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Title: Leaves of Grass
Author: Walt Whitman

Release date: May 1, 1998 [eBook #1322]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322

Credits: G. Fuhrman and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEAVES
OF GRASS ***

L E AV E S O F G R A S S

By Walt Whitman

Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and
now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

Walt Whitman

Contents

BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS
One’s-Self I Sing
As I Ponder’d in Silence
In Cabin’d Ships at Sea
To Foreign Lands
To a Historian
To Thee Old Cause
Eidolons
For Him I Sing
When I Read the Book
Beginning My Studies
Beginners
To the States
On Journeys Through the States
To a Certain Cantatrice
Me Imperturbe
Savantism
The Ship Starting
I Hear America Singing
What Place Is Besieged?
Still Though the One I Sing

Shut Not Your Doors
Poets to Come
To You
Thou Reader
BOOK II.
BOOK III.
BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM
From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
I Sing the Body Electric
A Woman Waits for Me
Spontaneous Me
One Hour to Madness and Joy
Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
O Hymen! O Hymenee!
I Am He That Aches with Love
Native Moments
Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City
I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ
Facing West from California’s Shores
As Adam Early in the Morning
BOOK V. CALAMUS
Scented Herbage of My Breast
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
For You, O Democracy
These I Singing in Spring

Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
The Base of All Metaphysics
Recorders Ages Hence
When I Heard at the Close of the Day
Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes
Trickle Drops
City of Orgies
Behold This Swarthy Face
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
To a Stranger
This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
The Prairie-Grass Dividing
When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame
We Two Boys Together Clinging
A Promise to California
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
No Labor-Saving Machine
A Glimpse
A Leaf for Hand in Hand
Earth, My Likeness
I Dream’d in a Dream
What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
To the East and to the West

Sometimes with One I Love
To a Western Boy
Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!
Among the Multitude
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
That Shadow My Likeness
Full of Life Now
BOOK VI.
BOOK VII.
BOOK VIII.
BOOK IX.
BOOK X.
BOOK XI.
BOOK XII.
BOOK XIII.
BOOK XIV.
BOOK XV.
BOOK XVI.
Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
BOOK XVII. BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
To You
France [the 18th Year of these States
Myself and Mine
Year of Meteors [1859-60
With Antecedents
BOOK XVIII

BOOK XIX. SEA-DRIFT
As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
Tears
To the Man-of-War-Bird
Aboard at a Ship’s Helm
On the Beach at Night
The World below the Brine
On the Beach at Night Alone
Song for All Seas, All Ships
Patroling Barnegat
After the Sea-Ship
BOOK XX. BY THE ROADSIDE
Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]
A Hand-Mirror
Gods
Germs
Thoughts
Perfections
O Me! O Life!
To a President
I Sit and Look Out
To Rich Givers
The Dalliance of the Eagles
Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]
A Farm Picture
A Child’s Amaze
The Runner

Beautiful Women
Mother and Babe
Thought
Visor’d
Thought
Gliding O’er all
Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
Thought
To Old Age
Locations and Times
Offerings
To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]
BOOK XXI. DRUM-TAPS
Eighteen Sixty-One
Beat! Beat! Drums!
From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
Song of the Banner at Daybreak
Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
Virginia—The West
City of Ships
The Centenarian’s Story
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
Bivouac on a Mountain Side
An Army Corps on the March
By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
Come Up from the Fields Father
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods
Not the Pilot
Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me
The Wound-Dresser
Long, Too Long America
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
Dirge for Two Veterans
Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice
I Saw Old General at Bay
The Artilleryman’s Vision
Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
Not Youth Pertains to Me
Race of Veterans
World Take Good Notice
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
Look Down Fair Moon
Reconciliation
How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]
As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado
Delicate Cluster
To a Certain Civilian
Lo, Victress on the Peaks
Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]
Adieu to a Soldier
Turn O Libertad

To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod
BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
O Captain! My Captain!
Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865
This Dust Was Once the Man
BOOK XXIII.
Reversals
BOOK XXIV. AUTUMN RIVULETS
The Return of the Heroes
There Was a Child Went Forth
Old Ireland
The City Dead-House
This Compost
To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire
Unnamed Land
Song of Prudence
The Singer in the Prison
Warble for Lilac-Time
Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]
Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]
Vocalism
To Him That Was Crucified
You Felons on Trial in Courts
Laws for Creations
To a Common Prostitute
I Was Looking a Long While
Thought

Miracles
Sparkles from the Wheel
To a Pupil
Unfolded out of the Folds
What Am I After All
Kosmos
Others May Praise What They Like
Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
Tests
The Torch
O Star of France [1870-71]
The Ox-Tamer
Wandering at Morn
With All Thy Gifts
My Picture-Gallery
The Prairie States
BOOK XXV.
BOOK XXVI.
BOOK XXVII.
BOOK XXVIII.
Transpositions
BOOK XXIX.
BOOK XXX. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
Whispers of Heavenly Death
Chanting the Square Deific
Of Him I Love Day and Night
Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours

As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
Assurances
Quicksand Years
That Music Always Round Me
What Ship Puzzled at Sea
A Noiseless Patient Spider
O Living Always, Always Dying
To One Shortly to Die
Night on the Prairies
Thought
The Last Invocation
As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing
Pensive and Faltering
BOOK XXXI.
A Paumanok Picture
BOOK XXXII. FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT
Faces
The Mystic Trumpeter
To a Locomotive in Winter
O Magnet-South
Mannahatta
All Is Truth
A Riddle Song
Excelsior
Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
Thoughts
Mediums

Weave in, My Hardy Life
Spain, 1873-74
By Broad Potomac’s Shore
From Far Dakota’s Canyons [June 25, 1876]
Old War-Dreams
Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
A Clear Midnight
BOOK XXXIII. SONGS OF PARTING
Years of the Modern
Ashes of Soldiers
Thoughts
Song at Sunset
As at Thy Portals Also Death
My Legacy
Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
Camps of Green
The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]
As They Draw to a Close
Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
The Untold Want
Portals
These Carols
Now Finale to the Shore
So Long!
BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY
Paumanok

From Montauk Point
To Those Who’ve Fail’d
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
The Bravest Soldiers
A Font of Type
As I Sit Writing Here
My Canary Bird
Queries to My Seventieth Year
The Wallabout Martyrs
The First Dandelion
America
Memories
To-Day and Thee
After the Dazzle of Day
Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
Out of May’s Shows Selected
Halcyon Days
Election Day, November, 1884
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
Death of General Grant
Red Jacket (From Aloft)
Washington’s Monument February, 1885
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
Broadway
To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
Old Salt Kossabone
The Dead Tenor

Continuities
Yonnondio
Life
“Going Somewhere”
Small the Theme of My Chant
True Conquerors
The United States to Old World Critics
The Calming Thought of All
Thanks in Old Age
Life and Death
The Voice of the Rain
Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here
While Not the Past Forgetting
The Dying Veteran
Stronger Lessons
A Prairie Sunset
Twenty Years
Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
Twilight
You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
The Dead Emperor
As the Greek’s Signal Flame
The Dismantled Ship
Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
An Evening Lull
Old Age’s Lambent Peaks

After the Supper and Talk
BOOKXXXV. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
Lingering Last Drops
Good-Bye My Fancy
On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
MY 71st Year
Apparitions
The Pallid Wreath
An Ended Day
Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s
To the Pending Year
Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher
Long, Long Hence
Bravo, Paris Exposition!
Interpolation Sounds
To the Sun-Set Breeze
Old Chants
A Christmas Greeting
Sounds of the Winter
A Twilight Song
When the Full-Grown Poet Came
Osceola
A Voice from Death
A Persian Lesson
The Commonplace
“The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”
Mirages

L. of G.’s Purport
The Unexpress’d
Grand Is the Seen
Unseen Buds
Good-Bye My Fancy!

BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS

One’s-Self I Sing

One’s-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse,
I say
the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

As I Ponder’d in Silence

As I ponder’d in silence,
Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,
Terrible in beauty, age, and power,
The genius of poets of old lands,
As to me directing like flame its eyes,
With finger pointing to many immortal songs,
And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,
Know’st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring
bards?
And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,
The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it so, then I answer’d,
I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater
one than any,
Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance
and retreat, victory deferr’d and wavering,
(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,)
the
field the world,
For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,
Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,
I above all promote brave soldiers.

