Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman, 1819–1892

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the 1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and Brooklyn, where Whitman attended the Brooklyn public schools.

At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printer’s trade and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, he began his career as teacher in the one-room schoolhouses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career.

He founded a weekly newspaper, The Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent for three months. After witnessing the auctions of enslaved individuals in New Orleans, he returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848 and co-founded a “free soil” newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, which he edited through the next fall. Whitman’s attitudes about race have been described as “unstable and inconsistent.” He did not always side with the abolitionists, yet he celebrated human dignity.

In Brooklyn, he continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-two poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his lifetime, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book. Noted Whitman scholar, M. Jimmie Killingsworth writes that “the ‘merge,' as Whitman conceived it, is the tendency of the individual self to overcome moral, psychological, and political boundaries. Thematically and poetically, the notion dominates the three major poems of 1855: ‘I Sing the Body Electric,' ‘The Sleepers,' and ‘Song of Myself,' all of which were ‘merged’ in the first edition under the single title Leaves of Grass but were demarcated by clear breaks in the text and the repetition of the title.”

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a “purged” and “cleansed” life. He worked as a freelance journalist and visited the wounded at New York City–area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D. C. in December 1862 to care for his brother, who had been wounded in the war.

Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals; he ended up staying in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass, which Harlan found offensive. After Harlan fired him, he went on to work in the attorney general's office.

In 1873, Whitman suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. A few months later he travelled to Camden, New Jersey, to visit his dying mother at his brother’s house. He ended up staying with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass (James R. Osgood), which brought him enough money to buy a home in Camden.

In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (David McKay, 1891–92) and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye My Fancy (David McKay, 1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered one of America’s most important poets.

Selected Poems by WALT WHITMAN

1. Sometimes with One I Love

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   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).

2. O Captain! My Captain!

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
   

   The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
   

   The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
   

   While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
   

   But O heart! heart! heart!
   

   O the bleeding drops of red,
   

   Where on the deck my Captain lies,
   

   Fallen cold and dead.
   

   O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
   

   Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
   

   For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
   

   For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
   

   Here Captain! dear father!
   

   This arm beneath your head!
   

   It is some dream that on the deck,
   

   You’ve fallen cold and dead.
   

   My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
   

   My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
   

   The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
   

   From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
   

   Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
   

   But I with mournful tread,
   

   Walk the deck my Captain lies,
   

   Fallen cold and dead.

3. I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   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 leaves 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 flat space,
   

   Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
   

   I know very well I could not.

4. A Noiseless Patient Spider

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   A noiseless patient spider,
   

   I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
   

   Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
   

   It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
   

   Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
   

   And you O my soul where you stand,
   

   Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
   

   Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
   

   Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
   

   Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

5. America

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
   

   All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
   

   Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
   

   Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
   

   A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
   

   Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

6. Red Jacket (From Aloft)

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   Upon this scene, this show,
   Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,
   (Nor in caprice alone- some grains of deepest meaning,)
   Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds' blended shapes,
   As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill'd with its soul,
   Product of Nature's sun, stars, earth direct- a towering human form,
   In hunting-shirt of film, arm'd with the rifle, a half-ironical
   smile curving its phantom lips,
   Like one of Ossian's ghosts looks down.

7. Song Of Myself, XXIX

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   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.

8. Thick-Sprinkled Bunting

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   
   THICK-SPRINKLED bunting! Flag of stars!
   Long yet your road, fateful flag!--long yet your road, and lined with
   bloody death!
   For the prize I see at issue, at last is the world!
   All its ships and shores I see, interwoven with your threads, greedy
   banner!
   --Dream'd again the flags of kings, highest born, to flaunt
   unrival'd?
   O hasten, flag of man! O with sure and steady step, passing highest
   flags of kings,
   Walk supreme to the heavens, mighty symbol--run up above them all,
   Flag of stars! thick-sprinkled bunting!

9. This Day, O Soul

   BY WALT WHITMAN

   THIS day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror;
   Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay--But the cloud has
   pass'd, and the tarnish gone;
   ... Behold, O Soul! it is now a clean and bright mirror,
   Faithfully showing you all the things of the world.

10. A Clear Midnight

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
    Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
    Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
    lovest best.
    Night, sleep, death and the stars.

11. Song Of Myself, XX

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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, con- formity 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 my- self,
    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.

12. To A Locomotive In Winter

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    THEE for my recitative!
    Thee in the driving storm, even as now--the snow--the winter-day
    declining;
    Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat
    convulsive;
    Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel;
    Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating,
    shuttling at thy sides;
    Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar--now tapering in the
    distance;
    Thy great protruding head-light, fix'd in front;
    Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple;
    The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack;
    Thy knitted frame--thy springs and valves--the tremulous twinkle of
    thy wheels; 10
    Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily-following,
    Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering:
    Type of the modern! emblem of motion and power! pulse of the
    continent!
    For once, come serve the Muse, and merge in verse, even as here I see
    thee,
    With storm, and buffeting gusts of wind, and falling snow;
    By day, thy warning, ringing bell to sound its notes,
    By night, thy silent signal lamps to swing.
    
