enemy is dead—a man divine as
myself is dead.
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—
I draw near;
I bend down and touch
lightly with my lips the white face
in the coffin.
___________
AFTER THE WAR.
TO the leavened soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the
last;
Not cities nor man alone, nor
war, nor the dead:
But forth from my tent emerging for
good—loosing, unty-
ing the tent-ropes;
In the freshness,
the forenoon air, in the far-stretching
circuits and vistas, again to peace
restored;
To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless
vistas beyond
—to the south and the north;
To the leavened soil of the general western world, to
attest
my songs,
To the average earth, the
wordless earth, witness of war
and peace,
To the Alleghanian hills,
and the tireless Mississippi,
To the rocks I, calling,
sing, and all the trees in the woods,
To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spread-
ing wide,
To the far-off sea, and the
unseen winds, and the sane im-
palpable air.
And responding they
answer all (but not in words),
The average earth, the
witness of war and peace, acknow-
ledges mutely;
The prairie draws me
close, as the father, to bosom broad,
the son:—
The Northern ice
and rain, that began me, nourish me to
the end;
But the hot sun of the South
is to ripen my songs.
WALT WHITMAN.
ASSIMILATIONS.
I.
THERE was a child went forth every day;
And the first
object he looked upon, that object he
became;
And that object became part
of him for the day, or a
certain part of the day, or for many
years, or
stretching cycles of years.
2.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And
grass, and white and red morning-glories,* and white
and red clover, and the song of the
phœbe-bird,†
And the third-month lambs,
and the sow’s pink-faint
litter, and the mare’s foal, and
the cow’s calf,
And the noisy brood of the
barnyard, or by the mire of
the pond-side,
And the fish
suspending themselves so curiously below
there—and the beautiful curious
liquid,
* The name of "morning-glory" is given to the
bindweed, or a
sort of bindweed, in America. I am not
certain whether this expres-
sive name is used in England
also.
† A dun-coloured little bird with
a cheerful note, sounding like
the word
Phœbe.
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all
became part of him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month
became part of him;
Winter-grain
sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn,
and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees covered with blossoms and the fruit
afterward, and wood-berries, and the
commonest
weeds by the road;
And the old
drunkard, staggering home from the outhouse
of the tavern, whence he had lately
risen,
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to
the
school,
And the friendly boys that
passed, and the quarrelsome
boys,
And the tidy and
fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot
negro boy and girl,
And all the
changes of city and country, wherever he
went.
His own parents;
He that had fathered him, and she
that had conceived him
in her womb, and birthed him,
They
gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave
him afterward every day—they became part of
him.
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the
supper-table;
The mother with mild
words—clean her cap and gown, a
wholesome odour falling off her person and
clothes
as she walks by;
The father, strong,
self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered,
unjust;
The blow, the quick loud
word, the tight bargain, the
crafty lure,
The family usages, the
language, the company, the fur-
niture—the yearning and swelling
heart,
Affection that will not be gainsaied—the
sense of what is
real—the thought if after all it
should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts
of night-time—
the curious whether and how,
Whether
that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes
and specks?
Men and women crowding
fast in the streets—if they are
not flashes and specks, what are
they?
The streets themselves, and the façades
of houses, and
goods in the windows,
Vehicles,
teams, the heavy-planked wharves—the huge
crossing at the ferries,
The village
on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the
river between,
Shadows, aureola and
mist, the light falling on roofs and
gables of white or brown, three miles
off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—
the little boat slack-towed astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests
slapping,
The strata of coloured
clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint
away solitary by itself—the
spread of purity it lies
motionless in,
The
horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance
of
salt marsh and shore mud;—
These became part of that child who went forth every
day, and who now goes, and will always go
forth
every day.
___________
A WORLD OUT OF THE SEA.
I.
OUT of the rocked cradle,
Out of the
mocking-bird’s throat, the musical
shuttle,
Out of the ninth-month
midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond,
where the
child, leaving his bed, wandered alone,
bareheaded,
barefoot,
Down from the showered
halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting
as if they were alive,
Out from the
patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of
the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad
brother—from the fitful risings
and fallings I heard,
From under that
yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen
as if with tears,
From those
beginning notes of sickness and love, there in
the transparent mist,
From the
thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the
myriad thence-aroused words,
From the word stronger and
more delicious than any,—
From such, as now they
start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering,
rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither—ere all
eludes me, hurriedly,—
A man—yet by
these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the
sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter, of pains and
joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to
use them, but swiftly leaping beyond
them,
A reminiscence sing.
2.
Once, Paumanok,
When the snows had melted, and the
fifth-month grass
was growing,
Up this sea-shore, in some briars,
Two guests from
Alabama—two together,
And their nest, and four
light-green eggs spotted with
brown;
And every day the he-bird, to
and fro, near at hand,
And every day the she-bird,
crouched on her nest, silent,
with bright eyes;
And every day I, a
curious boy, never too close, never
disturbing them,
Cautiously peering,
absorbing, translating.
3.
Shine! shine! shine!
Pour down your warmth, great
Sun!
While we bask—we two together.
Two together!
Winds blow South, or winds blow
North,
Day come white or night come black,
Home, or
rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding
no time,
If we two but keep together.
4.
Till of a sudden,
May-be killed, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest,
Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever
appeared again.
And thenceforward, all summer, in the sound of the
sea,
And at night, under the full of the moon, in calmer
weather,
Over the hoarse surging of
the sea,
Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
I
saw, I heard at intervals, the remaining one, the he-
bird,
The solitary guest from
Alabama.
5.
Blow! blow! blow!
Blow up, sea-winds, along
Paumanok’s shore!
I wait and I wait, till you
blow my mate to me.
6.
Yes, when the stars glistened,
All night long, on the
prong of a moss-scalloped stake,
Down, almost amid the
slapping waves,
Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears.
He called on his mate;
He poured forth the meanings
which I, of all men, know.
Yes, my brother, I know;
The rest might
not—but I have treasured every note;
For once, and
more than once, dimly, down to the beach
gliding,
Silent, avoiding the
moonbeams, blending myself with the
shadows,
Recalling now the obscure
shapes, the echoes, the sounds
and sights after their sorts,
The
white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with
bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listened
long and long.
Listened, to keep, to sing—now translating the
notes,
Following you, my brother.
7.
Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the
wave behind,
And again another behind, embracing and
lapping, every
one close,—
But my love soothes not me, not
me.
Low hangs the moon—it rose late;
O it is
lagging—O I think it is heavy with love, with love.
O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With
love—with love.
O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among
the breakers?
What is that little black thing I see
there in the white?
Loud! loud! loud!
Loud I call to you, my love!
High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves;
Surely you
must know who is here, is here;
You must know who I am, my love.
Low-hanging moon!
What is that dusky spot in your
brown yellow?
O it is the shape, the shape of my
mate!
O moon, do not keep her from me any longer!
Land! land! O land!
Whichever way I turn, O I think
you could give me my
mate back again, if you only would;
For I am almost
sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
O rising stars!
Perhaps the one I want so much will
rise, will rise with
some of you.
O throat! O trembling throat!
Sound clearer through
the atmosphere!
Pierce the woods, the earth;
Somewhere, listening to catch you, must be the one I want.
Shake out, carols!
Solitary here—the
night’s carols!
Carols of lonesome love!
Death’s carols!
Carols under that lagging,
yellow, waning moon!
O, under that moon, where she droops
almost down into the
sea!
O reckless, despairing carols!
But soft! sink low;
Soft! let me just murmur;
And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea;
For
somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
So
faint—I must be still, be still to listen;
But
not altogether still, for then she might not come imme-
diately to me.
Hither, my love!
Here I am! Here!
With this
just-sustained note I announce myself to you;
This gentle
call is for you, my love, for you!
Do not be decoyed elsewhere!
That is the whistle of
the wind—it is not my voice;
That is the
fluttering, the fluttering of the spray;
Those are the
shadows of leaves.
O darkness! O in vain!
O I am very sick and
sorrowful!
O brown halo in the sky, near the moon, drooping upon
the
sea!
O troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O
throbbing heart!
O all!—and I singing uselessly,
uselessly all the night!
Yet I murmur, murmur on!
O murmurs—you
yourselves make me continue to sing, I
know not why.
O past! O life! O songs of joy!
In the
air—in the woods—over fields;
Loved!
loved! loved! loved! loved!
But my love no more, no more
with me!
We two together no more!
8.
The aria sinking;
All else continuing—the
stars shining,
The winds blowing—the notes of the
bird continuous
echoing,
With angry moans the fierce
old Mother incessantly
moaning,
On the sands of
Paumanok’s shore, grey and rustling;
The yellow
half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping,
the face of the sea almost touching;
The boy ecstatic—with his bare feet the waves,
with his
hair the atmosphere, dallying,
The
love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last
tumultuously bursting;
The
aria’s meaning the ears, the soul, swiftly
depositing,
The strange tears down the cheeks
coursing;
The colloquy there—the
trio—each uttering;
The undertone—the
savage old Mother, incessantly crying,
To the
boy’s soul’s questions sullenly
timing—some
drowned secret hissing
To the
outsetting bard of love.
9.
Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Is it
indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly
to me?
For I, that was a child, my
tongue’s use sleeping,
Now I have heard
you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for—I
awake;
And already a thousand singers—a thousand
songs,
clearer, louder, and more sorrowful than
yours,
A thousand warbling echoes, have started to life
within
me,
Never to die.
O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting
me;
O solitary me, listening—never more shall I cease per-
petuating you;
Never more shall I
escape, never more, the reverbera-
tions,
Never more the cries of
unsatisfied love be absent from
me,
Never again leave me to be the
peaceful child I was
before what there, in the night,
By
the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger
there aroused—the fire, the sweet hell
within,
The unknown want, the destiny
of me.
O give me the clue! (it lurks in the night here some-
where;)
O if I am to have so much,
let me have more!
O a word! O what is my destination? I
fear it is hence-
forth chaos;—
O how joys,
dreads, convulsions, human shapes and all
shapes, spring as from graves around
me!
O phantoms! you cover all the land, and all the
sea!
O I cannot see in the dimness whether you smile
or
frown upon me;
O vapour, a look, a
word! O well-beloved!
O you dear women’s and
men’s phantoms!
A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
The word final, superior to all,
Subtle, sent
up—what is it?—I listen;
Are you
whispering it, and have been all the time, you
sea-waves?
Is that it from your
liquid rims and wet sands?
10.