In Cabin’d Ships at Sea

In cabin’d ships at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large
imperious waves,
Or some lone bark buoy’d on the dense marine,
Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or
under
many a star at night,
By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the
land, be read,
In full rapport at last.

Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them
be said,
The sky o’erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath
our feet,
We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,
The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions
of the
briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the
melancholy rhythm,
The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,
And this is ocean’s poem.

Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,
You not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos’d I know
not
whither, yet ever full of faith,
Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!

Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I
fold it
here in every leaf;)
Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark
athwart the
imperious waves,
Chant on, sail on, bear o’er the boundless blue from me to
every sea,
This song for mariners and all their ships.

To Foreign Lands

I heard that you ask’d for something to prove this puzzle the
New World,
And to define America, her athletic Democracy,
Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what
you wanted.

To a Historian

You who celebrate bygones,
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the
life
that has exhibited itself,
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics,
aggregates,
rulers and priests,
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in
himself
in his own rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited
itself,
(the great pride of man in himself,)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.

To Thee Old Cause

To thee old cause!
Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,
Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,
Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands,
After a strange sad war, great war for thee,
(I think all war through time was really fought, and ever
will be
really fought, for thee,)
These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.

(A war O soldiers not for itself alone,
Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance
in this book.)

Thou orb of many orbs!
Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou
centre!
Around the idea of thee the war revolving,
With all its angry and vehement play of causes,
(With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,)
These recitatives for thee,—my book and the war are one,
Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on
thee,
As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,
Around the idea of thee.

Eidolons

I met a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.

Put in thy chants said he,
No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put
in,
Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song
of all,
That of eidolons.

Ever the dim beginning,
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,
Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start
again,)
Eidolons! eidolons!

Ever the mutable,
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
Issuing eidolons.

Lo, I or you,
Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build eidolons.

The ostent evanescent,
The substance of an artist’s mood or savan’s studies long,
Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils,
To fashion his eidolon.

Of every human life,
(The units gather’d, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed,
left out,)
The whole or large or small summ’d, added up,
In its eidolon.

The old, old urge,
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,
From science and the modern still impell’d,
The old, old urge, eidolons.

The present now and here,
America’s busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,
To-day’s eidolons.

These with the past,
Of vanish’d lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors’ voyages,
Joining eidolons.

Densities, growth, facades,
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
Eidolons everlasting.

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
The mighty earth-eidolon.

All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter
use,)
Fill’d with eidolons only.

The noiseless myriads,
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,
The true realities, eidolons.

Not this the world,
Nor these the universes, they the universes,
Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,

Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn’d professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond
all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with
his chemistry,
The entities of entities, eidolons.

Unfix’d yet fix’d,
Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to
them,
God and eidolons.

And thee my soul,
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
Thy mates, eidolons.

Thy body permanent,
The body lurking there within thy body,
The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
An image, an eidolon.

Thy very songs not in thy songs,
No special strains to sing, none for itself,
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
A round full-orb’d eidolon.

For Him I Sing

For him I sing,
I raise the present on the past,
(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the
past,)
With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,
To make himself by them the law unto himself.

When I Read the Book

When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man’s life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my
real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

Beginning My Studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of
motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic
songs.

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 the States

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States,
Resist
much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth,
ever
afterward resumes its liberty.

On Journeys Through the States

On journeys through the States we start,
(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,
Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)
We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of
all.

We have watch’d the seasons dispensing themselves and passing
on,
And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as
the
seasons, and effuse as much?

We dwell a while in every city and town,
We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of
the
Mississippi, and the Southern States,
We confer on equal terms with each of the States,
We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,
We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge
the
body and the soul,
Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste,
magnetic,
And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,
And may be just as much as the seasons.

To a Certain Cantatrice

Here, take this gift,
I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,
One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the
progress and freedom of the race,
Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as
much as to any.

Me Imperturbe

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of
irrational things,
Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes,
less
important than I thought,
Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the
Tennessee,
or far north or inland,
A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of
these
States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,
Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for
contingencies,
To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents,
rebuffs, as
the trees and animals do.

Savantism

Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing
itself and
nestling close, always obligated,
Thither hours, months, years—thither trades, compacts,
establishments, even the most minute,
Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons,
estates;
Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful,
admirant,
As a father to his father going takes his children along with
him.

The Ship Starting

Lo, the unbounded sea,
On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying
even
her moonsails.
The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so
stately—
below emulous waves press forward,
They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.

I Hear America Singing

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be
blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves
off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter
singing as
he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the
morning,
or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
work,
or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

What Place Is Besieged?

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,
And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

Still Though the One I Sing

Still though the one I sing,
(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,
I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O
quenchless, indispensable fire!)

Shut Not Your Doors

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves,
yet
needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the
intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater
than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the
future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the
darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping,
turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

To You

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
why
should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

Thou Reader

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.

BOOK II

Starting from Paumanok

1
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,
Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a
miner
in California,
Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink
from
the spring,
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,
Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and
happy,
Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of
mighty Niagara,
Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute
and
strong-breasted bull,
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars,
rain, snow,
my amaze,
Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the
mountain-hawk,
And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from
the
swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

2
Victory, union, faith, identity, time,

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 group’d 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 cover’d 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 turn’d 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
Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-
spring,
Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,
And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they
connect
lovingly with you.

I conn’d 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.

5
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 heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the
flame of
materials,
Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow’d,
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,
The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,
Yes here comes my mistress the soul.

6
The soul,

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 mortality,
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 form’d out of all,
The fang’d 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.

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?

7
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,
I advance from the people 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 any thing else.)

I too, following many and follow’d by many, inaugurate a
religion, I
descend into the arena,
(It may be I am destin’d to utter the loudest cries there,
the
winner’s pealing shouts,
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every
thing.)

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 worship’d 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 just no real and permanent grandeur;
(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,
Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)

8
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.

9
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.

10
Know you, solely 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.

Melange 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 and all the spiritual
world,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

O such themes—equalities! O divine average!
Warblings under the sun, usher’d as now, or at noon, or
setting,
Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,
I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them,
and
cheerfully pass them forward.

11
As I have walk’d 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 paus’d to hear him near at hand inflating his throat
and
joyfully singing.

And while I paus’d 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.