    Fierce-throated beauty!
    Roll through my chant, with all thy lawless music! thy swinging lamps
    at night;
    Thy piercing, madly-whistled laughter! thy echoes, rumbling like an
    earthquake, rousing all! 20
    Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding;
    (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
    Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd,
    Launch'd o'er the prairies wide--across the lakes,
    To the free skies, unpent, and glad, and strong.

13. Song Of Myself, XXXIV

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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 enemy's, 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.

14. Song Of Myself, XXXI

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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'oeuvre 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.

15. The Great City

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
    Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-lifters of the departing,
    Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,
    Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest,
    Nor the place of the most numerous population.
    
    Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
    Where the city stands that is belov'd by these, and loves them in return and understands them,
    Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
    Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
    Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
    Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,
    Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons,
    Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
    
    Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority,
    Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
    Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves,
    Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
    Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
    Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
    Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;
    Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
    Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
    Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
    Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
    There the great city stands.

16. Song Of Myself, II

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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 pass- ing 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.

17. The Singer In The Prison

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    
    O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
    O fearful thought--a convict Soul!
    
    RANG the refrain along the hall, the prison,
    Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,
    Pouring in floods of melody, in tones so pensive, sweet and strong,
    the like whereof was never heard,
    Reaching the far-off sentry, and the armed guards, who ceas'd their
    pacing,
    Making the hearer's pulses stop for extasy and awe.
    
    
    O sight of pity, gloom, and dole!
    O pardon me, a hapless Soul!
    
    The sun was low in the west one winter day, 10
    When down a narrow aisle, amid the thieves and outlaws of the land,
    (There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced murderers, wily
    counterfeiters,
    Gather'd to Sunday church in prison walls--the keepers round,
    Plenteous, well-arm'd, watching, with vigilant eyes,)
    All that dark, cankerous blotch, a nation's criminal mass,
    Calmly a Lady walk'd, holding a little innocent child by either hand,
    Whom, seating on their stools beside her on the platform,
    She, first preluding with the instrument, a low and musical prelude,
    In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint old hymn.
    
    
    THE HYMN.
    
    A Soul, confined by bars and bands, 20
    Cries, Help! O help! and wrings her hands;
    Blinded her eyes--bleeding her breast,
    Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest.
    
    O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
    O fearful thought--a convict Soul!
    
    Ceaseless, she paces to and fro;
    O heart-sick days! O nights of wo!
    Nor hand of friend, nor loving face;
    Nor favor comes, nor word of grace.
    
    O sight of pity, gloom, and dole! 30
    O pardon me, a hapless Soul!
    
    It was not I that sinn'd the sin,
    The ruthless Body dragg'd me in;
    Though long I strove courageously,
    The Body was too much for me.
    
    O Life! no life, but bitter dole!
    O burning, beaten, baffled Soul!
    
    (Dear prison'd Soul, bear up a space,
    For soon or late the certain grace;
    To set thee free, and bear thee home, 40
    The Heavenly Pardoner, Death shall come.
    
    Convict no more--nor shame, nor dole!
    Depart! a God-enfranchis'd Soul!)
    
    
    The singer ceas'd;
    One glance swept from her clear, calm eyes, o'er all those upturn'd
    faces;
    Strange sea of prison faces--a thousand varied, crafty, brutal,
    seam'd and beauteous faces;
    Then rising, passing back along the narrow aisle between them,
    While her gown touch'd them, rustling in the silence,
    She vanish'd with her children in the dusk.
    
    
    While upon all, convicts and armed keepers, ere they stirr'd, 50
    (Convict forgetting prison, keeper his loaded pistol,)
    A hush and pause fell down, a wondrous minute,
    With deep, half-stifled sobs, and sound of bad men bow'd, and moved
    to weeping,
    And youth's convulsive breathings, memories of home,
    The mother's voice in lullaby, the sister's care, the happy
    childhood,
    The long-pent spirit rous'd to reminiscence;
    --A wondrous minute then--But after, in the solitary night, to many,
    many there,
    Years after--even in the hour of death--the sad refrain--the tune,
    the voice, the words,
    Resumed--the large, calm Lady walks the narrow aisle,
    The wailing melody again--the singer in the prison sings: 60
    
    O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
    O fearful thought--a convict Soul!

18. Longings For Home

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!
    O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
    O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
    born—the
    grains,
    plants, rivers;
    Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
    sands,
    or
    through swamps;
    Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee,
    the
    Coosa, and the Sabine;
    O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again;
    Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on the Okeechobee—I cross
    the
    hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests;
    I see the parrots in the woods—I see the papaw tree and the blossoming titi;
    Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia—I coast up the Carolinas,
    I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented
    bay-tree, the
    lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
    I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision
    inland;
    O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
    The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;
    The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe
    and
    trailing moss,
    The piney odor and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps
    the
    freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal'd hut;)
    O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by
    reptiles,
    resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the
    wild-cat,
    and
    the whirr of the rattlesnake;
    The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the
    moon-lit
    night,
    The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
    A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn—slender,
    flapping,
    bright
    green with tassels—with beautiful ears, each well-sheath'd in its husk;
    An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
    O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart;
    O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
    O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!