Whereto answering, the Sea,
Delaying not, hurrying
not,
Whispered me through the night, and very plainly before
daybreak,
Lisped to me the low and
delicious word DEATH;
And again
Death—ever Death, Death, Death,
Hissing
melodious, neither like the bird nor like my
aroused child’s heart,
But
edging near, as privately for me, rustling at my feet,
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears, and laving me
softly all over,
Death, Death, Death,
Death, Death.
Which I do not forget,
But fuse the song of my dusky
demon and brother,
That he sang to me in the moonlight on
Paumanok’s gray
beach,
With the thousand responsive
songs, at random,
My own songs, awaked from that
hour;
And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
The word of the sweetest song, and all songs,
That strong
and delicious word which, creeping to my
feet,
The Sea whispered me.
___________
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY.
I.
FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds
of the west! sun there half an hour high! I
see you also face to face.
2.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes,
how curious you are to me!
On the
ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me
than you
suppose;
And you that shall cross
from shore to shore years hence
are more to me, and more in my
meditations, than
you might suppose.
3.
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all
hours of the day;
The simple,
compact, well-joined scheme—myself disinte-
grated, every one disintegrated, yet part
of the
scheme;
The similitudes of the past,
and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on
my smallest sights and
hearings—on the walk in the
street, and the pas-
sage over the river;
The current
rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me
far away;
The others that are to
follow me, the ties between me and
them:
The certainty of
others—the life, love, sight, hearing, of
others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from
shore to shore;
Others will watch the
run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of
Manhattan north and
west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the
south and
east;
Others will see the islands
large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them
as they cross, the
sun half an hour high;
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years
hence, others will see them,
Will
enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
falling-back to the sea of the
ebb-tide.
It avails not, neither time nor place—distance
avails not;
I am with you—you men and women of a
generation, or
ever so many generations hence;
I
project myself—also I return—I am with you,
and know
how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I
felt;
Just as any of you is one of a
living crowd, I was one of
a crowd;
Just as you are refreshed by
the gladness of the river and
the bright flow, I was refreshed;
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the
swift current, I stood, yet was
hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of
ships, and the
thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I
looked.
I too many and many a time crossed the river, the sun half
an hour high;
I watched the
twelfth-month sea-gulls—I saw them high
in the air, floating with motionless
wings, oscil-
lating their bodies,
I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies,
and left the rest in strong shadow,
I
saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging
toward the south.
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the
water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of
beams,
Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the
shape of my head in the sun-lit
water,
Looked on the haze on the hills southward and
south-
westward,
Looked on the vapour as it
flew in fleeces tinged with
violet,
Looked toward the lower bay
to notice the arriving
ships,
Saw their approach, saw aboard
those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners
and sloops, saw the ships
at anchor,
The sailors at work in the
rigging, or out astride the
spars,
The round masts, the swinging
motion of the hulls, the
slender serpentine pennants,
The
large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their
pilot-houses,
The white wake left by
the passage, the quick tremulous
whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all
nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups,
the frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey
walls of the granite store-houses by the
docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug
closely
flanked on each side by the
barges—the hay-boat,
the belated lighter,
On the
neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry
chimneys burning high and glaringly into
the
night,
Casting their flicker of
black, contrasted with wild red and
yellow light, over the tops of houses, and
down
into the clefts of streets.
These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to
you;
I project myself a moment to
tell you—also I return.
I loved well those cities;
I loved well the stately
and rapid river;
The men and women I saw were all near to
me;
Others the same—others who look back on me
because I
looked forward to them;
The time will
come, though I stop here to-day and
to-night.
What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years
between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails
not, and place
avails not,
I too lived—Brooklyn, of ample hills, was
mine;
I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed
in the waters around it;
I too felt
the curious abrupt questionings stir within me;
In the
day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came
upon me,
In my walks home late at
night, or as I lay in my bed, they
came upon me.
I too had been struck from the float forever held in
solution,
I too had received identity by my Body;
That
I was, I knew, was of my body—and what I should
be, I knew, I should be of my body.
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The
dark threw its patches down upon me also;
The best I had
done seemed to me blank and suspicious;
My great thoughts,
as I supposed them, were they not in
reality meagre? would not people laugh at
me?
It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;
I am he who knew what it was to be evil;
I too
knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabbed, blushed,
resented, lied, stole, grudged,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot
wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy,
shallow, sly, cowardly,
malignant;
The wolf, the snake, the
hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous
word, the adulterous wish,
not wanting,
Refusals, hates,
postponements, meanness, laziness, none of
these wanting.
But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!
I was
called by my nighest name by clear loud voices of
young men as they saw me approaching or
passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the
negligent
leaning of their flesh against me as I
sat,
Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or
public
assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing,
gnawing, sleeping,
Played the part
that still looks back on the actor or
actress,
The same old rôle,
the rôle that is what we make it,—as
great as we like,
Or as small as we
like, or both great and small.
Closer yet I approach you;
What thought you have of
me, I had as much of you—I
laid in my stores in advance;
I
considered long and seriously of you before you were
born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who
knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows but I am as good as
looking at you now, for
all you cannot see me?
It is not you alone, nor I alone;
Nor a few races,
nor a few generations, nor a few centuries;
It is that each
came or comes or shall come from its due
emission, without fail, either now or then
or
henceforth.
Everything indicates—the smallest does, and the largest
does;
A necessary film envelops all,
and envelops the Soul for a
proper time.
Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and
admirable to me than my mast-hemmed
Manhatta,
My river and sun-set, and my scallop-edged waves
of
flood-tide,
The sea-gulls oscillating
their bodies, the hay-boat in the
twilight, and the belated lighter;
Curious what Gods can exceed these that clasp me by the
hand, and with voices I love call me
promptly and
loudly by my nighest name as I
approach;
Curious what is more subtle than this which ties
me to the
woman or man that looks in my face,
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into
you.
We understand, then, do we not?
What I promised
without mentioning it, have you not
accepted?
What the study could not
teach—what
the preaching could
not accomplish, is accomplished, is it
not?
What the push of reading could not start, is started
by me
personally, is it not?
4.
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the
ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and
scallop-edged waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set,
drench with your splendour
me, or the men and women generations after
me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of
passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of
Mannahatta!—stand up, beautiful
hills of Brooklyn!
Bully for you! you
proud, friendly, free Manhattanese!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and
answers!
Suspend here and everywhere,
eternal float of solution!
Blab, blush, lie, steal, you or
I or anyone after us!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in
the house, or street, or
public assembly!
Sound out, voices of
young men! loudly and musically
call me by my nighest name!
Live, old
life! play the part that looks back on the actor
or actress!
Play the old
rôle, the rôle that is great or small,
according
as one makes it!
Consider, you who
peruse me, whether I may not in
unknown ways be looking upon you;
Be
firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly,
yet haste with the hasting current:
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles
high in the air;
Receive the summer
sky, you water! and faithfully hold
it, till all downcast eyes have time to
take it from
you;
Diverge, fine spokes of light,
from the shape of my head,
or anyone’s head, in the sun-lit
water;
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or
down,
white-sailed schooners, sloops,
lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly
lowered at
sunset;
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black
shadows at nightfall; cast red and yellow
light over
the tops of the houses;
Appearances,
now or henceforth, indicate what you are;
You necessary
film, continue to envelop the soul;
About my body for me,
and your body for you, be hung
our divinest aromas;
Thrive, cities!
bring your freight, bring your shows, ample
and sufficient rivers!
Expand, being
than which none else is perhaps more
spiritual!
Keep your places, objects
than which none else is more
lasting!
We descend upon you and all things—we arrest you
all;
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and
fluids;
Through you color, form,
location, sublimity, ideality;
Through you every proof,
comparison, and all the sugges-
tions and determinations of
ourselves.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful
ministers! you novices!
We receive
you with free sense at last, and are insatiate
henceforward;
Not you any more shall
be able to foil us, or withhold
yourselves from us;
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you
permanently within us;
We fathom you
not—we love you—there is perfection in
you also;
You furnish your parts
toward eternity;
Great or small, you furnish your parts
toward the soul.
___________
NIGHT AND DEATH.
I.
NIGHT on the prairies.
The supper is
over—the fire on the ground burns
low;
The wearied emigrants sleep,
wrapped in their blankets;
I walk by myself—I
stand and look at the stars, which I
think now I never realized before.
Now I absorb immortality and peace,
I admire death,
and test propositions.
How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé!
The same Old Man and Soul—the same old aspirations,
and the same content.
2.
I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the
not-day exhibited,
I was thinking
this globe enough, till there sprang out so
noiseless around me myriads of other
globes.
Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill
me, I will measure myself by them;
And now, touched with the lives of other globes, arrived
as far along as those of the earth,
Or waiting to arrive, or passed on farther than those of
the earth,
I henceforth no more
ignore them than I ignore my own
life,
Or the lives of the earth
arrived as far as mine, or waiting
to arrive.
3.
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me—as
the day
cannot,
I see that I am to wait for
what will be exhibited by
death.
___________
ELEMENTAL DRIFTS.
I.
ELEMENTAL drifts!
O I wish I could impress others as
you and the
waves have just been impressing me.
As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I
wended the shores I know,
As I walked where the sea-ripples
wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and
sibilant,
Where the fierce old Mother endlessly cries for
her cast-
aways,
I, musing, late in the autumn
day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal
self of me, out of the pride of
which I have uttered my poems,
Was
seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water
and
all the land of the globe.
Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped,
to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-
gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce,
left by the tide;
Miles walking, the
sound of breaking waves the other
side of me,
Paumanok, there and then,
as I thought the old thought
of likenesses,
These you presented to
me, you fish-shaped Island,
As I wended the shores I
know,
As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking
types.
2.
As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the
dirge, the voices of men and women
wrecked,
As I inhale the impalpable
breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious
rolls toward me closer and
closer,
I too but signify, at the
utmost, a little washed-up drift,
A few sands and dead
leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the
sands and drift.
O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth,
Oppressed
with myself that I have dared to open my
mouth,
Aware now that, amid all that
blab whose echoes recoil
upon me, I have not once had the least
idea who
or what I am,
But that before all my insolent poems, the real M
E stands
yet untouched, untold, altogether
unreached,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with
mock-congratulatory
signs and bows,
With peals of distant
ironical laughter at every word I
have written,
Pointing in silence to
these songs, and then to the sand
beneath.
Now I perceive I have not really understood
anything—not a
single object—and that no man
ever can.
I perceive Nature, here in sight of the sea, is taking
advantage of me, to dart upon me, and
sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at
all.
3.
You oceans both! I close with you;
These little
shreds shall, indeed, stand for all.
You friable shore, with trails of debris!
You
fish-shaped Island, I take what is underfoot;
What is yours
is mine, my father.
I too, Paumanok,
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and
been washed on your shores;
I too am
but a trail of drift and debris,
I too leave little wrecks
upon you, you fish-shaped Island.