12
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 outlaw’d 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 dropt 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 sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I
am determin’d
to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you
illustrious,
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present,
and
can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be
turn’d 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 poems, songs, 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 look’d at the objects of the universe, I find
there
is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to
the soul.

13
Was somebody asking to see the soul?
See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances,
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 impression,
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!

14
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,
Exulting words, words to Democracy’s lands.

Interlink’d, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land 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-air’d interminable plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the
south-west
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 clutch’d together! the passionate
ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-
limb’d!
The great women’s land! the feminine! the experienced sisters
and
the inexperienced sisters!
Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez’d! the
diverse! the
compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
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 traveler,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on
Paumanok’s sands,
Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in
every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,
Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman
my neighbor,
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 Seaside State or in
Maryland,
Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice
welcome to me,
Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or
the
Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming
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.

15
With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
For your life adhere to me,
(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to
give
myself really to you, but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, 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.

16
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.

17
Expanding and swift, 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.

18
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 Kaw, 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-cylinder’d steam printing-press—see, the
electric
telegraph stretching across the continent,
See, through Atlantica’s depths pulses American Europe
reaching,
pulses of Europe duly return’d,
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, drest in
working dresses,
See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me
well-belov’d, close-held by day and night,
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there—read the hints come at
last.

19
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.

BOOK III

Song of Myself

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer
grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven 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 harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are
crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not
let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread,
crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the
passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore
and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the
eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of
arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the
fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me
rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d
the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the
origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are
millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor
look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things
from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance
and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed
of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it
is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that
is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes
age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while
they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man
hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall

be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side
through the night,
and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the
house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at
my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and
which is ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the
ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors
old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or
loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of
doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable
certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog
with
linguists and contenders,

I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase
itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture,
not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d
over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your
tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held
my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the
women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder,
mullein and
poke-weed.

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green

stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may
see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of
the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken
soon out
of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and
I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d
babe, and
am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all
good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal
and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and
female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be
slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and
the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot
be shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush
away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy
hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the
pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles,
talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb,
the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-
balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to
the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly
working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or
in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what
howls
restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made,
acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I
depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn
wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green
intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by
my side.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the
sparkle and scud,
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously
from the deck.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good
time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-
kettle.

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far
west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly
smoking,
they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins,
his luxuriant
beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by
the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse
straight locks

descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her
feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy
and weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured
him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and
bruis’d feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him
some
coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his
awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and
ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d
north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the
corner.

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the
window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your
room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from
their long hair,

Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge
to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and
bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his
knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-
down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great
heat in
the fire.

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive
arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so
sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

13
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the
block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain,
The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady
and
tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens
over
his hip-band,
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of
his hat
away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the

black of
his polish’d and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not
stop there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well
as
forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object
missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy
shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my
life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant
and
day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown
intentional,
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not
something else,
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills
pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,
Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.

The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-
sill, the
chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,

The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread
wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred
affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

I am enamour’d of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of
axes and
mauls, and the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take
me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

15
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane
whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their
Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong
arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon
are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big
wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe
and
looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d
case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his
mother’s
bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his

case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the
manuscript;
The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard
nods by
the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his
beat,
the gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him,
though I do
not know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the
race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on
their
rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position,
levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer
views them
from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their
partners, the dancers bow to each other,
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to
the
musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the
Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering
moccasins and
bead-bags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-
shut
eyes bent sideways,
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown
for
the shore-going passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister
winds it
off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago

borne
her first child,
The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or
in the
factory or mill,
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s
lead
flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is
lettering
with blue and gold,
The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts
at his
desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers
follow him,
The child is baptized, the convert is making his first
professions,
The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the
white
sails sparkle!)
The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would
stray,
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser
higgling
about the odd cent;)
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the
clock
moves slowly,
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d
lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her
tipsy and
pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and
wink to
each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the
great
Secretaries,
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with
twined arms,
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in
the hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his

cattle,
As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice
by the
jingling of loose change,
The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning
the
roof, the masons are calling for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the
laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is
gather’d, it
is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon
and small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower
mows,
and the winter-grain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the
hole in
the frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter
strikes deep
with his axe,
Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or
pecan-trees,
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or
through
those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the
Arkansas,
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or
Altamahaw,
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-
grandsons
around them,
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and
trappers after
their day’s sport,
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their
time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband
sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

16
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the
stuff
that is fine,
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and
the
largest the same,
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and
hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the
limberest
joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier,
Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with
fishermen
off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and
tacking,
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or
the
Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners,
(loving
their big proportions,)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake
hands
and welcome to drink and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in

their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its
place.)

17
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and
lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or
next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they
are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are
nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the
water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.

18
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches
for
conquer’d and slain persons.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same
spirit
in which they are won.

I beat and pound for the dead,
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

Vivas to those who have fail’d!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome
heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest
heroes known!

19
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural
hunger,
It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make

appointments
with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor
of hair,
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of
yearning,
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica
on the
side of a rock has.

Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart
twittering
through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids,
conformity
goes to the fourth-remov’d,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsel’d with
doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-
corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually
flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s
compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a
burnt
stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be
understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house
by,
after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I
can wait.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

21
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are
with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I
translate
into new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one,
and
still pass on.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic
nourishing night!
Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with
blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for
my sake!
Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.

Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give
love!
O unspeakable passionate love.

Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each
other.

22
You sea! I resign myself to you also—I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of
sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.

Sea of stretch’d ground-swells,
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell’d yet always-ready
graves,
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all
phases.

Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and
conciliation,
Extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others’ arms.

I am he attesting sympathy,
(Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the
house that
supports them?)

I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be
the poet
of wickedness also.

What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand
indifferent,
My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work’d over
and rectified?

I find one side a balance and the antipedal side a balance,

Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
There is no better than it and now.

What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not
such wonder,
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man
or an infidel.

23
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.

A word of the faith that never balks,
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time
absolutely.

It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,
That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.

I accept Reality and dare not question it,
Materialism first and last imbuing.

Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,
This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a
grammar of
the old cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas.
This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this
is a
mathematician.

Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!
Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.

Less the reminders of properties told my words,
And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom
and extrication,
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men
and
women fully equipt,

And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them
that
plot and conspire.

24
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart
from them,
No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the
current
and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and
slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and
dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and
of the
father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the
veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and

heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag
of me
is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch
or am
touch’d from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the
spread of
my own body, or any part of it,
Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my
life!
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of
guarded
duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be
you!
Sun so generous it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be
you!
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger
in my
winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever
touch’d,
it shall be you.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so
luscious,

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my
faintest wish,
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the
friendship I take again.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the
metaphysics
of books.

To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising
freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their
junction,
The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head,
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

25
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the
daybreak.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of
worlds.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure
itself,
It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,
Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of

articulation,
Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost,
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning
of all things,
Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in
search
of this day.)

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I
really am,
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

26
Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds
contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of
flames,
clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or
following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the
day and night,
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh
of
work-people at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of
the sick,
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips
pronouncing
a death-sentence,
The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves,
the
refrain of the anchor-lifters,
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-

streaking
engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and
color’d lights,
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching
cars,
The slow march play’d at the head of the association marching
two and two,
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with
black muslin.)