19. Song Of Myself, XXIII

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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 abso- lutely.
    
    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 scalpel, 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.

20. Song Of Myself, XXIV

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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 cur- rent 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 meta- physics 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!

21. Washington's Monument, February, 1885

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:
    Far from its base and shaft expanding—the round zones circling,
    comprehending,
    
    Thou, Washington, art all the world's, the continents' entire—
    not yours alone, America,
    
    Europe's as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer's cot,
    Or frozen North, or sultry South—the African's—the Arab's in
    his tent,
    
    Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;
    (Greets the antique the hero new? ‘tis but the same—the heir
    legitimate, continued ever,
    
    The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken
    line,
    
    Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e'en in defeat
    defeated not, the same:)
    
    Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,
    Through teeming cities' streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,
    Now, or to come, or past—where patriot wills existed or exist,
    Wherever Freedom, pois'd by Toleration, sway'd by Law,
    Stands or is rising thy true monument.

22. This Compost

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    
    SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest;
    I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
    I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
    I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
    I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew
    me.
    
    O how can it be that the ground does not sicken?
    How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
    How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards,
    grain?
    Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
    Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? 10
    
    Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
    Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;
    Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
    I do not see any of it upon you to-day--or perhaps I am deceiv'd;
    I will run a furrow with my plough--I will press my spade through the
    sod, and turn it up underneath;
    I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
    
    
    Behold this compost! behold it well!
    Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--Yet behold!
    The grass of spring covers the prairies,
    The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden, 20
    The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
    The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
    The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its
    graves,
    The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
    The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on
    their nests,
    The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
    The new-born of animals appear--the calf is dropt from the cow, the
    colt from the mare,
    Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green
    leaves,
    Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk--the lilacs bloom in the
    door-yards;
    The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
    of sour dead. 30
    
    What chemistry!
    That the winds are really not infectious,
    That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which
    is so amorous after me,
    That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its
    tongues,
    That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
    themselves in it,
    That all is clean forever and forever.
    That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
    That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
    That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard--that
    melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
    That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, 40
    Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a
    catching disease.
    
    
    Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
    It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
    It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
    successions of diseas'd corpses,
    It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
    It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous
    crops,
    It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from
    them at last.

23. Think Of The Soul

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    THINK of the Soul;
    I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul
    somehow to live in other spheres;
    I do not know how, but I know it is so.
    
    Think of loving and being loved;
    I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such
    things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon
    you.
    
    Think of the past;
    I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you
    and your times.
    
    The race is never separated--nor man nor woman escapes;
    All is inextricable--things, spirits, Nature, nations, you too--from
    precedents you come.
    
    Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers precede them;) 10
    Recall the sages, poets, saviors, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
    Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves,
    felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas'd persons.
    
    Think of the time when you were not yet born;
    Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
    Think of the time when your own body will be dying.
    
    Think of spiritual results,
    Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
    objects pass into spiritual results.
    
    Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
    Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
    
    Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman; 20
    The creation is womanhood;
    Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
    Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
    womanhood?

24. These, I, Singing In Spring

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    
    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, 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, 10
    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 in spring, 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, 20
    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.

25. Vicouac On A Mountain Side

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    
    I SEE before me now, a traveling army halting;
    Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of
    summer;
    Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising
    high;
    Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily
    seen;
    The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up on the
    mountain;
    The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized flickering;
    And over all, the sky--the sky! far, far out of reach, studded,
    breaking out, the eternal stars.

26. To A Stranger

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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.

27. The Return Of The Heroes

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
    Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of autumn fields,
    Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
    Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
    Tuning a verse for thee.
    
    O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice,
    O harvest of my lands—O boundless Summer growths!
    O lavish brown parturient earth—O infinite, teeming womb.
    A song to narrate thee.
    
    2
    
    Ever upon this stage,
    Is acted God's calm, annual drama,
    Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
    Sunrise that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
    The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
    The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
    The lilliput countless armies of the grass,
    The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
    The scenery of the snows, the wind's free orchestra,
    The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and the silvery fringes,
    The high dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,
    The shows of all the varied soils, and all the growths and products,
    The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
    The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products.
    
    3
    
    Fecund America—to-day,
    Thou art all over set in births and joys!
    Thou groan'st with riches! thy wealth clothes thee as a swathing garment,
    Thou laughest loud with ache of great possessions,
    A myriad-twining life, like interlacing vines, binds all thy vast demesne,
    As some huge ship freighted to water's edge thou ridest into port,
    As rain falls from the heaven, and vapors rise from the earth, so have the precious values fallen upon thee, and risen out of thee;
    Thou envy of the globe! thou miracle!
    Thou, bathed, choked, swimming in plenty,
    Thou lucky Mistress of the tranquil barns,
    Thou Prairie Dame that sittest in the middle and lookest out upon thy world, and lookest East, and lookest West,
    Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a million farms, and missest nothing,
    Thou all-acceptress—thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable as God is hospitable.)
    