I throw myself upon your breast, my father,
I cling
to you so that you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm
till you answer me something.
Kiss me, my father,
Touch me with your lips, as I
touch those I love,
Breathe to me, while I hold you close,
the secret of the
wondrous murmuring I envy.
4.
Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)
Cease not
your moaning, you fierce old Mother,
Endlessly cry for your
castaways—but fear not, deny not
me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry
against my feet, as I
touch you, or gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you,
I gather for myself, and for
this phantom, looking down
where we lead, and following me and
mine.
Me and mine!
We, loose winrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See! from my dead
lips the ooze exuding at last!
See—the prismatic
colours, glistening and rolling!)
Tufts of straw, sands,
fragments,
Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting
another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the
swell;
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid
or soil;
Up just as much out of
fathomless workings fermented
and thrown;
A limp blossom or two,
torn, just as much over waves
floating, drifted at random;
Just as
much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature;
Just as much,
whence we come, that blare of the cloud-
trumpets;
We, capricious, brought
hither, we know not whence,
spread out before you,
You, up there,
walking or sitting,
Whoever you are—we too lie in
drifts at your feet.
___________
WONDERS.
I.
WHO learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman,
apprentice—churchman and
atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker—parents and offspring—
merchant, clerk, porter, and
customer,
Editor, author, artist, and
schoolboy—Draw nigh and
commence;
It is no lesson—it
lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another,
and every one to another still.
2.
The great laws take and effuse without argument;
I am
of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits
and quits—I do not halt and make
salaams.
I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the
reasons of things;
They are so
beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
I cannot say to any
person what I hear—I cannot say it to
myself—it is very wonderful.
It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe,
moving so exactly in its orbit for ever
and ever,
without one jolt, or the untruth of a
single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor
in ten thousand
years, nor ten billions of years,
Nor
planned and built one thing after another, as an
architect plans and builds a house.
I
do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or
woman,
Nor that years will ever stop
the existence of me, or any
one else.
3.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is
immortal;
I know it is
wonderful—but my eye-sight is equally
wonderful, and how I was conceived in my
mother’s
womb is equally wonderful;
And passed
from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple
of summers and winters, to articulate and
walk—
All this is equally wonderful.
And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect
each other without ever seeing each other,
and
never perhaps to see each other, is every
bit as
wonderful.
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as
wonderful;
And that I can remind you,
and you think them and know
them to be true, is just as
wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth, and on
with the
earth, is equally wonderful;
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars
is equally wonderful.
___________
MIRACLES.
I.
What shall I give? and which are my miracles?
2.
Realism is mine—my miracles—Take
freely,
Take without end—I offer them to you
wherever your
feet can carry you, or you eyes
reach.
3.
Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of
nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of
Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the
sky,
Or wade with naked feet along
the beach, just in the edge
of the water,
Or stand under trees in
the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in
the bed
at night with any one I love,
Or sit
at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at
strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch
honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer
forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the
fields,
Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects
in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the
sun-down—or of stars shining
so quiet and bright,
Or the
exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in
spring;
Or whether I go among those I
like best, and that like
me best—mechanics, boatmen,
farmers,
Or among the savans—or to the
soirée—or to the opera,
Or stand a
long while looking at the movements of ma-
chinery,
Or behold children at their
sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or
the
perfect old woman,
Or the sick in
hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes
and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and
all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring—yet
each distinct and in its place.
4.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard
of the surface of the earth is spread
with the same,
Every cubic foot of
the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of
grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men
and women, and all that concerns
them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect
miracles.
To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that
swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves
—the ships, with men in
them,
What stranger miracles are there?
___________
VISAGES.
OF the visages of things—And of piercing through to
the accepted hells beneath.
Of
ugliness—To me there is just as much in it as
there
is in beauty—And now the ugliness
of human
beings is acceptable to me.
Of
detected persons—To me, detected persons are not,
in
any respect, worse than undetected
persons—and
are not in any respect worse than I am
myself.
Of criminals—To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally
criminal—and any reputable person
is also—and
the President is also.
___________
THE DARK SIDE.
I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
and upon all oppression and shame;
I
hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at
anguish with themselves, remorseful after
deeds
done;
I see, in low life, the mother
misused by her children,
dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I
see the wife misused by her husband—I see the
trea-
cherous seducer of young women;
I
mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love,
attempted to be hid—I see these
sights on the
earth;
I see the workings of battle,
pestilence, tyranny—I see
martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a
famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting
lots who shall be killed, to preserve the
lives of the
rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant
persons upon labourers, the poor, and upon
negroes,
and the like;
All these—All
the meanness and agony without end, I
sitting, look out upon,
See, hear,
and am silent.
___________
MUSIC.
I HEARD you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last
Sunday morn I passed the church;
Winds of autumn!—as I walked the woods at dusk, I
heard your long-stretched sighs, up above,
so
mournful;
I heard the perfect Italian
tenor, singing at the opera—I
heard the soprano in the midst of the
quartet
singing.
...Heart of my
love!—you too I heard, murmuring low,
through one of the wrists around my
head;
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing
little
bells last night under my ear.
___________
WHEREFORE?
O ME! O life!...of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled
with the foolish;
Of myself forever
reproaching myself, (for who more
foolish than I, and who more
faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the
light—of the objects mean—
of the struggle ever renewed;
Of the
poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid
crowds I see around me;
Of the empty
and useless years of the rest—with the rest
me intertwined;
The question, O me!
so sad, recurring—What good amid
these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists, and
identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you may
contribute a
verse.
___________
QUESTIONABLE.
AS I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,
The
confession I made I resume—what I said to
you and the open air I resume.
I know
I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are
weapons, full of danger, full of
death;
(Indeed I am myself the real
soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and no the
red-striped
artilleryman;)
For I confront peace,
security, and all the settled laws, to
unsettle them;
I am more resolute
because all have denied me than I
could ever have been had all accepted
me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either
experience,
cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing
to me;
And the lure of what is called
heaven is little or nothing
to me.
...Dear camerado! I confess I
have urged you onward
with me, and still urge you, without the
least idea
what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quelled and
defeated.
___________
SONG AT SUNSET.
I.
SPLENDOUR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour
prophetic—hour resuming the past!
Inflating my
throat—you, divine Average!
You, Earth and Life,
till the last ray gleams, I sing.
2.
Open mouth of my soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my
soul, seeing perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully
praising things;
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.
3.
Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name
space—sphere of unnumbered
spirits;
Illustrious the mystery of
motion, in all beings, even the
tiniest insect;
Illustrious the
attribute of speech—the senses—the body;
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection
on the new moon in the western sky!
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the
last.
Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of
animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the
hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of
manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,
In the superb vistas of Death.
Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to be here!
The
heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood,
To breathe
the air, how delicious!
To speak! to walk! to seize
something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for
bed—to look on my rose-colored
flesh,
To be conscious of my body, so
happy, so large,
To be this incredible God I am,
To
have gone forth among other Gods—these men and
women I love.
Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my
thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the
clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon,
stars, dart on and on!
How the water
sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise
and stand up—with strong trunks—
with branches and leaves!
Surely
there is something more in each of the trees—some
living soul.
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O
spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through
ages and continents—
now reaching me and America!
I take
your strong chords—I intersperse them, and cheer-
fully pass them forward.
I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now,
setting,
I too throb to the brain and
beauty of the earth, and of
all the growths of the earth,
I too
have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I sailed down the Mississippi,
As I wandered over
the prairies,
As I have lived—As I have looked
through my windows,
my eyes,
As I went forth in the
morning—As I beheld the light
breaking in the east;
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again
on the beach of the Western Sea;
As I
roamed the streets of inland Chicago—whatever
streets I have roamed;
Wherever I
have been, I have charged myself with con-
tentment and triumph.
4.
I sing the Equalities;
I sing the endless finales of
things;
I say Nature continues—Glory
continues;
I praise with electric voice:
For I do not
see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one
cause or result lamentable at last in
the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still
warble under you unmitigated adoration.
___________
LONGINGS FOR HOME
O MAGNET South! O glistening, perfumed South!
my South!
O quick mettle, rich blood,
impulse, and love! good and
evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things—all moving things, and
the trees where I was born,* the grains,
plants,
rivers;
Dear to me my own slow
sluggish rivers, where they flow
distant over flats of slivery sands or
through
swamps;
Dear to me the Roanoke, the
Savannah, the Altamahaw,
the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the
Coosa,
and the Sabine—
O pensive,
far away wandering, I return with my soul to
haunt their banks again.
Again in
Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on
Okeechobee—I cross the hummock
land, or through
pleasant openings or dense forests.
I
see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw tree, and
the blossoming titi.
Again, sailing
in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia,
I coast up the Carolinas;
I see where
the live-oak is growing—I see where the
yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the
lemon and
orange, the cypress, the graceful
palmetto.
I pass rude sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico
Sound
through an inlet, and dart my vision
inland;
* These expressions cannot be understood in a
literal sense, for
Whitman was born, not in the South, but
in the State of New York.
The precise sense to be attached
to them may be open to some
difference of opinion.
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar,
hemp!
The cactus, guarded with
thorns—the laurel-tree, with
large white flowers;
The range
afar—the richness and barrenness—the old
woods charged with mistletoe and trailing
moss,
The piney odor and the gloom—the awful
natural stillness,
(Here in these dense swamps the
free-booter carries
his gun, and the fugitive slave has his
concealed
hut;)
O the strange fascination of
these half-known, half-
impassable swamps, infested by reptiles,
resounding
with the bellow of the alligator, the sad
noises of
the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the
whirr of the
rattlesnake;
The mocking-bird, the
American mimic, singing all the
forenoon—singing through the
moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the
raccoon, the
opossum;
A Tennessee
corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leaved corn
—slender, flapping, bright green,
with tassels—
with beautiful ears, each well-sheathed in
its husk;
An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or
still bayou.
O my heart! O tender and fierce
pangs—I can stand them
not—I will depart!
O to be a
Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Caro-
linian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennes-
see, and never wander more!
___________
APPEARANCES.
OF the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the
uncertainty after all—that we may be
deluded,
That may-be reliance and
hope are but speculations after
all,
That may-be identity beyond the
grave is a beautiful fable
only,
May-be the things I
perceive—the animals, plants, men,
hills, shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night—colours, densities,
forms—
May-be these are (as doubtless they are)
only
apparitions, and the real something has
yet to be
known;
(How often they dart out of
themselves, as if to confound
me and mock me!
How often I think
neither I know, nor any man knows,
aught of them!)