I hear the violoncello, (’tis the young man’s heart’s
complaint,)
I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my
ears,
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
Ah this indeed is music—this suits me.

A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?)
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d
them,
It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the
indolent waves,
I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,
Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes
of death,
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call Being.

27
To be in any form, what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back
thither,)
If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous
shell were enough.

Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I
can stand.

28
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is
hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and
pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the
edges of me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my
anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against
me.

I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the
greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me
there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in
its throat,
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.

29
Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d
touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual
loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and
vital,
Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.

30
All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(What is less or more than a touch?)

Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

(Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.)

A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for
each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until
it
becomes omnific,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.

31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of
the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and
the egg
of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all
machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any
statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of

infidels.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss,
fruits,
grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
But call any thing back again when I desire it.

In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my
approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters
lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the
cliff.

32
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so
placid and
self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania
of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in
their
possession.

I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on
brotherly terms.

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my
caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly
moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around
and return.

I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

33
Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at,
What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass,
What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed,
And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the
morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

By the city’s quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with
lumber-men,
Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and
rivulet bed,
Weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and
parsnips,
crossing savannas, trailing in forests,
Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new
purchase,

Scorch’d ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the
shallow river,
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where
the
buck turns furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where
the
otter is feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where
the
beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall;
Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower’d cotton
plant, over
the rice in its low moist field,
Over the sharp-peak’d farm house, with its scallop’d scum and
slender shoots from the gutters,
Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav’d corn, over
the
delicate blue-flower flax,
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there
with
the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in
the breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on
by low
scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the
leaves of the brush,
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-
lot,
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great
goldbug drops through the dark,
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and
flows to
the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous
shuddering of their hides,
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons
straddle
the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the
rafters;
Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its
cylinders,

Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its
ribs,
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in
it
myself and looking composedly down,)
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat
hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes
it,
Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of
smoke,
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the
water,
Where the half-burn’d brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are
corrupting below;
Where the dense-starr’d flag is borne at the head of the
regiments,
Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my
countenance,
Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good
game of
base-ball,
At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,
bull-dances, drinking, laughter,
At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash,
sucking the
juice through a straw,
At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I
find,
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-
raisings;
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,
screams, weeps,
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-
stalks are
scatter’d, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the
stud to
the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,
Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with
short jerks,
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and

lonesome prairie,
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square
miles
far and near,
Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-
lived
swan is curving and winding,
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs
her
near-human laugh,
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid
by the
high weeds,
Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground
with
their heads out,
Where burial coaches enter the arch’d gates of a cemetery,
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled
trees,
Where the yellow-crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh
at
night and feeds upon small crabs,
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,
Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-
tree over
the well,
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired
leaves,
Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,
Through the gymnasium, through the curtain’d saloon, through
the
office or public hall;
Pleas’d with the native and pleas’d with the foreign, pleas’d
with
the new and old,
Pleas’d with the homely woman as well as the handsome,
Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and
talks melodiously,
Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the whitewash’d church,
Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist
preacher,
impress’d seriously at the camp-meeting;
Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole
forenoon,
flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,

Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn’d up to the
clouds,
or down a lane or along the beach,
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I
in the middle;
Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy,
(behind me
he rides at the drape of the day,)
Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet,
or the
moccasin print,
By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish
patient,
Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a
candle;
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,
Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from
me a long while,
Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God
by my side,
Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the
stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and
the
diameter of eighty thousand miles,
Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the
rest,
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother
in its belly,
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,
And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions
green.

I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

I help myself to material and immaterial,
No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.

I anchor my ship for a little while only,
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns
to me.

I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a
pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and
blue.

I ascend to the foretruck,
I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest,
We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the
wonderful beauty,
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the
scenery is
plain in all directions,
The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my
fancies toward them,
We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are
soon to
be engaged,
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with
still
feet and caution,
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city,
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living
cities
of the globe.

I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,
I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride
myself,
I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the
stairs,
They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the
steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was
faithful of
days and faithful of nights,

And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we
will
not desert you;
How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and
would not give it up,
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the
side of their prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
sharp-lipp’d unshaved men;
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it
becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry
wood, her
children gazing on,
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,
blowing, cover’d with sweat,
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the
murderous
buckshot and the bullets,
All these I feel or am.

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the
marksmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with
the
ooze of my skin,
I fall on the weeds and stones,
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with
whip-stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become
the
wounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my

comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,
They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me
forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is
for my sake,
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are
bared
of their fire-caps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

Distant and dead resuscitate,
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the
clock myself.

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment,
I am there again.

Again the long roll of the drummers,
Again the attacking cannon, mortars,
Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

I take part, I see and hear the whole,
The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim’d shots,
The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,
Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable
repairs,
The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped
explosion,
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the
air.

Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously
waves
with his hand,
He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments.

34
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,
(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)
’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and

twelve
young men.

Retreating they had form’d in a hollow square with their
baggage for
breastworks,
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemies, nine times
their
number, was the price they took in advance,
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,
They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing
and
seal, gave up their arms and march’d back prisoners of
war.

They were the glory of the race of rangers,
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and
affectionate,
Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,
Not a single one over thirty years of age.

The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads
and
massacred, it was beautiful early summer,
The work commenced about five o’clock and was over by eight.

None obey’d the command to kneel,
Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and
straight,
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living
and dead
lay together,
The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw
them there,
Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away,
These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the
blunts of muskets,
A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two
more
came to release him,
The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood.

At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies;
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve

young men.

35
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told
it to me.

Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)
His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or
truer,
and never was, and never will be;
Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us.

We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d,
My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.

We had receiv’d some eighteen pound shots under the water,
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first
fire,
killing all around and blowing up overhead.

Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,
Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the
gain,
and five feet of water reported,
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the
after-hold
to give them a chance for themselves.

The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the
sentinels,
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to
trust.

Our frigate takes fire,
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colors are struck and the fighting done?

Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little
captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun
our part
of the fighting.

Only three guns are in use,
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s
main-mast,
Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry
and
clear his decks.

The tops alone second the fire of this little battery,
especially
the main-top,
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

Not a moment’s cease,
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the
powder-magazine.

One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought
we are sinking.

Serene stands the little captain,
He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender
to us.

36
Stretch’d and still lies the midnight,
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass
to the
one we have conquer’d,
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders
through a
countenance white as a sheet,
Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and
carefully
curl’d whiskers,
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and
below,
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for
duty,
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of
flesh

upon the masts and spars,
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe
of waves,
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong
scent,
A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and
fields by
the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,
The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his
saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and
long,
dull, tapering groan,
These so, these irretrievable.

37
You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d!
Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering,
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and
keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d
to him
and walk by his side,
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with
sweat
on my twitching lips.)

Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am
tried
and sentenced.

Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at
the last gasp,
My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people
retreat.

Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

38
Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers,
dreams, gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the
bludgeons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion
and
bloody crowning.

I remember now,
I resume the overstaid fraction,
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or
to any graves,
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an
average
unending procession,
Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,
Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of
years.

Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

39
The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the
sea?

Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them,
stay with them.

Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass,
uncomb’d
head, laughter, and naivete,
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and
emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly
out of
the glance of his eyes.

40
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!
You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but
cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights
and days.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.

You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to
spare,
And any thing I have I bestow.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.
(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant
republics.)

To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the

door.
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the physician and the priest go home.