    4
    
    When late I sang sad was my voice;
    Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred and smoke of war;
    In the midst of the conflict, the heroes, I stood,
    Or pass'd with slow step through the wounded and dying.
    
    But now I sing not War,
    Nor the measur'd march of soldiers, nor the tents of camps,
    Nor the regiments hastily coming up, deploying in line of battle;
    No more the sad, unnatural shows of war.
    
    Ask'd room those flush'd immortal ranks, the first forth-stepping armies?
    Ask room alas the ghastly ranks—the armies dread that follow'd.
    
    (Pass—pass, ye proud brigades, with your tramping, sinewy legs,
    With your shoulders young and strong, with your knapsacks and your muskets;
    How elate I stood and watch'd you, where starting off you march'd.
    
    Pass;—then rattle drums again,
    For an army heaves in sight, O another gathering army,
    Swarming, trailing on the rear, O you dread accruing army,
    O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal diarrhea, with your fever,
    O my land's maimed darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch,
    Lo, your pallid army follows.)
    
    5
    
    But on these days of brightness,
    On the far-stretching beauteous landscape, the roads and lanes, the high-piled farm-wagons, and the fruits and barns,
    Should the dead intrude?
    
    Ah the dead to me mar not, they fit well in Nature,
    They fit very well in the landscape under the trees and grass,
    And along the edge of the sky in the horizon's far margin.
    
    Nor do I forget you Departed;
    Nor in winter or summer my lost ones,
    But most in the open air as now when my soul is rapt and at peace, like pleasing phantoms,
    Your memories rising glide silently by me.
    
    6
    
    I saw the day the return of the heroes;
    (Yet the heroes never surpass'd shall never return,
    Them that day I saw not.)
    
    I saw the interminable corps, I saw the processions of armies,
    I saw them approaching, defiling by with divisions,
    Streaming northward, their work done, camping awhile in clusters of mighty camps.
    
    No holiday soldiers—youthful, yet veterans,
    Worn, swart, handsome, strong, of the stock of homestead and workshop,
    Harden'd of many a long campaign and sweaty march,
    Inured on many a hard-fought bloody field.
    
    A pause—the armies wait,
    A million flush'd embattled conquerors wait,
    The world too waits, then soft as breaking night and sure as dawn,
    They melt, they disappear.
    
    Exult O lands! victorious lands!
    Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields;
    But here and hence your victory.
    
    Melt, melt away, ye armies—disperse, ye blue-clad soldiers,
    Resolve ye back again, give up for good your deadly arms,
    Other the arms the fields henceforth for you, or South or North,
    With saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars.
    
    7
    
    Loud O my throat, and clear O soul!
    The season of thanks and the voice of full-yielding,
    The chant of joy and power for boundless fertility.
    
    All till'd and untill'd fields expand before me,
    I see the true arenas of my race and land—or first or last,
    Man's innocent and strong arenas.
    
    I see the heroes at other toils,
    I see well-wielded in their hands the better weapons.
    
    I see where the Mother of All,
    With full-spanning eye gazes forth, dwells long,
    And counts the varied gathering of the products.
    
    Busy the far, the sunlit panorama,
    Prairie, orchard, and yellow grain of the North,
    Cotton and rice of the South and Louisianian cane,
    Open unseeded fallows, rich fields of clover and timothy,
    Kine and horses feeding, and droves of sheep and swine,
    And many a stately river flowing and many a jocund brook,
    And healthy uplands with herby-perfumed breezes,
    And the good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass.
    
    8
    
    Toil on heroes! harvest the products!
    Not alone on those warlike fields the Mother of All,
    With dilated form and lambent eyes watch'd you.
    
    Toil on heroes! toil well! handle the weapons well!
    The Mother of All, yet here as ever she watches you.
    
    Well-pleased America thou beholdest,
    Over the fields of the West, those crawling monsters,
    The human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements;
    Beholdest, moving in every direction imbued as with life the revolving hay-rakes,
    The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machines,
    The engines, thrashers of grain, and cleaners of grain, well separating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork;
    Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and the rice-cleanser.
    
    Beneath thy look O Maternal,
    With these and else and with their own strong hands the heroes harvest.
    
    All gather and all harvest;
    Yet but for thee O Powerful, not a scythe might swing as now in security,
    Not a maize-stalk dangle as now its silken tassels in peace.
    
    Under thee only they harvest, even but a wisp of hay under thy great face only,
    Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed spear under thee,
    Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in its light-green sheath,
    Gather the hay to its myriad mows in the odorous tranquil barns,
    Oats to their bins, the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
    Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama, dig and hoard the golden the sweet potato of Georgia and the Carolinas,
    Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
    Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp or tobacco in the Borders,
    Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees or bunches of grapes from the vines,
    Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,
    Under the beaming sun and under thee.

28. The Sleepers

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    
    I WANDER all night in my vision,
    Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and
    stopping,
    Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
    Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
    Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
    
    How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still!
    How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles!
    