May-be seeming to me
what they are (as doubtless they
indeed but seem) as from my present point
of view
—And might prove (as of course
they would)
nought of what they appear, or nought any
how,
from entirely changed points of view;
—To me, these, and the like of these, are curiously
answered
by my lovers, my dear friends,
When
he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while
holding me by the hand,
When the
subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words
and reason hold not, surround us and
pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable
wisdom—I
am silent—I require nothing
further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances, or
that of
identity beyond the grave;
But I walk
or sit indifferent—I am satisfied,
He ahold of my
hand has completely satisfied me.
___________
THE FRIEND.
RECORDERS ages hence!
Come, I will take you down
underneath this im-
passive exterior—I will tell you
what to say
of me,
Publish my name and hang up my
picture as that of the
tenderest lover,
The friend, the lover’s portrait, of whom his
friend, his
lover, was fondest,
Who was not proud
of his songs, but of the measureless
ocean of love within him—and
freely poured it
forth,
Who often walked lonesome
walks, thinking of his dear
friends, his lovers,
Who pensive,
away from one he loved, often lay sleepless
and dissatisfied at night,
Who knew
too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he
loved might secretly be indifferent to
him,
Whose happiest days were far away, through fields,
in
woods, on hills, he and another, wandering
hand in
hand, they twain, apart from other
men,
Who oft as he sauntered the streets, curved with his
arm
the shoulder of his friend—while
the arm of his
friend rested upon him also.
___________
MEETING AGAIN.
WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name
had been received with plaudits in the
capitol,
still it was not a happy night for me
that
followed;
And else, when I caroused, or when my plans were accom-
plished, still I was not happy.
But
the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect
health, refreshed, singing, inhaling the
ripe breath
of autumn,
When I saw the full moon
in the west grow pale and dis-
appear in the morning light,
When I
wandered alone over the beach, and undressing
bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and
saw the
sun rise,
And when I thought how my
dear friend, my lover, was
on his way coming, O then I was
happy;
O then each breath tasted sweeter—and all
that day my
food nourished me more—and the
beautiful day
passed well,
And the next came with
equal joy—and with the next, at
evening, came my friend;
And that
night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll
slowly continually up the shores,
I
heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as
directed to me, whispering, to
congratulate me;
For the one I love most lay sleeping by
me under the
same cover in the cool night,
In the
stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was
inclined toward me,
And his arm lay
lightly around my breast—and that
night I was happy.
A DREAM.
OF him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he
was dead;
And I dreamed I went where
they had buried him I love
—but he was not in that
place;
And I dreamed I wandered, searching among
burial-
places, to find him;
And I found that
every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life
were equally full of death, (this
house is now;)
The streets, the
shipping, the places of amusement, the
Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the
Mannahatta,
were as full of the dead as of the
living,
And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of
the
living.
—And what I dreamed
I will henceforth tell to every
person and age,
And I stand
henceforth bound to what I dreamed;
And now I am willing
to disregard burial-places, and
dispense with them;
And if the
memorials of the dead were put up indifferently
everywhere, even in the room where I eat
or sleep
I should be satisfied;
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse,
be duly rendered to powder, and poured in
the
sea, I shall be satisfied;
Or if it
be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.
___________
PARTING FRIENDS.
WHAT think you I take my pen in hand to record?
The
battle-ship, perfect-modeled, majestic, that I
saw pass the offing to-day under full
sail?
The splendours of the past day? Or the splendour of
the
night that envelops me?
Or the
vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread
around me?—No;
But I record
of two simple men I saw to-day, on the pier,
in the midst of the crowd, parting the
parting of
dear friends;
The one to remain hung
on the other’s neck, and passion-
ately kissed him,
While the one to
depart tightly pressed the one to remain
in his arms.
___________
TO A STRANGER.
PASSING stranger! you do no know how longingly
I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it
comes to me, as of a dream).
I have
somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is
recalled as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
chaste, matured,
You grew up with me,
were a boy with me, or a girl with
me,
I ate with you, and slept with
you—your body has
become not yours only, nor left my body
mine
only,
You give me the pleasure of
your eyes, face, flesh, as we
pass—you take of my beard,
breast, hands, in
return,
I am not to speak to
you—I am to think of you when I
sit alone, or wake at night alone,
I
am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
___________
OTHER LANDS.
THIS moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me there are other men in other lands,
yearning and thoughtful;
It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in
Prussia, Italy, France, Spain—or
far, far away,
in China, or in Russia or
India—talking other
dialects;
And it seems to me if I
could know those men, I should
become attached to them, as I do to men in
my
own lands.
O I know we should be
brethren and lovers,
I know I should be happy with
them.
___________
ENVY.
WHEN I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and
the victories of mighty generals, I do not
envy the
generals,
Nor the President in his
Presidency, nor the rich in his
great house.
But when I read of the
brotherhood of lovers, how it was
with them,
How through life, through
dangers, odium, unchanging,
long and long,
Through youth, and
through middle and old age, how
unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful
they were,
Then I am pensive—I hastily put down
the book, and
walk away, filled with the bitterest
envy.
THE CITY OF FRIENDS.
I DREAMED in a dream I saw a city invincible to the
attacks of the whole of the rest of the
earth;
I dreamed that was the new City of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love
—it led the rest;
It was
seen every hour in the actions of the men of that
city,
And in all their looks and
words.
___________
OUT OF THE CROWD.
I.
OUT of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop
gently to me,
Whispering, I love
you, before long I die:
I have traveled a long way,
merely to look on you, to touch
you,
For I could not die till I once looked on
you,
For I feared I might afterward lose you.
2.
Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe;
Return
in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that
ocean, my love—we are not so much
separated;
Behold the great
rondure—the cohesion of all, how per-
fect!
But as for me, for you, the
irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour
carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us
diverse for ever;
Be not
impatient—a little space—know you, I salute
the
air, the ocean, and the land,
Every
day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.
___________
AMONG THE MULTITUDE.
AMONG the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive
one picking me out by secret and divine
signs,
Acknowledging none
else—not parent, wife, husband,
brother, child, any nearer than I am;
Some are baffled—But that one is not—that one
knows
me.
Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by faint in-
directions;
And I, when I meet you,
mean to discover you by the like
in you.
LEAVES OF GRASS.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S FUNERAL HYMN.
I.
WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the
great star* early drooped in the western
sky in the night,
I mourned ... and
yet shall mourn with ever-returning
spring.
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you
bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the
west,
And thought of him I love.
2.
O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night!
O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared! O the
black murk that hides
the star!
* "The evening star, which, as many may
remember, night after
night, in the early part of that
eventful spring, hung low in the west
with unusual and
tender brightness."—JOHN BURROUGHS.
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of
me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that
will not free my soul!
3.
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the
whitewashed palings,
Stands the lilac
bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped
leaves of rich green,
With many a
pointed blossom, rising delicate, with the
perfume strong I love,
With every
leaf a miracle: and from this bush in the
door-yard,
With delicate-coloured
blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves
of rich green,
A sprig, with its
flower, I break.
4.
In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden
bird is warbling a song.
Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to
himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song:
Song of the bleeding throat!
Death’s outlet
song of life—for well, dear brother, I know,
If
thou wast not granted to sing, thou wouldst surely die.
5.
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes, and through old woods, where lately the
violets peeped from the ground, spotting
the grey
debris;
Amid the grass in the fields
each side of the lanes—passing
the endless grass;
Passing the
yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its
shroud in the dark-brown fields
uprising;
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink
in the
orchards;
Carrying a corpse to where
it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a
coffin.
6.
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through
day and night, with the great cloud darkening
the land,
With the pomp of the
inlooped flags, with the cities draped
in black,
With the show of the States
themselves as of crape-veiled
women standing,
With processions long
and winding, and the flambeaus of
the night,
With the countless torches
lit—with the silent sea of faces,
and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre
faces,
With dirges through the night,
with the thousand voices
rising strong and solemn;
With all
the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around
the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and
the shuddering organs—Where
amid these you journey,
With the
tolling, tolling bells’ perpetual clang;
Here!
coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of
lilac.
7.
Nor for you, for one, alone;
Blossoms and branches
green to coffins all I bring;
For fresh as the
morning—thus would I chant a song for
you, O sane and sacred Death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O Death! I cover you over
with roses and early lilies;
But mostly and now the lilac
that blooms the first,
Copious, I break, I break the sprigs
from the bushes:
With loaded arms I come, pouring for
you,
For you and the coffins all of you, O Death.
8.
O western orb, sailing the heaven!
Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since
we walked,
As we walked up and down
in the dark blue so mystic,
As we walked in silence the
transparent shadowy
night,
As I saw you had something to
tell, as you bent to me
night after night,
As you drooped
from the sky low down, as if to my side,
while the other stars all looked on;
As we wandered together the solemn night, for something,
I know not what, kept me from sleep;
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west,
ere you went, how full you were of
woe;
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the
cool
transparent night,
As I watched where
you passed and was lost in the nether-
ward black of the night,
As my soul,
in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you,
sad orb,
Concluded, dropped in the
night, and was gone.
9.
Sing on, there in the swamp!
O singer bashful and
tender! I hear your notes—I hear
your call;
I hear—I come
presently—I understand you;
But a moment I linger—for the lustrous star has detained
me;
The star, my comrade departing,
holds and detains me.
10.
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I
loved?
And how shall I deck my song
for the large sweet soul
that has gone?
And what shall my
perfume be for the grave of him I
love?
Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
Blown from the
eastern sea, and blown from the western
sea, till there on the prairies
meeting:
These, and with these, and the breath of my
chant,
I perfume the grave of him I love.
11.
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what
shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn
the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,
With the fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey
smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent,
sinking sun, burning, expanding the
air;
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the
pale
green leaves of the trees prolific;
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the
river,
with a wind-dapple here and there;
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against
the sky, and shadows;
And the city at
hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks
of chimneys,
And all the scenes of
life, and the workshops, and the
workmen homeward returning.
12.
Lo! body and soul! this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with
spires, and the sparkling and
hurrying tides, and the ships;
The
varied and ample land—the South and the North in
the light—Ohio’s
shores, and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading
prairies, covered with grass
and corn.
Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty;
The
violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes:
The gentle,
soft-born, measureless light;
The miracle, spreading,
bathing all—the fulfilled noon;
The coming eve, delicious—the welcome night, and the
stars,
Over my cities shining all,
enveloping man and land.
13.
Sing on! sing on, you grey-brown bird!
Sing from the
swamps, the recesses—pour your chant from
the bushes;
Limitless out of the
dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother—warble your reedy
song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid, and free, and tender!
O wild and loose to
my soul! O wondrous singer!
You only I hear ...... yet the
star holds me, (but will soon
depart;)
Yet the lilac, with
mastering odour, holds me.