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless
will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon
me.

I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

Sleep—I and they keep guard all night,
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell
you is so.

41
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their
backs,
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

I heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?

Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his
grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the
crucifix
engraved,
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and
image,
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,
(They bore mites as for unfledg’d birds who have now to rise
and fly
and sing for themselves,)

Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in
myself,
bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up
sleeves
driving the mallet and chisel,
Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of
smoke or
a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any
revelation,
Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less
to me
than the gods of the antique wars,
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their
white
foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;
By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple
interceding for
every person born,
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty
angels
with shirts bagg’d out at their waists,
The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past
and to come,
Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers
for his
brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;
What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about
me, and
not filling the square rod then,
The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough,
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d,
The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be
one of
the supremes,
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as
the
best, and be as prodigious;
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,
Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the
shadows.

42
A call in the midst of the crowd,
My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

Come my children,
Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,
Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his
prelude on
the reeds within.

Easily written loose-finger’d chords—I feel the thrum of your
climax and close.

My head slues round on my neck,
Music rolls, but not from the organ,
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.

Ever the hard unsunk ground,
Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward
sun, ever
the air and the ceaseless tides,
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,
Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb,
that
breath of itches and thirsts,
Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one
hides
and bring him forth,
Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.

Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never
once going,
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for
payment
receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

This is the city and I am one of the citizens,
Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars,
markets,
newspapers, schools,

The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships,
factories,
stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.

The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and
tail’d coats
I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or
fleas,)
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and
shallowest
is deathless with me,
What I do and say the same waits for them,
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in
them.

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine,
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book—but the printer and the
printing-office boy?
The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and
solid
in your arms?
The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her
turrets—but
the pluck of the captain and engineers?
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host
and
hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

43
I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient
and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five
thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting

the sun,
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with
sticks in
the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the
idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt
and
austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas
admirant,
minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and
knife,
beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified,
knowing
assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or
sitting
patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-
like till
my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement
and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk
like
man leaving charges before a journey.

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d,
atheistical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt,
despair
and unbelief.

How the flukes splash!
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts
of blood!

Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any,

The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all,
precisely
the same.

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot
fail.

Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d,
not
single one can it fall.

It cannot fall the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then
drew back
and was never seen again,
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it
with
bitterness worse than gall,
Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad
disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish
koboo
call’d the ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to
slip in,
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of
the earth,
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of
myriads
that inhabit them,
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.

44
It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.

What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity
indicate?

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,

There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety.

I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my
sister?
I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon
me,
All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with
lamentation,
(What have I to do with lamentation?)

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of
things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the
steps,
All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even
there,
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic
mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

Long I was hugg’d close—long and long.

Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful
boatmen,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and
deposited it
with care.

All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and
delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

45
O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity!
O manhood, balanced, florid and full.

My lovers suffocate me,
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to
me at night,
Crying by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging
and
chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving
them to be mine.

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying
days!

Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what
grows
after and out of itself,
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the
rim of
the farther systems.

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward and outward and forever outward.

My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,

He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside
them.

There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their
surfaces,
were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would
not avail the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic
leagues, do
not hazard the span or make it impatient,
They are but parts, any thing is but a part.

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be
there.

46
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never
measured and
never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut
from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the
public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not
know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us
hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your
hand
on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the
crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those
orbs,
and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them,
shall we
be fill’d and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and
continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for
yourself.

Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes,
I kiss you
with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress
hence.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of
every
moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me,
shout,

and laughingly dash with your hair.

47
I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the
width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the
teacher.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived
power,
but in his own right,
Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp
steel cuts,
First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull’s eye, to sail
a
skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,
Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-
pox over
all latherers,
And those well-tann’d to those that keep out of the sun.

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time
while
I wait for a boat,
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the
tongue of you,
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.)

I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a
house,
And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him
or her
who privately stays with me in the open air.

If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of
waves key,
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.

No shutter’d room or school can commune with me,
But roughs and little children better than they.

The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,
The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me
with
him all day,
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound
of my voice,
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and
seamen
and love them.

The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine,
On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do
not fail them,
On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know
me seek me.
My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in
his blanket,
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his
wagon,
The young mother and old mother comprehend me,
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget
where they are,
They and all would resume what I have told them.

48
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of
the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
the
learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man
following it
may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the
wheel’d universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and

composed
before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God
and
about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not
in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than
myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face
in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is
sign’d
by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er
I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

49
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is
idle to
try to alarm me.

To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,
And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that
does not
offend me,
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of
melons.

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many
deaths,

(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and
promotions,
If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing
twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that
decay
in the muck,
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.

I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams
reflected,
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring
great or small.

50
There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is
in me.

Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep—I sleep long.

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers
and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is
eternal
life—it is Happiness.

51
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a
minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-
slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with
his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too
late?

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my
gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the
shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM

To the Garden the World

To the garden the world anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me
again,
Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them,
for
reasons, most wondrous,
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past,
By my side or back of me Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.

From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

From pent-up aching rivers,
From that of myself without which I were nothing,
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I
stand sole
among men,
From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown
people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!
O for any and each the body correlative attracting!
O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more
than all
else, you delighting!)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,
From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,
Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought
it
many a long year,
Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,
Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,
Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,
Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,
Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,
Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,
The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,
The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,
The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his
back
lying and floating,
The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous
aching,

The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,
The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it
arouses,
The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter
abandonment,
(Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,
I love you, O you entirely possess me,
O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off,
free and lawless,
Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more
lawless than we;)
The furious storm through me careering, I passionately
trembling.
The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman
that
loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath
swearing,
(O I willingly stake all for you,
O let me be lost if it must be so!
O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and
exhaust
each other if it must be so;)
From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,
The general commanding me, commanding all, from him
permission taking,
From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long
as it is,)
From sex, from the warp and from the woof,
From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,
From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not
near,
From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of
fingers
through my hair and beard,
From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom,
From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk,
fainting
with excess,
From what the divine husband knows, from the work of
fatherhood,
From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s
embrace in
the night,
From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,

From the cling of the trembling arm,
From the bending curve and the clinch,
From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,
From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as
unwilling
to leave,
(Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,)
From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,
From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,
Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,
And you stalwart loins.

I Sing the Body Electric

1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to
them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of
the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies
conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who
defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body
itself
balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is
perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his
face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the
joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his
waist
and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton
and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps
more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and
shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of
women, the
folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the
street, the
contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims
through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and
rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the
garden or
cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his
six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown,
lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at
sundown after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and
resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and
blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of
masculine
muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell
strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the
curv’d
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the
mother’s

breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line
with
the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of
sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair
and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the
richness
and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons
were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with
personal love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through
the
clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat
himself, he
had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt
or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous
of the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish
to sit
by him in the boat that you and he might touch each
other.

4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing
flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so

lightly
round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and
looking
on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that
pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless
vapor,
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and
what
was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now
consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the
response
likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh
swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering
jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is
born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large,
and the
outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and
is the

exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the
soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and
active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as
well as daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female
I see.

6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his
place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him
well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow
that is
utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the
soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every
thing to
the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in
the
laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the
wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off,
just as
much as you,

Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect
motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest
ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or
she has
no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse
float, and
the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation
sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch
the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his
business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough
for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without
one
animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning
in
tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.

Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not
flabby,
good-sized arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires,
reachings, aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not
express’d in
parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall
be
fathers in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments
and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his
offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could
trace
back through the centuries?)

8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of
mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the
mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all
nations
and times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood
untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is
more
beautiful than the most beautiful face.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or
the fool

that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal
themselves.

9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men
and
women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the
likes of
the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems,
and
that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking
or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck,
neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and
the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-
bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb,
forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone,
breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,
man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my
or your
body or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and

clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality,
maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes
from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter,
weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting
aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking,
swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving
and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around
the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the
naked
meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence
downward
toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and
the
marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only,
but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

A Woman Waits for Me

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture
of the
right man were lacking.

Sex contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results,
promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the
seminal milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the
earth,
These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and
justifications of itself.

Without shame the man I like knows and avows the
deliciousness of his sex,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those
women that
are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,
I see that they understand me and do not deny me,
I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust
husband of
those women.

They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing
winds,

Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run,
strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear,
well-possess’d of themselves.

I draw you close to me, you women,
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake,
but for
others’ sakes,
Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.

It is I, you women, I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these
States, I
press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long
accumulated within me.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and
America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic
girls,
new artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-
spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and
you
inter-penetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them,
as I
count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

Spontaneous Me

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hillside whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab,
purple, and
light and dark green,
The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the
private
untrimm’d bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after
another as I happen to call them to me or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and
that all
men carry,
(Know once for all, avow’d on purpose, wherever are men like
me, are
our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-
climbers,
and the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love,
breasts
of love, bellies press’d and glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,
The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body
of the
man, the body of the earth,
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down, that
gripes the

full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm
legs, takes
his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight
till he is
satisfied;
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one
with
an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the
other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crush’d sage-plant, mint,
birch-bark,
The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to
me what
he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and
content to the ground,
The no-form’d stings that sights, people, objects, sting me
with,
The hubb’d sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever
can any
one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp’d brothers, that only
privileged
feelers may be intimate where they are,
The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the
bashful
withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause
and
edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vex’d corrosion so pensive and so painful,
The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman
that
flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking
to
repress what would master him,
The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs,
visions, sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling
fingers,
the young man all color’d, red, ashamed, angry;

The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and
naked,
The merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in
the
sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from
them,
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or
ripen’d
long-round walnuts,
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself
indecent,
while birds and animals never once skulk or find
themselves indecent,
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity
of maternity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh
daughters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I
saturate
what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am
through,
The wholesome relief, repose, content,
And this bunch pluck’d at random from myself,
It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall where it
may.

One Hour to Madness and Joy

One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my
children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded
to me
in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the
lips of
a determin’d man.

O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool,
all
untied and illumin’d!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at
last!
To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from
mine and
you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of
Nature!
To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I
am.

O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!

To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to
me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and
freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch
you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look’d, 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 perfect!
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 forever;
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.

Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals

Ages and ages returning at intervals,
Undestroy’d, wandering immortal,
Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly
sweet,
I, chanter of Adamic songs,
Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,
Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these,
offering myself,
Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,
Offspring of my loins.

We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d

We two, how long we were fool’d,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as
any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes
mornings
and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves
orbic
and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on
prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves
rolling
over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive,
pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and
influence
of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again,
we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

O Hymen! O Hymenee!

O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?
O why sting me for a swift moment only?
Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you
would
soon certainly kill me?

I Am He That Aches with Love

I am he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching,
attract all matter?
So the body of me to all I meet or know.

Native Moments

Native moments—when you come upon me—ah you are here now,
Give me now libidinous joys only,
Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and
rank,
To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the
midnight
orgies of young men,
I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,
The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low
person
for my dearest friend,
He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one
condemn’d by
others for deeds done,
I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from
my companions?
O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,
I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,
I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City

Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for
future
use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually
met
there who detain’d me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has
long
been forgotten by me,
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to
me,
Again we wander, we love, we separate again,
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the
Organ

I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday
morn I
pass’d the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your
long-
stretch’d 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.

Facing West from California’s Shores

Facing west from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of
maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost
circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of
Kashmere,
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the
hero,
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice
islands,
Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,
Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)

As Adam Early in the Morning

As Adam early in the morning,
Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,
Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.

BOOK V. CALAMUS

In Paths Untrodden

In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all the standards hitherto publish’d, from the
pleasures,
profits, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,
Clear to me now standards not yet publish’d, clear to me that
my soul,
That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades,
Here by myself away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abash’d, (for in this secluded spot I can respond
as I
would not dare elsewhere,)
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet
contains
all the rest,
Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly
attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,
Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,
Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,
I proceed for all who are or have been young men,
To tell the secret my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.

Scented Herbage of My Breast

Scented herbage of my breast,
Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best
afterwards,
Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death,
Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze
you
delicate leaves,
Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired
you
shall emerge again;
O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or
inhale
your faint odor, but I believe a few will;
O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to
tell in
your own way of the heart that is under you,
O I do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves,
you are
not happiness,
You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting
me,
Yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots, you make
me
think of death,
Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally
beautiful
except death and love?)
O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of
lovers,
I think it must be for death,
For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere
of lovers,
Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to

prefer,
(I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death
most,)
Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the
same as
you mean,
Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my
breast!
Spring away from the conceal’d heart there!
Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid
leaves!
Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!
Come I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine, I
have
long enough stifled and choked;
Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve
me not,
I will say what I have to say by itself,
I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again
utter a
call only their call,
I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the
States,
I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and
will
through the States,
Through me shall the words be said to make death
exhilarating,
Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with
it,
Give me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above
all, and
are folded inseparably together, you love and death are,
Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was
calling life,
For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports
essential,
That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons,
and that
they are mainly for you,
That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,
That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no
matter how long,
That you will one day perhaps take control of all,
That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of

appearance,
That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last
so very long,
But you will last very long.

Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps
destructive,
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to
be your
sole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the
lives
around you would have to be abandon’d,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any
further, let
go your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.

Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air,
(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in
company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or
dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching
lest any
person for miles around approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the
sea or

some quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s
kiss,
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your
hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried
eternally.

But these leaves conning you con at peril,
For these leaves and me you will not understand,
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
certainly elude you.
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me,
behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written
this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise
me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very
few)
prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much
evil,
perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many
times
and not hit, that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.

For You, O Democracy

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the
rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the
prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each
other’s necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

These I Singing in Spring

These I singing in spring collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow
and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass
the gates,
Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not
the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown
there,
pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones
and
partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before
I
think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in
the silence,
Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my
arms or neck,
They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they
come, a
great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near
me,
Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-
oak in
Florida as it hung trailing down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,

And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the
pondside,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns
again
never to separate from me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades,
this
calamus-root shall,
Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it
back!)
And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,
And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
These I compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely
from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something
to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I
reserve,
I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am
capable
of loving.

Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only,
Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,
Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,
Not in many an oath and promise broken,
Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition,
Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,
Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,
Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one
day cease,
Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,
Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone
far in
the wilds,
Not in husky pantings through clinch’d teeth,
Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes,
dead words,
Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every
day,
Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and
dismiss you
continually—not there,
Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in
these songs.