    The wretched features of ennuyés, the white features of
    corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of
    onanists,
    The gash'd bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door'd
    rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and
    the dying emerging from gates,
    The night pervades them and infolds them. 10
    
    The married couple sleep calmly in their bed--he with his palm on the
    hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the
    husband,
    The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
    The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
    And the mother sleeps, with her little child carefully wrapt.
    
    The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
    The prisoner sleeps well in the prison--the run-away son sleeps;
    The murderer that is to be hung next day--how does he sleep?
    And the murder'd person--how does he sleep?
    
    The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
    And the male that loves unrequited sleeps, 20
    The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
    And the enraged and treacherous dispositions--all, all sleep.
    
    
    I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the
    most restless,
    I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
    The restless sink in their beds--they fitfully sleep.
    
    Now I pierce the darkness--new beings appear,
    The earth recedes from me into the night,
    I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is
    beautiful.
    
    I go from bedside to bedside--I sleep close with the other sleepers,
    each in turn,
    I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, 30
    And I become the other dreamers.
    
    
    I am a dance--Play up, there! the fit is whirling me fast!
    
    I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight,
    I see the hiding of douceurs--I see nimble ghosts whichever way I
    look,
    Cache, and cache again, deep in the ground and sea, and where it is
    neither ground or sea.
    
    Well do they do their jobs, those journeymen divine,
    Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,
    I reckon I am their boss, and they make me a pet besides,
    And surround me and lead me, and run ahead when I walk,
    To lift their cunning covers, to signify me with stretch'd arms, and
    resume the way; 40
    Onward we move! a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting music,
    and wild-flapping pennants of joy!
    
    
    I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician;
    The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,
    He who has been famous, and he who shall be famous after to-day,
    The stammerer, the well-form'd person, the wasted or feeble person.
    
    
    I am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair expectantly,
    My truant lover has come, and it is dark.
    
    Double yourself and receive me, darkness!
    Receive me and my lover too--he will not let me go without him.
    
    I roll myself upon you, as upon a bed--I resign myself to the
    dusk. 50
    
    
    He whom I call answers me, and takes the place of my lover,
    He rises with me silently from the bed.
    
    Darkness! you are gentler than my lover--his flesh was sweaty and
    panting,
    I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
    
    My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
    I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.
    
    Be careful, darkness! already, what was it touch'd me?
    I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
    I hear the heart-beat--I follow, I fade away.
    
    
    O hot-cheek'd and blushing! O foolish hectic! 60
    O for pity's sake, no one must see me now! my clothes were stolen
    while I was abed,
    Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?
    
    Pier that I saw dimly last night, when I look'd from the windows!
    Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you, and stay--I
    will not chafe you,
    I feel ashamed to go naked about the world.
    
    I am curious to know where my feet stand--and what this is flooding
    me, childhood or manhood--and the hunger that crosses the
    bridge between.
    
    
    The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,
    Laps life-swelling yolks--laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just
    ripen'd;
    The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,
    And liquor is spill'd on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the
    best liquor afterward. 70
    
    
    I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
    Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.
    
    It is my face yellow and wrinkled, instead of the old woman's,
    I sit low in a straw-bottom chair, and carefully darn my grandson's
    stockings.
    
    It is I too, the sleepless widow, looking out on the winter midnight,
    I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.
    
    A shroud I see, and I am the shroud--I wrap a body, and lie in the
    coffin,
    It is dark here under ground--it is not evil or pain here--it is
    blank here, for reasons.
    
    It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be
    happy,
    Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has
    enough. 80
    
    
    I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer, swimming naked through the eddies
    of the sea,
    His brown hair lies close and even to his head--he strikes out with
    courageous arms--he urges himself with his legs,
    I see his white body--I see his undaunted eyes,
    I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on
    the rocks.
    
    What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
    Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of
    his middle age?
    
    Steady and long he struggles,
    He is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd--he holds out while his strength holds
    out,
    The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood--they bear him away--
    they roll him, swing him, turn him,
    His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually
    bruis'd on rocks, 90
    Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.
    
    
    I turn, but do not extricate myself,
    Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.
    
    The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind--the wreck-guns sound,
    The tempest lulls--the moon comes floundering through the drifts.
    
    I look where the ship helplessly heads end on--I hear the burst as
    she strikes--I hear the howls of dismay--they grow fainter and
    fainter.
    
    I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,
    I can but rush to the surf, and let it drench me and freeze upon me.
    
    I search with the crowd--not one of the company is wash'd to us
    alive;
    In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a
    barn. 100
    
    
    Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
    Washington stands inside the lines--he stands on the intrench'd
    hills, amid a crowd of officers,
    His face is cold and damp--he cannot repress the weeping drops,
    He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes--the color is blanch'd
    from his cheeks,
    He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their
    parents.
    