14.
Now while I sat in the day and looked forth,
In the
close of the day, with its light, and the fields of
spring, and the farmer preparing his
crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with
its
lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds,
and the storms;
Under the arching
heavens of the afternoon swift passing,
and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides,—and I saw the ships
how
they sailed,
And the summer
approaching with richness, and the fields
all busy with labour,
And the
infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each
with its meals and minutiæ of
daily usages;
And the streets, how their throbbings
throbbed, and the
cities pent—lo! then and
there,
Falling upon them all, and among them all,
enveloping me
with the rest,
Appeared the cloud,
appeared the long black trail;
And I knew Death, its
thought, and the sacred knowledge
of Death.
15.
Then with the Knowledge of Death as walking one side of
me,
And the Thought of Death
close-walking the other side of
me,
And I in the middle, as with
companions, and as holding
the hands of companions,
I fled forth
to the hiding receiving night, that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp
in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy
cedars, and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me;
The
grey-brown bird I know received us Comrades three;
And he
sang what seemed the song of Death, and a verse
for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant
cedars, and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the singing of
the bird.
And the charm of the singing rapt me,
As I held, as
if by their hands, my Comrades in the night;
And the voice
of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
16.
Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the
world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the
night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death.
Praised be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy,
and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet
love—But praise! O praise and praise,
For the
sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then
I chant it for thee—I glorify thee above all;
I
bring thee a song that, when thou must indeed come,
come unfalteringly.
Approach, encompassing Death—strong
deliveress!
When it is so—when thou hast taken
them, I joyously
sing the dead,
Lost in the loving,
floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O
Death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I
propose, saluting thee—adornments and
feastings for thee;
And the sights of
the open landscape, and the high-spread
sky, are fitting,
And life and the
fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night, in silence, under many a star;
The ocean
shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose
voice I know;
And the soul turning to
thee, O vast and well-veiled Death,
And the body
gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song!
Over the
rising and sinking waves—over the myriad
fields, and the prairies wide;
Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves
and ways,
I float this carol with
joy, with joy, to thee, O Death!
17.
To the tally of my soul
Loud and strong kept up the
grey-brown bird,
With pure, deliberate notes, spreading,
filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the
freshness moist, and the swamp-perfume;
And I with my
Comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As
to long panoramas of visions.
18.
I saw the vision of armies;
And I saw, as in
noiseless dreams, hundreds of battle-
flags;
Borne through the smoke of the
battles, and pierced with
missiles, I saw them,
And carried
hither and yon through the smoke, and torn
and bloody;
And at last but a few shreds of the flags left on the staffs,
(and all in silence,)
And the staffs
all splintered and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white
skeletons of young men—I saw them;
I saw the
debris and debris of all dead soldiers.
But I saw they were
not as was thought;
They themselves were fully at
rest—they suffered not;
The living remained and
suffered—the mother suffered,
And the wife and the
child, and the musing comrade
suffered,
And the armies that
remained suffered.
19.
Passing the visions, passing the night;
Passing,
unloosing the hold of my Comrades’ hands;
Passing
the song of the hermit bird, and the tallying song
of my soul,
Victorious song,
Death’s outlet song, yet varying, ever-
altering song;
As low and wailing,
yet clear, the notes, rising and falling,
flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and
fainting, as warning and warning, and
yet again bursting with joy,
Covering
the earth, and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that
powerful psalm in the night, I heard from recesses.
20.
Must I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves?
Must I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming,
returning with spring?
Must I pass from my song for thee—
From my
gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west,
communing with thee,
O comrade
lustrous, with silver face in the night?
21.
Yet each I keep, and all;
The song, the wondrous
chant of the grey-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the
echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping
star, with the countenance
full of woe;
With the lilac tall, and
its blossoms of mastering odour;
Comrades mine, and I in
the midst, and their memory
ever I keep—for the dead I loved
so well:
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands...
and this for his dear sake;
With the
holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the
bird,
There in the fragrant pines,
and the cedars dusk and dim.
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
(FOR THE DEATH
OF LINCOLN.)
I.
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!
The
ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we
sought is won.
The port is near, the
bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes
the steady keel, the vessel grim and
daring.
But, O heart! heart! heart!
Leave you not the little spot
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells!
Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle
trills:
For you bouquets and ribboned
wreaths, for you the
shores a-crowding:
For you they call,
the swaying mass, their eager faces
turning.
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm I push beneath you!
It is some dream that on the deck
You’ve fallen cold and
dead!
3.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and
still:
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor
will.
But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed
and done:
From fearful trip the
victor ship comes in with object
won!
Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!
But I, with silent tread,
Walk the spot my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
___________
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!
I.
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow
well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your
pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
2.
For we cannot tarry here,
We must
march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of
danger,
We, the youthful sinewy
races, all the rest on us depend.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
3.
O you youths, western youths,
So
impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and
friendship,
Plain I see you, western
youths, see you tramping with
the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
4.
Have the elder races halted?
Do
they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there
beyond the seas?
We take up the
task eternal, and the burden, and the
lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
5.
All the past we leave behind;
We
debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world;
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and
the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
6.
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains
steep,
Conquering, holding,
daring, venturing, as we go, the
unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
7.
We primeval forests felling,
We
the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep
the mines within;
We the surface
broad surveying, we the virgin soil up-
heaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
8.
Colorado men are we,
From the
peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the
high plateaus,
From the mine
and from the gully, from the hunting trail
we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
9.
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the
con-
tinental blood interveined;
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern,
all
the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
10.
O resistless, restless race!
O
beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender
love for all!
O I mourn and
yet exult—I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
11.
Raise the mighty mother
mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over
all the starry
mistress, (bend your heads
all,)
Raise the fanged and warlike mistress,
stern, impassive,
weaponed mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
12.
See, my children, resolute
children,
By those swarms upon our rear, we must
never yield or
falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there
behind us
urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
13.
On and on, the compact
ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the
places of the dead
quickly filled,
Through the
battle, through defeat, moving yet and never
stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
14.
O to die advancing on!
Are
there some of us to droop and die? has the hour
come?
Then upon the march
we fittest die, soon and sure the
gap is filled,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
15.
All the pulses of the
world,
Falling in, they beat for us, with the
western movement
beat;
Holding single or
together, steady moving, to the front,
all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
16.
Life’s involved and
varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all
the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and
the landsmen, all the masters with
their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
17.
All the hapless silent
lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons,
all the righteous and the
wicked,
All the joyous,
all the sorrowing, all the living, all the
dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
18.
I too with my soul and
body,
We, a curious trio, picking,
wandering on our way,
Through these shores,
amid the shadows, with the
apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
19.
Lo! the darting bowling
orb!
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the
clustering sons and
planets;
All the dazzling days, all the mystic
nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
20.
These are of us, they are
with us,
All for primal needed work,
while the followers there in
embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we
the route for travel
clearing,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
21.
O you daughters of the
west!
O you young and elder daughters! O
you mothers and
you wives!
Never
must you be divided, in our ranks you
move
united,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
22.
Minstrels latent on the
prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other
lands! you may sleep—you
have done your
work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling,
soon you rise and
tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
23.
Not for delectations
sweet;
Not the cushion and the
slipper, not the peaceful and the
studious;
Not the
riches safe and palling, not for us the
tame en-
joyment,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
24.
Do the feasters
gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent
sleepers sleep? have they locked and
bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the
blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
25.
Has the night
descended?
Was the road of late so
toilsome? did we stop discouraged,
nodding on our
way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you
in your tracks to pause
oblivious,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
26.
Till with sound of
trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak
call—hark! how loud and
clear
I hear it
wind;
Swift! to the head of the
army!—swift! spring to your
places,
Pioneers! O
pioneers!
___________
TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS
I.
EARTH, round, rolling,
compact—suns, moons, ani-
mals—all
these are words to be said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid
advances—beings, premoni-
tions, lispings of
the future,
Behold! these are vast
words to be said.
Were you thinking that those were
the words—those up-
right lines? those
curves, angles, dots?
No, those
are not the words—the
substantial words are in
the ground and
sea,
They are in the
air—they are in you.
Were you thinking that those were
the words—those
delicious sounds
out of your friends’
mouths?
No, the real words are
more delicious than they.
Human bodies are words, myriads of
words;
In the best poems re-appears
the body, man’s or woman’s,
well-shaped,
natural, gay,
Every part able, active,
receptive, without shame or the
need of
shame.
Air, soil, water,
fire—these are words;
I
myself am a word with them—my
qualities inter-
penetrate with
theirs—my name is nothing
to
them;
Though
it were told in the three thousand
languages,
what would air,
soil, water, fire, know of my
name?
A healthy presence, a friendly or
commanding gesture,
are words,
sayings, meanings;
The charms that
go with the mere looks of some men
and
women are sayings
and meanings also.
2.
The workmanship of souls is by the
inaudible words of
the earth;
The great masters know the
earth’s words, and use
them
more than the
audible words.
Amelioration is one of the
earth’s words;
The earth
neither lags nor hastens;
It has
all attributes, growths, effects, latent
in itself from
the jump;
It is not half beautiful
only—defects and excrescences
show just as much
as perfections show.
The earth does not withhold, it is
generous enough;
The truths of the
earth continually wait, they are not so
concealed
either;
They are calm, subtle,
untransmissible by print;
They are
imbued through all things, conveying
them-
selves
willingly,
Conveying a sentiment
and invitation of the earth. I
utter
and utter:
I
speak not, yet if you hear me not, of
what avail am I to
you?
To
bear—to better; lacking these,
of what avail am I?
Accouche! Accouchez!
Will you
rot your own fruit in yourself
there?
Will you squat and stifle there?
The earth does not argue,
Is
not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade,
threaten, promise,
Makes no
discriminations, has no conceivable
failures,
Closes nothing, refuses
nothing, shuts none out,
Of all the
powers, objects, states, it notifies,
shuts none
out.
The earth does not exhibit itself,
nor refuse to exhibit
itself—possesses still
underneath;
Underneath the
ostensible sounds, the august chorus
of
heroes, the wail
of slaves,
Persuasions of lovers,
curses, gasps of the dying,
laughter
of young people,
accents of bargainers,
Underneath
these, possessing words that never
fail.
To her children, the words of the
eloquent dumb great
mother never
fail;
The true words do not fail,
for motion does not fail, and
reflection does
not fail;
Also the day and night
do not fail, and the voyage we
pursue does not
fail.
3.
Of the interminable sisters,
Of the ceaseless cotillons of
sisters,
Of the centripetal and
centrifugal sisters, the elder and
younger
sisters,
The beautiful sister we
know dances on with the rest.