Of the Terrible Doubt of 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, colors, 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 anyhow, from
entirely
changed points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answer’d 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 Base of All Metaphysics

And now gentlemen,
A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,
As base and finale too for all metaphysics.

(So to the students the old professor,
At the close of his crowded course.)

Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic
systems,
Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and
Hegel,
Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,
And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine
having
studied long,
I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,
See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,
Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ
the divine I see,
The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of
friend to friend,
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and
parents,
Of city for city and land for land.

Recorders Ages Hence

Recorders ages hence,
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive
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 pour’d it forth,
Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends,
his lovers,
Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and
dissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d
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 saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the
shoulder
of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon
him also.

When I Heard at the Close of the Day

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been
receiv’d
with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy
night for
me that follow’d,
And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d,
still
I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect
health,
refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear
in the
morning light,
When I wander’d 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
nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d 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.

Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from
what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d
satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and
tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a
real heroic man?
Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya,
illusion?

Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone

Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-
side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around
tighter
than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees
as the
sun is risen,
Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the
living
sea, to you O sailors!
Frost-mellow’d berries and Third-month twigs offer’d fresh to
young
persons wandering out in the fields when the winter
breaks up,
Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and
bring
form, color, perfume, to you,
If you become the aliment and the wet they will become
flowers,
fruits, tall branches and trees.

Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes

Not heat flames up and consumes,
Not sea-waves hurry in and out,
Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears
lightly
along white down-balls of myriads of seeds,
Waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may;
Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me,
consuming,
burning for his love whom I love,
O none more than I hurrying in and out;
Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? O
I the same,
O nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting
clouds,
are borne through the open air,
Any more than my soul is borne through the open air,
Wafted in all directions O love, for friendship, for you.

Trickle Drops

Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving!
O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,
Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,
From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d,
From my face, from my forehead and lips,
From my breast, from within where I was conceal’d, press
forth red
drops, confession drops,
Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say,
bloody drops,
Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten,
Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,
Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,
Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.

City of Orgies

City of orgies, walks and joys,
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one
day make
Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your
spectacles, repay me,
Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at
the wharves,
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows
with
goods in them,
Nor to converse with learn’d persons, or bear my share in the
soiree
or feast;
Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift
flash
of eyes offering me love,
Offering response to my own—these repay me,
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.

Behold This Swarthy Face

Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,
This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,
My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;
Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me
lightly
on the lips with robust love,
And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship’s deck
give a
kiss in return,
We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea,
We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark
green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of
myself,
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing
alone there
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon
it and
twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my
room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of
manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in
Louisiana
solitary in a wide in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover
near,
I know very well I could not.

To a Stranger

Passing stranger! you do not 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 recall’d 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.

This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful

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 Germany,
Italy,
France, Spain,
Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or 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.

I Hear It Was Charged Against Me

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy
institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the
destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of
these
States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or
large
that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

The Prairie-Grass Dividing

The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing,
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh,
nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom
and
command, leading not following,
Those with a never-quell’d audacity, those with sweet and
lusty
flesh clear of taint,
Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and
governors,
as to say Who are you?
Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain’d, never
obedient,
Those of inland America.

When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame

When I peruse the conquer’d 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 hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with
them,
How together 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 walk away fill’d with the
bitterest envy.

We Two Boys Together Clinging

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions
making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering,
thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water
drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

A Promise to California

A promise to California,
Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound
and Oregon;
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to
remain,
to teach robust American love,
For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,
inland, and along the Western sea;
For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and
I will also.

Here the Frailest Leaves of Me

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,
Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose
them,
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

No Labor-Saving Machine

No labor-saving machine,
Nor discovery have I made,
Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to
found
hospital or library,
Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,
Nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-
shelf,
But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,
For comrades and lovers.

A Glimpse

A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the
stove
late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a
corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching
and
seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking
and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking
little,
perhaps not a word.

A Leaf for Hand in Hand

A leaf for hand in hand;
You natural persons old and young!
You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of
the Mississippi!
You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!
You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!
I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for
you to
walk hand in hand.

Earth, My Likeness

Earth, my likeness,
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to
burst forth,
For an athlete is enamour’d of me, and I of him,
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me
eligible
to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.

I Dream’d in a Dream

I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks
of the
whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream’d 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.

What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?

What think you I take my pen in hand to record?
The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass
the
offing to-day under full sail?
The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night
that
envelops me?
Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread
around me? —no;
But merely 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 passionately
kiss’d him,
While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in
his arms.

To the East and to the West

To the East and to the West,
To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,
To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,
These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs
are in all men,
I believe the main purport of these States is to found a
superb
friendship, exalte, previously unknown,
Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting,
latent in all men.

Sometimes with One I Love

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I
effuse
unreturn’d love,
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is
certain one
way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not
return’d,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

To a Western Boy

Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of
mine;
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,
If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently
select lovers,
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?

Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!

Fast-anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love!
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought
of you!
Then separate, as disembodied or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

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 indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in
you.

O You Whom I Often and Silently Come

O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may
be with you,
As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same
room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake
is
playing within me.

That Shadow My Likeness

That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a
livelihood,
chattering, chaffering,
How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it
flits,
How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;
But among my lovers and caroling these songs,
O I never doubt whether that is really me.

Full of Life Now

Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking
me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become
your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now
with you.)

BOOK VI

Salut au Monde!

1
O take my hand Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join’d unended links, each hook’d 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 groups of old men going slowly with their arms
about
each other’s necks?
What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
What are the mountains call’d that rise so high in the mists?
What myriads of dwellings are they fill’d 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,
Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises
above
the horizon and sinks again,
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, 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 singing,
I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals
early
in the day,
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 locusts in Syria 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 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 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, fasten’d together
with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,
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 space,
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, 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 sunlit part on the other side,
I see the curious rapid 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 where they
range,
I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,
I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,
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, the mountains of the Moon, and the
Red
mountains of Madagascar,
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 Atlantic
and
Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the
sea of Peru,
The waters of Hindustan, the China sea, and the gulf of
Guinea,
The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki land-lock’d
in its
mountains,
The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British
shores, and

the bay of Biscay,
The clear-sunn’d Mediterranean, and from one to another of
its islands,
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
lookout,
Some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.

I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in
clusters in
port, some on their voyages,
Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes
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 as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
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 steam’d up ready to start 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.

5
I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,
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 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 Danube, 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, llamas, monks, muftis,
exhorters,
I see where druids walk’d 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 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 toil’d
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-limb’d Bacchus,
I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of
feathers on
his head,
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov’d, saying to the
people
Do not weep for me,
This is not my true country, I have lived banish’d 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 bowlders 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 restless
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 refresh’d 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 notch’d with ravines, I see the jungles
and deserts,
I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tail’d
sheep,

the antelope, and the burrowing wolf

I see the highlands of Abyssinia,
I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree,
tamarind, 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 incomparable
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 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 porpoise-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 habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin,
Constantinople,
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,
I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels,
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 poison’d
splint, the
fetich, and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns,
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia,
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta,
Tokio,
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 intervening
sands,
see the caravans toiling onward,
I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and
obelisks.
I look on chisell’d histories, records of conquering kings,
dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-
blocks,
I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm’d,
swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,
I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the
side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.