    The same, at last and at last, when peace is declared,
    He stands in the room of the old tavern--the well-belov'd soldiers
    all pass through,
    The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,
    The chief encircles their necks with his arm, and kisses them on the
    cheek,
    He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another--he shakes hands,
    and bids good-by to the army. 110
    
    
    Now I tell what my mother told me to-day as we sat at dinner
    together,
    Of when she was a nearly grown girl, living home with her parents on
    the old homestead.
    
    A red squaw came one breakfast time to the old homestead,
    On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,
    Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop'd her
    face,
    Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as
    she spoke.
    
    My mother look'd in delight and amazement at the stranger,
    She look'd at the freshness of her tall-borne face, and full and
    pliant limbs,
    The more she look'd upon her, she loved her,
    Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity, 120
    She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace--she cook'd
    food for her,
    She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and
    fondness.
    
    The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the
    afternoon she went away,
    O my mother was loth to have her go away!
    All the week she thought of her--she watch'd for her many a month,
    She remember'd her many a winter and many a summer,
    But the red squaw never came, nor was heard of there again.
    
    
    Now Lucifer was not dead--or if he was, I am his sorrowful terrible
    heir;
    I have been wrong'd--I am oppress'd--I hate him that oppresses me,
    I will either destroy him, or he shall release me. 130
    
    Damn him! how he does defile me!
    How he informs against my brother and sister, and takes pay for their
    blood!
    How he laughs when I look down the bend, after the steamboat that
    carries away my woman!
    
    Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale's bulk, it seems mine;
    Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, the tap of my
    flukes is death.
    
    
    A show of the summer softness! a contact of something unseen! an
    amour of the light and air!
    I am jealous, and overwhelm'd with friendliness,
    And will go gallivant with the light and air myself,
    And have an unseen something to be in contact with them also.
    
    O love and summer! you are in the dreams, and in me! 140
    Autumn and winter are in the dreams--the farmer goes with his thrift,
    The droves and crops increase, and the barns are well-fill'd.
    
    
    Elements merge in the night--ships make tacks in the dreams,
    The sailor sails--the exile returns home,
    The fugitive returns unharm'd--the immigrant is back beyond months
    and years,
    The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood, with
    the well-known neighbors and faces,
    They warmly welcome him--he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well
    off;
    The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage
    home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,
    To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill'd ships,
    The Swiss foots it toward his hills--the Prussian goes his way, the
    Hungarian his way, and the Pole his way, 150
    The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.
    
    
    The homeward bound, and the outward bound,
    The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyé, the onanist, the
    female that loves unrequited, the money-maker,
    The actor and actress, those through with their parts, and those
    waiting to commence,
    The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee
    that is chosen, and the nominee that has fail'd,
    The great already known, and the great any time after to-day,
    The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form'd, the homely,
    The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced
    him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,
    The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red
    squaw,
    The consumptive, the erysipelite, the idiot, he that is wrong'd, 160
    The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,
    I swear they are averaged now--one is no better than the other,
    The night and sleep have liken'd them and restored them.
    
    I swear they are all beautiful;
    Every one that sleeps is beautiful--everything in the dim light is
    beautiful,
    The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.
    
    
    Peace is always beautiful, The myth of heaven indicates peace and
    night.
    
    The myth of heaven indicates the Soul;
    The Soul is always beautiful--it appears more or it appears less--it
    comes, or it lags behind, 170
    It comes from its embower'd garden, and looks pleasantly on itself,
    and encloses the world,
    Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and
    clean the womb cohering,
    The head well-grown, proportion'd and plumb, and the bowels and
    joints proportion'd and plumb.
    
    
    The Soul is always beautiful,
    The universe is duly in order, everything is in its place,
    What has arrived is in its place, and what waits is in its place;
    The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,
    The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of
    the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,
    The sleepers that lived and died wait--the far advanced are to go on
    in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their
    turns,
    The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite--
    they unite now. 180
    
    
    The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
    They flow hand in hand over the whole earth, from east to west, as
    they lie unclothed,
    The Asiatic and African are hand in hand--the European and American
    are hand in hand,
    Learn'd and unlearn'd are hand in hand, and male and female are hand
    in hand,
    The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover--they
    press close without lust--his lips press her neck,
    The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with
    measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with
    measureless love,
    The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the
    daughter,
    The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is
    inarm'd by friend,
    The scholar kisses the teacher, and the teacher kisses the scholar--
    the wrong'd is made right,
    The call of the slave is one with the master's call, and the master
    salutes the slave, 190
    The felon steps forth from the prison--the insane becomes sane--the
    suffering of sick persons is reliev'd,
    The sweatings and fevers stop--the throat that was unsound is sound--
    the lungs of the consumptive are resumed--the poor distress'd
    head is free,
    The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother
    than ever,
    Stiflings and passages open--the paralyzed become supple,
    The swell'd and convuls'd and congested awake to themselves in
    condition,
    They pass the invigoration of the night, and the chemistry of the
    night, and awake.
    
    
    I too pass from the night,
    I stay a while away, O night, but I return to you again, and love
    you.
    
    Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
    I am not afraid--I have been well brought forward by you; 200
    I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so
    long,
    I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you--but
    I know I came well, and shall go well.
    