With her ample back towards every
beholder,
With the fascinations of
youth, and the equal fascinations
of age,
Sits
she whom I too love like the
rest—sits undisturbed,
Holding up in her hand what has
the character of a mirror,
while her eyes
glance back from it,
Glance as she
sits, inviting none, denying none,
Holding a mirror day and night
tirelessly before her own
face.
Seen at hand, or seen at a
distance,
Duly the twenty-four
appear in public every day,
Duly
approach and pass with their companions,
or a
companion,
Looking from no countenances of their
own, but from the
countenances of
those who are with them,
From the
countenances of children or women, or
the
manly
countenance,
From the open
countenances of animals, or from
inanimate
things,
From
the landscape or waters, or from the
exquisite ap-
parition of the
sky,
From our countenances, mine
and yours, faithfully re-
turning
them,
Every day in public
appearing without fail, but never
twice with the
same companions.
Embracing man, embracing all,
proceed the three hundred
and sixty-five
resistlessly round the sun;
Embracing all, soothing, supporting,
follow close three
hundred and
sixty-five offsets of the first, sure
and
necessary as
they.
Tumbling on steadily, nothing
dreading,
Sunshine, storm, cold,
heat, forever withstanding, passing,
carrying,
The Soul’s realization and
determination still inheriting;
The fluid vacuum around and ahead
still entering and
dividing,
No
baulk retarding, no anchor anchoring,
on no rock
striking,
Swift, glad, content, unbereaved,
nothing losing,
Of all able and
ready at any time to give strict
account,
The divine ship sails
the divine sea.
4.
Whoever you are! motion and
reflection are especially
for you;
The
divine ship sails the divine sea for
you.
Whoever you are! you are he or
she for whom the earth
is solid and
liquid,
You are he or she for
whom the sun and moon hang in
the sky;
For
none more than you are the present and
the past,
For none more than you
is immortality.
Each man to himself, and each
woman to herself, such is
the word of the
past and present, and the word of
immortality;
No one can acquire for
another—not one!
Not one
can grow for another—not one!
The song is to the singer, and
comes back most to him;
The
teaching is to the teacher, and comes
back most to
him;
The
murder is to the murderer, and comes
back most to
him;
The
theft is to the thief, and comes back
most to him;
The love is to the
lover, and comes back most to
him;
The gift is to the giver,
and comes back most to
him—it
cannot fail;
The oration is to the orator, the
acting is to the actor and
actress, not to
the audience;
And no man
understands any greatness or goodness
but
his own, or the
indication of his own.
5.
I swear the earth shall surely be
complete to him or her
who shall be
complete!
I swear the earth
remains jagged and broken only to
him
or her who
remains broken and jagged!
I swear there is no greatness or
power that does not
emulate those of
the earth!
I swear there can be
no theory of any account, unless
it
corroborate the
theory of the earth!
No politics, art, religion,
behaviour, or what not, is of
account, unless
it compare with the amplitude of
the earth,
Unless it face the exactness,
vitality, impartiality, rectitude
of the
earth.
I swear I begin to see love with
sweeter spasms than that
which responds
love!
It is that which contains
itself—which never invites,
and
never
refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or
nothing in audible words!
I swear
I think all merges toward the
presentation of the
unspoken meanings
of the earth!
Toward him who
sings the songs of the Body, and of
the
truths of the
earth;
Toward him who makes the
dictionaries of words that
print cannot
touch.
I swear I see what is better than
to tell the best;
It is always to
leave the best untold.
When I undertake to tell the
best, I find I cannot,
My tongue
is ineffectual on its pivots,
My
breath will not be obedient to its
organs,
I become a dumb man.
The best of the earth cannot be
told anyhow—all or any
is best;
It
is not what you
anticipated—it is cheaper,
easier,
nearer;
Things are not dismissed from the
places they held
before;
The
earth is just as positive and direct
as it was before;
Facts,
religions, improvements, politics,
trades, are as real
as before;
But the Soul is also real,—it
too is positive and direct;
No
reasoning, no proof has established
it,
Undeniable growth has
established it.
6.
This is a poem for the sayers of
words—these are hints of
meanings,
These are they that echo the tones of
souls, and the
phrases of
souls;
If they did not echo the
phrases of souls, what were they
then?
If
they had not reference to you in
especial, what were
they then?
I swear I will never henceforth
have to do with the faith
that tells the
best!
I will have to do only with that
faith that leaves the best
untold.
7.
Say on, sayers!
Delve!
mould! pile the words of the
earth!
Work on—it is
materials you bring, not breaths;
Work on, age after age! nothing is to
be lost;
It may have to wait long,
but it will certainly come in
use;
When
the materials are all prepared, the
architects shall
appear.
I swear to you the architects
shall appear without fail! I
announce them and
lead them;
I swear to you they
will understand you and justify
you;
I swear to you the greatest
among them shall be he who
best knows you,
and encloses all, and is faithful
to all;
I
swear to you, he and the rest shall
not forget you—
they shall
perceive that you are not an iota
less
than they;
I
swear to you, you shall be fully
glorified in them.
___________
VOICES
I.
NOW I make a leaf of
Voices—for I have found
nothing mightier
than they are,
And I have found
that no word spoken but is
beautiful
in its
place.
2.
O what is it in me that makes me
tremble so at voices?
Surely,
whoever speaks to me in the right
voice, him or
her I shall
follow,
As the water follows the
moon, silently, with fluid steps
any where around
the globe.
All waits for the right
voices;
Where is the practised and
perfect organ? Where is the
developed
Soul?
For I see every word
uttered thence has deeper,
sweeter,
new sounds,
impossible on less terms.
I see brains and lips
closed—tympans and temples un-
struck,
Until that comes which has the
quality to strike and to
unclose,
Until that comes which has the quality
to bring forth what
lies slumbering,
forever ready, in all words.
___________
WHOSOEVER
WHOEVER you are, I fear you are
walking the
walks of
dreams,
I fear these supposed
realities are to melt from under
your feet and
hands;
Even now your features,
joys, speech, house, trade, man-
ners, troubles,
follies, costume, crimes,
dissipate
away from
you,
Your true Soul and Body
appear before me,
They stand
forth out of affairs—out of
commerce, shops,
law, science,
work, farms, clothes, the house,
medi-
cine, print,
buying, selling, eating, drinking,
suffer-
ing, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my
hand upon you, that
you be my
poem;
I whisper with my lips
close to your ear,
I have loved
many women and men, but I love
none
better than
you.
Oh! I have been dilatory and
dumb;
I should have made my way
straight to you long ago;
I should
have blabbed nothing but you, I should have
chanted nothing
but you.
I will leave all, and come and
make the hymns of you;
None has
understood you, but I understand
you;
None have done justice to
you—you have not done justice
to yourself;
None but have found you
imperfect—I only find no
im-
perfection in
you;
None but would subordinate
you—I only am he who
will
never consent to
subordinate you;
I only am he who
places over you no master, owner,
better, God,
beyond what waits intrinsically
in
yourself.
Painters have painted their
swarming groups, and the
centre figure of
all,
From the head of the centre
figure spreading a nimbus of
gold-coloured
light;
But I paint myriads of
heads, but paint no head without
its nimbus of
gold-coloured light;
From my
hand, from the brain of every man and
woman
it streams,
effulgently flowing forever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and
glories about you!
You have not known what you
are—you have slumbered
upon yourself all
your life;
Your eye-lids have
been the same as closed most of
the
time;
What
you have done returns already in
mockeries;
Your thrift,
knowledge, prayers, if they do not
return in
mockeries, what
is their return?
The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see
you lurk;
I pursue you where none
else has pursued you;
Silence, the
desk, the flippant expression, the
night, the
accustomed
routine, if these conceal you
from
others, or from
yourself, they do not conceal you
from me;
The
shaved face, the unsteady eye, the
impure com-
plexion, if these
baulk others, they do not baulk
me.
The pert apparel, the
deformed attitude, drunkenness,
greed, premature
death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or
woman that is not
tallied in
you;
There is no virtue, no
beauty, in man or woman, but as
good is in
you;
No pluck, no endurance in
others, but as good is in you;
No
pleasure waiting for others, but an
equal pleasure
waits for
you.
As for me, I give nothing to any
one, except I give the
like carefully to
you;
I sing the songs of the
glory of none, not God, sooner
than
I sing the songs
of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own
at any hazard!
These shows of the
east and west are tame compared to
you;
These
immense meadows—these
interminable rivers—
you are immense
and interminable as they;
These
furies, elements, storms, motions of
Nature, throes
of apparent
dissolution—you are he or she
who is
master or
mistress over them,
Master or
mistress in your own right over
Nature, ele-
ments, pain,
passion, dissolution.
The hopples fall from your
ankles—you find an unfailing
sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude,
low, rejected by the
rest, whatever
you are promulges itself;
Through
birth, life, death, burial, the means
are provided,
nothing is
scanted;
Through angers, losses,
ambition, ignorance, ennui, what
you are picks its
way.
___________
BEGINNERS.
HOW they are provided for upon
the earth, appearing
at
intervals;
How dear and dreadful
they are to the earth;
How they
inure to themselves as much as to
any—What
a paradox appears
their age;
How people respond to
them, yet know them not;
How
there is something relentless in their
fate, all times;
How all times
mischoose the objects of their
adulation and
reward,
And
how the same inexorable price must
still be paid for
the same great
purchase.
___________
TO A PUPIL.
I.
IS reform needed? Is it through
you?
The greater the reform
needed, the greater the P
ER-
SONALITY you
need to accomplish it.
You! do you not see how it would
serve to have eyes,
blood,
complexion, clean and sweet?
Do you not see how it would serve
to have such a Body
and Soul that,
when you enter the crowd, an
atmosphere of
desire and command enters with
you, and every
one is impressed with your per-
sonality?
2.
O the magnet! the flesh over and
over!
Go, dear friend! if need be,
give up all else, and com-
mence to-day to
inure yourself to pluck, reality,
self-esteem,
definiteness, elevatedness;
Rest
not, till you rivet and publish
yourself of your own
personality.
___________
LINKS.
I.
THINK of the Soul;
I swear
to you that body of yours gives proportions
to your Soul
somehow to live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is
so.
2.
Think of loving and being loved;
I swear to you, whoever you are,
you can interfuse your-
self with such
things that everybody that sees
you
shall look
longingly upon you.
3.
Think of the past;
I warn
you that, in a little while, others
will find their past
in you and your
times.
The race is never
separated—nor man nor woman
escapes;
All
is inextricable—things,
spirits, nature, nations, you
too—from
precedents you come.