I see all the menials of the earth, laboring,
I see all the prisoners in the prisons,
I see the defective human bodies of the earth,
The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,
The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of
the earth,
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, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, I go among
them, I
mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.

11
You whoever 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-soul’d African, large, fine-
headed,
nobly-form’d, superbly destin’d, 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 stock
whence I
myself have descended;)
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of
Styria!
You neighbor 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 Roman! Neapolitan! you 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 Bab-el-mandeb
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 allow’d the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

12
You Hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair’d hordes!
You own’d persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive
countenances of brutes!
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon
for all
your glimmering language and spirituality!
You dwarf’d Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!
You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,
groveling, seeking your food!
You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
You haggard, uncouth, untutor’d Bedowee!
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you
Feejeeman!
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.)

13
My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around

the whole earth,
I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for
me in
all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

You vapors, I think I have risen with you, moved away to
distant
continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you you winds;
You waters I have finger’d 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:

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 you all, in America’s name,
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.

BOOK VII

Song of the Open Road

1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I
go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not
all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor
denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the
illiterate person, are not denied;

The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s
tramp, the
drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the
eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture
into the
town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be
interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give
them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable
showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so
dear to me.

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the
edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-
lined
side! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d facades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden
crossings!
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to
yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive
surfaces,
and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable
with me.

4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where
it is

not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh
sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and
undenied,
adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I
love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and
all
free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and
whoever
beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.

5
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary
lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the
holds that
would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south
are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to
me
I would do the same to you,

I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless
me.

6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not
amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would
not
astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the
earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks
all
authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not
having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its
own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is
content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things,
and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that
provokes
it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all
under the
spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing
currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of
you, you
are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and
me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is
apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d
gates,
ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness
why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the
sunlight
expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and
lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and
melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and
always
drop fruit as I pass;)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I
walk by
and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will?
what
gives them to be free to mine?

8
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,

I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and
sweetness of
man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every
day
out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and
sweet
continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of
the
love of young and old,
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and
attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature
is rude
and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well
envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than
words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this
dwelling
we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we
must
not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are
permitted
to receive it but a little while.

10

Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee
clipper
speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no
longer.

Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and
health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is
permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)

11
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new
prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or
achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you
hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by
an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of
those
who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer
with
passionate kisses of parting,

You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their
reach’d hands
toward you.

12
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—
they
are the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant
dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary
toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the
shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers
of
children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down
of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the
curious
years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse
phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their
bearded
and well-grain’d manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or
womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of
the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of
death.

13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and
nights
they tend to,

Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass
it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach
it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for
you,
however long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all
without
labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not
abstracting one
particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s
elegant
villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married
couple, and
the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass
through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever
you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you
encounter
them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you
leave
them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as
roads for
traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that
was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners
before the procession of souls along the grand roads of
the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of
the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and
sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent,
feeble,
dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by
men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where
they go,
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something
great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house,
though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and
trimm’d faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the
confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding
it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities,
polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public
assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the
bedroom,
everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death
under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and
artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of
itself,

Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of
things that
from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come
forth
something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm’d,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry
enemies,
desertions.

15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be
not
detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on
the
shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain
unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead
in the
court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

BOOK VIII

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

1
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also
face
to face.

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.

2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours
of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself
disintegrated, 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 passage 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.

3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so
many
generations hence,
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 refresh’d by the gladness of the river and
the
bright flow, I was refresh’d,
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-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air
floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies
and left
the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward
the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,

Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the
shape of my
head in the sunlit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
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
pilothouses,
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
frolic-some crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of
the
granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely
flank’d 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.

4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, 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 look’d
forward
to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5
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 walk’d 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 receiv’d 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.

6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in
reality meagre?
Nor is it 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,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
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,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call’d 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,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or
actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great
as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid
in my
stores in advance,
I consider’d 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, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking
at you
now, for all you cannot see me?

8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
mast-hemm’d Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
twilight, and the belated lighter?
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
approach?
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 promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?

What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not
accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?

9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the
ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor 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!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and
answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
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 role, the role 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
any
one’s head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-
sail’d
schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d 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.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful
ministers,
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.

BOOK IX

Song of the Answerer

1
Now list to my morning’s romanza, I tell the signs of the
Answerer,
To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine
before me.

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 stand before the young
man
face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand and
his
left hand in my right hand,
And I answer for his brother and for men, and I answer for
him that
answers for all, and send 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 landscape,
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 any one 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 times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and
sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the
rest
never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.

He is the Answerer,
What can be answer’d he answers, and what cannot be answer’d
he
shows how it cannot be answer’d.

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 satisfaction,
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 favors by day or sleeps with at night is
blessed.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and
tongue,
He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men,
and
any man translates, and any man translates 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.

Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors
that
he has follow’d the sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for
an artist,
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love
them,
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it
or has
follow’d 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 traveler’s coffee-house claims

him,
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the German is sure, 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.

2
The indications and tally of time,
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs,
Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts,
What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant
company
of singers, and their words,
The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the
light or dark,
but the words of the maker of poems are the general light
and dark,
The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,
His insight and power encircle things and the human race,
He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the
human race.

The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,
The singers are welcom’d, understood, appear often enough,
but rare
has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the
maker
of poems, the Answerer,
(Not every century nor every five centuries has contain’d
such a
day, for all its names.)

The singers of successive hours of centuries may have

ostensible
names, but the name of each of them is one of the
singers,
The name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer,
sweet-singer, night-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer,
weird-singer, or something else.

All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please,
The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august
masters of beauty;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of
mothers
and fathers,
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of
science.

Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason,
health,
rudeness of body, withdrawnness,
Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of
poems.

The sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems, the
Answerer,
The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist,
artist, all
these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.

The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions,
politics, war,
peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every
thing else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty,
longing,
fain, love-sick.

They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but
rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and
full,
Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of

stars, to
learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the
ceaseless
rings and never be quiet again.

BOOK X

Our Old Feuillage

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-breath’d Cuba,
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern sea,
inseparable with
the slopes drain’d 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,
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 continent of
Democracy;
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities,
travelers,
Kanada, the snows;
Always these compact 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 labor
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 sail’d, 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 festoon’d 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
color’d flowers and berries enveloping 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 with 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 windlasses on shore work’d 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 cover’d 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 welcom’d and kiss’d by the aged mulatto nurse,
On rivers boatmen safely moor’d at nightfall 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 odor, 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 eyes
around;
California life, the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude
costume,
the stanch California friendship, the sweet air, the
graves one
in passing meets solitary 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 Dilation or Pride;
In arriere the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines,
the
calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and
indorsement,
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, institutions,
All these States compact, every square mile of these States
without

excepting a particle;
Me pleas’d, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok’s
fields,
Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies
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
roadside,
The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston,
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
moneymakers,
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass,
lever,
pulley, all certainties,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,
In space the sporades, the scatter’d islands, the stars—on
the firm
earth, the lands, my lands,
O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I
putting it
at random in these songs, 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,
Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio
Grande,

the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, 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 Paumanok, 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
reliev’d by other sentinels—and I feeding and taking
turns
with the rest,
In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner’d 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, corner’d 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 out of a
thousand
diverse contributions one identity, any more than my
lands
are inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY;
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,
Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—
these me,