    I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes;
    I will duly pass the day, O my mother, and duly return to you.

29. Pioneers! O Pioneersby Walt Whitman

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    1
    COME, my tan-faced children,
    Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
    Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

    2
    For we cannot tarry here,
    We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
    We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    3
    O you youths, western youths,
    So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
    Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    4
    Have the elder races halted?
    Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
    We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    5
    All the past we leave behind;
    We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
    Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    6
    We detachments steady throwing,
    Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
    Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    7
    We primeval forests felling,
    We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;
    We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    8
    Colorado men are we,
    From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
    From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    9
    From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
    Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d;
    All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    10
    O resistless, restless race!
    O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
    O I mourn and yet exult—I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    11
    Raise the mighty mother mistress,
    Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,)
    Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    12
    See, my children, resolute children,
    By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
    Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    13
    On and on, the compact ranks,
    With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
    Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    14
    O to die advancing on!
    Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
    Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    15
    All the pulses of the world,
    Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat;
    Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    16
    Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
    All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
    All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    17
    All the hapless silent lovers,
    All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
    All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    18
    I too with my soul and body,
    We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
    Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    19
    Lo! the darting bowling orb!
    Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets,
    All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    20
    These are of us, they are with us,
    All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
    We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    21
    O you daughters of the west!
    O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
    Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    22
    Minstrels latent on the prairies!
    (Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep—you have done your work;)
    Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    23
    Not for delectations sweet;
    Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;
    Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    24
    Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
    Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
    Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    25
    Has the night descended?
    Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way?
    Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers!

    26
    Till with sound of trumpet,
    Far, far off the day-break call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
    Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers.

30. I Sing the Body Electric

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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 fro in the heave of the water,
    

    The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman 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 hoeing 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 sun-down 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 of 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 juice,
    

    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’s, 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!

31. Beat! Beat! Drums!

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
    

    Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
    

    Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
    

    Into the school where the scholar is studying,
    

    Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride,
    

    Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
    

    So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.
    

    Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
    

    Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
    

    Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,
    

    No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—would they continue?
    

    Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
    

    Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
    

    Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
    

    Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
    

    Make no parley—stop for no expostulation,
    

    Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer,
    

    Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
    

    Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
    

    Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses,
    

    So strong you thump O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

32. I Hear America Singing

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    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.

33. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
    

    Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,
    

    Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
    

    Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
    

    Down from the shower’d halo,
    

    Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
    

    Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
    

    From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
    

    From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
    

    From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
    

    From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
    

    From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
    

    From the myriad thence-arous’d words,
    

    From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
    

    From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
    

    As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
    

    Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
    

    A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
    

    Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
    

    I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
    

    Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
    

    A reminiscence sing.
    

    Once Paumanok,
    

    When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
    

    Up this seashore in some briers,
    

    Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,
    

    And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
    

    And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
    

    And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
    

    And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,
    

    Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
    

    Shine! shine! shine!
    

    Pour down your warmth, great sun!
    

    While we bask, we two together.
    

    Two together!
    

    Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
    

    Day come white, or night come black,
    

    Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
    

    Singing all time, minding no time,
    

    While we two keep together.
    

    Till of a sudden,
    

    May-be kill’d, unknown to her mate,
    

    One forenoon the she-bird crouch’d not on the nest,
    

    Nor return’d that afternoon, nor the next,
    

    Nor ever appear’d again.
    

    And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,
    

    And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
    

    Over the hoarse surging of the sea,
    

    Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
    

    I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,
    

    The solitary guest from Alabama.
    

    Blow! blow! blow!
    

    Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;
    

    I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.
    

    Yes, when the stars glisten’d,
    

    All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop’d stake,
    

    Down almost amid the slapping waves,
    

    Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears.
    

    He call’d on his mate,
    

    He pour’d forth the meanings which I of all men know.
    

    Yes my brother I know,
    

    The rest might not, but I have treasur’d every note,
    

    For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,
    

    Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,
    

    Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their sorts,
    

    The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
    

    I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
    

    Listen’d long and long.
    

    Listen’d to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,
    

    Following you my brother.
    

    Soothe! soothe! soothe!
    

    Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
    

    And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
    

    But my love soothes not me, not me.
    

    Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
    

    It is lagging—O I think it is heavy with love, with love.
    

    O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
    

    With love, with love.
    

    O night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
    

    What is that little black thing I see there in the white?
    

    Loud! loud! loud!
    

    Loud I call to you, my love!
    

    High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves,
    

    Surely you must know who is here, is here,
    

    You must know who I am, my love.
    

    Low-hanging moon!
    

    What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow?
    

    O it is the shape, the shape of my mate!
    

    O moon do not keep her from me any longer.
    

    Land! land! O land!
    

    Whichever way I turn, O I think you could give me my mate back again if you only would,
    

    For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
    

    O rising stars!
    

    Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.
    

    O throat! O trembling throat!
    

    Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
    

    Pierce the woods, the earth,
    

    Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.
    

    Shake out carols!
    

    Solitary here, the night’s carols!
    

    Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols!
    

    Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon!
    

    O under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea!
    

    O reckless despairing carols.
    

    But soft! sink low!
    