Recall the ever-welcome defiers,
(the mothers precede
them;)
Recall the sages, poets, saviours,
inventors, lawgivers, of
the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected
persons—brother of
slaves, felons,
idiots, and of insane and
diseased
persons.
4.
Think of the time when you was
not yet born;
Think of times you
stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body
will be dying.
Think of spiritual results:
Sure as the earth swims through the
heavens, does every
one of its
objects pass into spiritual
results.
Think of manhood, and you to be a
man;
Do you count manhood, and the
sweet of manhood,
nothing?
Think of womanhood, and you to be
a woman;
The creation is
womanhood;
Have I not said that
womanhood involves all?
Have I not
told how the universe has nothing
better than
the best
womanhood?
___________
THE WATERS.
THE world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the
sea—the branches and
leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange
flowers and seeds—the
thick tangle, the
openings, and the pink turf,
Different colours, pale grey and
green, purple, white, and
gold—the
play of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the
rocks—coral, gluten,
grass,
rushes—and the aliment of the
swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there
suspended, or slowly
crawling close to
the bottom:
The sperm-whale at
the surface, blowing air and
spray,
or disporting
with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed
shark, the walrus, the turtle, the
hairy
sea-leopard, and
the sting-ray,
Passions there,
wars, pursuits, tribes—sight
in those
ocean-depths—breathing that
thick-breathing air,
as so many
do.
The change thence to the
sight here, and to the subtle
air,
breathed by
beings like us, who walk this
sphere:
The change onward from
ours to that of beings who walk
other
spheres.
___________
TO THE STATES.
TO IDENTIFY THE 16TH, 17TH, OR 18TH PRESIDENTIAD.*
WHY reclining, interrogating? Why
myself and all
drowsing?
What deepening twilight! Scum floating
atop of the
waters!
Who
are they, as bats and night-dogs,
askant in the
Capitol?
* These were the three
Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor,
suc-
ceeded by Filmore; and of
Pierce;—1845 to 1857.
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O
South, your torrid suns!
O North, your
arctic freezings!)
Are those
really Congressmen? Are those the
great
Judges? Is that
the President?
Then I will sleep
a while yet—for I see that
these States
sleep, for
reasons.
With gathering
murk—with muttering thunder
and
lambent shoots,
we all duly awake,
South, North,
East, West, inland and seaboard, we
will
surely
awake.
___________
TEARS.
TEARS! tears! tears!
In the
night, in solitude, tears;
On the
white shore dripping, dripping, sucked
in by the
sand;
Tears—not a star
shining—all dark and
desolate;
Moist tears from the
eyes of a muffled head:
—O who is that
ghost?—that form in the dark,
with
tears?
What
shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched
there on the
sand?
Streaming tears—sobbing
tears—throes, choked with wild
cries;
O
storm, embodied, rising, careering
with swift steps
along the
beach;
O wild and dismal
night-storm, with wind! O
belching
and
desperate!
O shade, so sedate and
decorous by day, with calm coun-
tenance and
regulated pace;
But away, at
night, as you fly, none
looking—O then the
unloosened
ocean
Of tears! tears!
tears!
___________
A SHIP.
I.
ABOARD, at the ship’s
helm,
A young steersman, steering
with care.
A bell through fog on a sea-coast
dolefully ringing,
An
ocean-bell—O a warning bell,
rocked by the waves.
O you give good notice indeed,
you bell by the sea-reefs
ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship
from its wreck-place.
For, as on the alert, O
steersman, you mind the bell’s
admonition,
The bows turn,—the
freighted ship, tacking, speeds
away under her
gray sails,
The beautiful and
noble ship, with all her precious
wealth,
speeds away gaily
and safe.
2.
But O the ship, the immortal
ship! O ship aboard the
ship!
O ship
of the body—ship of the
soul—voyaging, voyaging,
voyaging.
___________
GREATNESSES.
Great are the myths—I
too delight in them;
Great are
Adam and Eve—I too look back and
accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations,
and their poets, women,
sages, inventors,
rulers, warriors, and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is
Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft!
where you sail,
I sail,
I
weather it out with you, or sink with
you.
Great is Youth—equally
great is Old Age—great are the
Day and
Night;
Great is
Wealth—great is
Poverty—great is
Expression—
great is
Silence.
2.
Youth, large, lusty,
loving—Youth, full of grace, force,
fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come
after you, with
equal grace,
force, fascination?
Day, full-blown and
splendid—Day of the immense sun,
action, ambition,
laughter,
The Night follows
close, with millions of suns, and
sleep,
and restoring
darkness.
Wealth, with the flush hand, fine
clothes, hospitality;
But then the
soul’s wealth, which is
candour, knowledge,
pride, enfolding
love;
Who goes for men and women
showing Poverty richer
than wealth?
Expression of speech! in what is
written or said, forget
not that Silence
is also expressive;
That anguish
as hot as the hottest, and contempt as
cold
as the coldest,
may be without words.
3.
Great is the Earth, and the way
it became what it is:
Do you
imagine it is stopped at this? the increase
abandoned?
Understand then that it goes as far
onward from this as
this is from the
times when it lay in covering
waters and gases,
before man had appeared.
4.
Great is the quality of Truth in
man;
The quality of truth in man
supports itself through all
changes,
It
is inevitability in the
man—he and it are in love,
and
never leave each
other.
The truth in man is no dictum, it
is vital as eyesight;
If there be
any Soul, there is truth—if
there be man or
woman, there is
truth—if there be physical
or
moral, there is
truth;
If there be equilibrium or
volition, there is truth—if
there
be things at all
upon the earth, there is truth.
O truth of the earth! O truth of
things! I am determined
to press my way
toward you;
Sound your voice! I
scale mountains, or dive in the
sea
after you.
Great is Language—it is
the mightiest of the sciences,
It
is the fulness, colour, form, diversity
of the earth, and of
men and women,
and of all qualities and pro-
cesses;
It
is greater than wealth—it is
greater than buildings,
ships, religions,
paintings, music.
Great is the English
speech—what speech is so great
as the
English?
Great is the English
brood—what brood has so vast
a
destiny as the
English?
It is the mother of the
brood that must rule the earth
with
the new
rule;
The new rule shall rule as
the Soul rules, and as the love,
justice, equality
in the Soul, rule.
6.
Great is Law—great are
the old few land-marks of the law,
They are the same in all times, and
shall not be disturbed.
Great is Justice!
Justice is
not settled by legislators and
laws—it is in the
Soul;
It
cannot be varied by statues, any more
than love, pride,
the attraction of
gravity, can;
It is immutable—it does
not depend on majorities—
majorities or
what not come at last before the
same
passionless and
exact tribunal.
For justice are the grand natural
lawyers, and perfect
judges—it is in their
souls;
It is well
assorted—they have not
studied for nothing—
the great
includes the less;
They rule on
the highest grounds—they
oversee all eras,
states,
administrations.
The perfect judge fears
nothing—he could go front to front
before God;
Before the perfect judge all shall
stand back—life and
death shall stand
back—heaven and hell shall
stand
back.
7.
Great is Life, real and mystical,
wherever and whoever;
Great is
Death—sure as Life holds all
parts together, Death
holds all parts
together,
Has Life much
purport?—Ah, Death has the
greatest
purport.
___________
THE POET.
I.
NOW list to my
morning’s romanza;
To
the cities and farms I sing, as they
spread in the
sunshine before
me.
2.
A young man comes to me bearing a
message from his
brother;
How
shall the young man know the whether
and when
of his
brother?
Tell him to send me the
signs.
And I stood before the young man
face to face, and took
his right hand in
my left hand, and his left hand
in my right
hand,
And I answered for his
brother, and for men, and I
answered for
THE POET, and sent these
signs.
Him all wait for—him all
yield up to—his word is decisive
and final,
Him they accept, in him lave, in him
perceive themselves,
as amid
light,
Him they immerse, and he
immerses them.
Beautiful women, the haughtiest
nations, laws, the land-
scape, people,
animals,
The profound earth and
its attributes, and the unquiet
ocean (so tell I
my morning’s romanza),
All enjoyments and properties, and
money, and whatever
money will
buy,
The best
farms—others toiling and
planting, and he
unavoidably
reaps,
The noblest and costliest
cities—others grading
and
building, and he
domiciles there,
Nothing for
anyone, but what is for
him—near and far
are for
him,—the ships in the
offing,
The perpetual shows and
marches on land, are for him, if
they are for
anybody.
He puts things in their
attitudes;
He puts to-day out of
himself, with plasticity and love;
He places his own city, times,
reminiscences, parents,
brothers and
sisters, associations,
employment,
politics, so that
the rest never shame them after-
ward, nor assume
to command them.
He is the answerer;
What can
be answered he answers—and
what cannot be
answered, he
shows how it cannot be answered.
3.
A man is a summons and challenge;
(It is vain to skulk—Do
you hear that mocking and
laughter? Do you
hear the ironical echoes?)
Books, friendships, philosophers,
priests, action, pleasure,
pride, beat up
and down seeking to give
satisfac-
tion;
He
indicates the satisfaction, and
indicates them that beat
up and down
also.
Whichever the sex, whatever the
season or place, he may
go freshly and
gently and safely, by day or by
night;
He
has the pass-key of hearts—to
him the response of the
prying of hands
on the knobs.
His welcome is
universal—the flow of beauty
is not more
welcome or
universal than he is;
The person
he favours by day or sleeps with at
night is
blessed.
Every existence has its
idiom—everything has an idiom
and tongue;
He resolves all tongues into his own,
and bestows it upon
men, and any man
translates, and any man trans-
lates himself
also;
One part does not
counteract another part—he is
the
joiner—he sees how they
join.
He says indifferently and alike
How are you, friend? to
the President at
his levee,
And he says
Good-day, my brother! to Cudge
that hoes in
the
sugar-field,
And both understand
him, and know that his speech is
right,
He walks with perfect ease in the
Capitol,
He walks among the
Congress, and one representative
says to another
Here is our equal, appearing and
new.
4.
Then the mechanics take him for a
mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose
him to be a soldier, and the
sailors that he
has followed the sea,
And the
authors take him for an author, and
the artists
for an
artist,
And the labourers
perceive he could labour with them
and
love them;
No matter what the work is, that he is
the one to follow
it, or has
followed it,
No matter what the
nation, that he might find his
brothers
and sisters
there.
The English believe he comes of
their English stock,
A Jew to the Jew he
seems—a Russ to the Russ—usual
and near, removed
from none.
Whoever he looks at in the
travellers’ coffee-house claims
him,
The
Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the
German is
sure, and the
Spaniard is sure, and the island
Cuban is
sure;
The engineer, the deck-hand
on the great lakes, or on the
Mississippi, or
St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or
Hudson, or
Paumanok Sound, claims him.
The gentleman of perfect blood
acknowledges his perfect
blood;
The
insulter, the prostitute, the angry
person, the beggar,
see themselves in
the ways of him—he
strangely
transmutes
them,
They are not vile any
more—they hardly know
themselves,
they are so
grown.
___________
BURIAL.
I.
To think of it!
To think of
time—of all that
retrospection!
To think of to-day,
and the ages continued henceforward!
Have you guessed you yourself
would not continue?
Have you
dreaded these earth-beetles?
Have
you feared the future would be nothing
to you?
Is to-day nothing? Is the
beginningless past nothing?
If the
future is nothing, they are just as
surely nothing.
To think that the sun rose in the
east! that men and
women were
flexible, real, alive! that
everything
was alive!
To think that you and I did not see,
feel, think, nor bear
our part!
To
think that we are now here, and bear
our part!
2.
Not a day passes—not a
minute or second, without an
accouchement!
Not a day
passes—not a minute or
second, without a
corpse!
The dull nights go over, and the
dull days also,
The soreness of
lying so much in bed goes over,
The physician, after long putting off,
gives the silent and
terrible look for
an answer,
The children come
hurried and weeping, and the
brothers
and sisters are
sent for,
Medicines stand unused on the
shelf—(the camphor-smell
has long pervaded
the rooms,)
The faithful hand of
the living does not desert the
hand
of the
dying,
The twitching lips press
lightly on the forehead of the
dying,
The
breath ceases, and the pulse of the
heart ceases,
The corpse
stretches on the bed, and the living
look
upon it,
It
is palpable as the living are
palpable.
The living look upon the corpse
with their eye-sight,
But without
eye-sight lingers a different living,
and looks
curiously on the
corpse.
3.
To think that the rivers will
flow, and the snow fall, and
the fruits ripen,
and act upon as others as upon us
now—yet
not act upon us!
To think of all
these wonders of city and country,
and
others taking
great interest in them—and we
taking
no interest in
them!
To think how eager we are in
building our houses!
To think
others shall be just as eager, and we
quite indif-
ferent!
I see one building the house that
serves him a few years,
or seventy or
eighty years at most,
I see one
building the house that serves him
longer than
that.
Slow-moving and black lines creep
over the whole earth
—they
never cease—they are the
burial lines,
He that was
President was buried, and he that is
now
President shall
surely be buried.
4.
Cold dash of waves at the
ferry-wharf—posh and ice in
the river,
half-frozen mud in the streets, a
grey
discouraged sky
overhead, the short last daylight
of
Twelfth-month,
A hearse and
stages—other vehicles give
place—the
funeral of an old
Broadway stage-driver, the cor-
tege mostly
drivers.
Steady the trot to the cemetery,
duly rattles the death-
bell, the gate is
passed, the new-dug grave is
halted
at, the living
alight, the hearse uncloses,
The
coffin is passed out, lowered and
settled, the whip is
laid on the
coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled
in,
The mound above is flatted
with the spades—silence,
A minute, no one moves or
speaks—it is done,
He is
decently put away—is there
anything more?
He was a good fellow,
free-mouthed, quick-tempered, not
bad-looking, able
to take his own part, witty, sen-
sitive to a
slight, ready with life or death for
a
friend, fond of
women, gambled, ate hearty, drank
hearty, had known
what it was to be flush, grew
low-spirited
toward the last, sickened, was
helped
by a
contribution, died, aged forty-one
years—and
that was his
funeral.
Thumb extended, finger uplifted,
apron, cape, gloves,
strap,
wet-weather clothes, whip carefully
chosen,
boss, spotter,
starter, hostler, somebody loafing
on
you, you loafing
on somebody, headway, man before
and man behind,
good day’s work, bad
day’s work,
pet stock, mean
stock, first out, last out,
turning-in
at night;
To
think that these are so much and so
nigh to other
drivers—and he there takes
no interest in them!
5.
The markets, the government, the
working-man’s wages,
—to
think what account they are through
our
nights and
days!
To think that other
working-men will make just as
great account of
them—yet we make little or
no
account!
The vulgar and the
refined—what you call sin, and
what you call
goodness—to think how wide
a
difference!
To think the difference will still
continue to others, yet
we lie beyond the
difference.
To think how much pleasure there
is!
Have you pleasure from looking
at the sky? have you
pleasure from
poems?
Do you enjoy yourself in
the city? or engaged in business?
or planning a
nomination and election? or with
your wife and
family?
Or with your mother and
sisters? or in womanly house-
work? or the
beautiful maternal cares?
These
also flow onward to
others—you and I flow
on-
ward,
But in
due time you and I shall take less
interest in
them.
Your farm, profits,
crops,—to think how engrossed you
are!
To
think there will still be farms,
profits, crops—yet for
you, of what
avail?
6.
What will be will be
well—for what is is well:
To take interest is well, and not
to take interest shall be
well.
The sky continues beautiful,
The pleasure of men with women shall
never be sated,
nor the pleasure
of women with men, nor the
pleasure from
poems;
The domestic joys, the
daily housework or business, the
building of
houses—these are not
phantasms—
they have weight,
form, location;
Farms, profits,
crops, markets, wages, government,
are
none of them
phantasms,
The difference between
sin and goodness is no delusion,
The earth is not an echo—man
and his life, and all the
things of his
life are well-considered.
You are not thrown to the
winds—you gather certainly and
safely around
yourself;
Yourself! Yourself!
Yourself, for ever and ever!
7.
It is not to diffuse you that you
were born of your mother
and
father—it is to identify
you,
It is not that you should be
undecided, but that you should
be decided;
Something long preparing and
formless is arrived and
formed in
you,
You are henceforth secure,
whatever comes or goes.
The threads that were spun are
gathered, the weft crosses
the warp, the
pattern is systematic.
The preparations have every one
been justified,
The orchestra have
sufficiently tuned their instruments—
the baton has
given the signal.
The guest that was
coming—he waited long, for reasons—
he is now
housed,
He is one of those who
are beautiful and
happy—he
is one of those
that to look upon and be with is
enough.
The law of the past cannot be
eluded,
The law of the present and
future cannot be eluded,
The law
of the living cannot be
eluded—it is eternal,
The
law of promotion and transformation
cannot be
eluded,
The
law of heroes and good-doers cannot be
eluded,
The law of drunkards,
informers, mean persons—not
one
iota thereof can
be eluded.
8.
Slow-moving and black lines go
ceaselessly over the earth,
Northerner goes carried, and
Southerner goes carried, and
they on the
Atlantic side, and they on the
Pacific,
and they between,
and all through the Mississippi
country, and all
over the earth.
The great masters and kosmos are
well as they go—the
heroes and
good-doers are well,
The known
leaders and inventors, and the rich
owners
and pious and
distinguished, may be well,
But
there is more account than
that—there is strict
account
of all.
The interminable hordes of the
ignorant and wicked are
not nothing,
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are
not nothing,
Th common people of
Europe are not
nothing—the
American
aborigines are not nothing,
The
infected in the immigrant hospital are
not nothing—
the murderer or
mean person is not nothing,
The
perpetual successions of shallow
people are not nothing
as they go.
The lowest prostitute is not
nothing—the mocker of
reli-
gion is not
nothing as he goes.
9.
I shall go with the
rest—we have satisfaction,
I have dreamed that we are not to
be changed so much,
nor the law of us
changed,
I have dreamed that
heroes and good-doers shall be
under
the present and
past law,
And that murderers,
drunkards, liars, shall be under
the
present and past
law,
For I have dreamed that the
law they are under now is
enough.
And I have dreamed that the
satisfaction is not so much
changed, and that
there is not life without satis-
faction;
What is the earth? what are Body and
Soul without
satisfaction?
I shall go with the rest,
We
cannot be stopped at a given
point—that is not satis-
faction,
To
show us a good thing, or a few good
things, for a space
of
time—that is no
satisfaction,
We must have the
indestructible breed of the best,
re-
gardless of
time.
If otherwise, all these things
came but to ashes of dung,
If
maggots and rats ended us, then alarum!
for we are
betrayed!
Then indeed suspicion of death.
Do you suspect death? If I were
to suspect death, I
should die
now:
Do you think I could walk
pleasantly and well-suited
toward
annihilation?
10.
Pleasantly and well-suited I
walk:
Whither I walk I cannot
define, but I know it is good;
The
whole universe indicates that it is
good,
The past and the present
indicate that it is good.
How beautiful and perfect are the
animals! How perfect
is my Soul!
How perfect the earth, and the
minutest thing upon it!
What is
called good is perfect, and what is
called bad is
just as
perfect,
The vegetables and
minerals are all perfect, and the
im-
ponderable fluids
are perfect;
Slowly and surely
they have passed on to this, and
slowly
and surely they
yet pass on.
My Soul! if I realize you, I have
satisfaction,
Animals and
vegetables! if I realize you, I have satis-
faction,
Laws of the earth and air! if I
realize you, I have
satisfaction.
I cannot define my satisfaction,
yet it is so,
I cannot define my
life, yet it is so.
11.
It comes to me now!
I swear
I think now that everything without
exception has
an eternal
Soul!
The trees have, rooted in
the ground! the weeds of the
sea have! the
animals!
I swear I think there is nothing
but immortality!
That the
exquisite scheme is for it, and the
nebulous float
is for it, and
the cohering is for it;
And all
preparation is for it! and identity is
for it! and
life and death
are altogether for it!
___________
THIS COMPOST.
I.
SOMETHING startles me where I
thought I was
safest;
I
withdraw from the still woods I
loved;
I will not go now on the
pastures to walk;
I will not
strip the clothes from my body to meet
my lover
the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the
earth, as to other flesh, to
renew me.
2.
O how can the ground not
sicken?
How can you be alive, you
growths of spring?
How can you
furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots,
orchards,
grain?
Are they not continually
putting distempered corpses in
you?
Is not
every continent worked over and over
with sour
dead?
Where have you disposed of their
carcasses?
Those drunkards and
gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the foul
liquid and meat?
I do not see any
of it upon you to-day—or
perhaps I am
deceived;
I
will run a furrow with my
plough—I will press my
spade through the
sod, and turn it up underneath;
I
am sure I shall expose some of the
foul meat.
3.
Behold this compost! behold it
well!
Perhaps every mite has once
formed part of a sick
person—Yet behold!
The grass covers the
prairies,
The bean bursts
noiselessly through the mould in the
garden,
The
delicate spear of the onion pierces
upward,
The apple-buds cluster
together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears
with pale visage out
of its
graves,
The tinge awakes over the
willow-tree and the mulberry-
tree,
The
he-birds carol mornings and evenings,
while the she-
birds sit on
their nests,
The young of poultry