    Soft! let me just murmur,
    

    And do you wait a moment you husky-nois’d sea,
    

    For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me,
    

    So faint, I must be still, be still to listen,
    

    But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me.
    

    Hither my love!
    

    Here I am! here!
    

    With this just-sustain’d note I announce myself to you,
    

    This gentle call is for you my love, for you.
    

    Do not be decoy’d elsewhere,
    

    That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
    

    That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
    

    Those are the shadows of leaves.
    

    O darkness! O in vain!
    

    O I am very sick and sorrowful.
    

    O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
    

    O troubled reflection in the sea!
    

    O throat! O throbbing heart!
    

    And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.
    

    O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
    

    In the air, in the woods, over fields,
    

    Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!
    

    But my mate no more, no more with me!
    

    We two together no more.
    

    The aria sinking,
    

    All else continuing, the stars shining,
    

    The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing,
    

    With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning,
    

    On the sands of Paumanok’s shore gray and rustling,
    

    The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face of the sea almost touching,
    

    The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair the atmosphere dallying,
    

    The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumultuously bursting,
    

    The aria’s meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing,
    

    The strange tears down the cheeks coursing,
    

    The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering,
    

    The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying,
    

    To the boy’s soul’s questions sullenly timing, some drown’d secret hissing,
    

    To the outsetting bard.
    

    Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
    

    Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
    

    For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you,
    

    Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
    

    And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
    

    A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.
    

    O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
    

    O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you,
    

    Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
    

    Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
    

    Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night,
    

    By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
    

    The messenger there arous’d, the fire, the sweet hell within,
    

    The unknown want, the destiny of me.
    

    O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,)
    

    O if I am to have so much, let me have more!
    

    A word then, (for I will conquer it,)
    

    The word final, superior to all,
    

    Subtle, sent up—what is it?—I listen;
    

    Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?
    

    Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
    

    Whereto answering, the sea,
    

    Delaying not, hurrying not,
    

    Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before day-break,
    

    Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,
    

    And again death, death, death, death,
    

    Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart,
    

    But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet,
    

    Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over,
    

    Death, death, death, death, death.
    

    Which I do not forget,
    

    But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother,
    

    That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok’s gray beach,
    

    With the thousand responsive songs at random,
    

    My own songs awaked from that hour,
    

    And with them the key, the word up from the waves,
    

    The word of the sweetest song and all songs,
    

    That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
    

    (Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet garments, bending aside,)
    

    The sea whisper’d me.
    

34. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

    BY WALT WHITMAN

    1
    

    When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
    

    And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
    

    I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
    

    Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
    

    Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
    

    And thought of him I love.
    

    2
    

    O powerful western fallen star!
    

    O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
    

    O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
    

    O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
    

    O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
    

    3
    

    In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
    

    Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
    

    With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
    

    With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
    

    With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
    

    A sprig with its flower I break.
    

    4
    

    In the swamp in secluded recesses,
    

    A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
    

    Solitary the thrush,
    

    The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
    

    Sings by himself a song.
    

    Song of the bleeding throat,
    

    Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
    

    If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)
    

    5
    

    Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
    

    Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
    

    Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
    

    Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
    

    Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
    

    Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
    

    Night and day journeys a coffin.
    

    6
    

    Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
    

    Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
    

    With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
    

    With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
    

    With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
    

    With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
    

    With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
    

    With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
    

    With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
    

    The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey,
    

    With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
    

    Here, coffin that slowly passes,
    

    I give you my sprig of lilac.
    

    7
    

    (Nor for you, for one alone,
    

    Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
    

    For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
    

    All over bouquets of roses,
    

    O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
    

    But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
    

    Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
    

    With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
    

    For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
    

    8
    

    O western orb sailing the heaven,
    

    Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,
    

    As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
    

    As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
    

    As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,)
    

    As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)
    

    As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
    

    As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
    

    As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
    

    As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
    

    Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
    

    9
    

    Sing on there in the swamp,
    

    O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
    

    I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
    

    But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,
    

    The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
    

    10
    

    O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
    

    And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
    

    And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
    

    Sea-winds blown from east and west,
    

    Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
    

    These and with these and the breath of my chant,
    

    I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
    

    11
    

    O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
    

    And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
    

    To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
    

    Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
    

    With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
    

    With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
    

    With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
    

    In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,
    

    With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,
    

    And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
    

    And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
    

    12
    

    Lo, body and soul—this land,
    

    My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,
    

    The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri,
    

    And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
    

    Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
    

    The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
    

    The gentle soft-born measureless light,
    

    The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
    

    The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
    

    Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
    

    13
    

    Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
    

    Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
    

    Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
    

    Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
    

    Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
    

    O liquid and free and tender!
    

    O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!
    

    You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
    

    Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
    

    14
    

    Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,
    

    In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,
    

    In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
    

    In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)
    

    Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,
    

    The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
    

    And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
    

    And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
    

    And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,
    

    Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
    

    Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
    

    And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
    

    Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
    

    And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
    

    And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
    

    I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
    

    Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
    

    To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
    

    And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me,
    

    The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,
    

    And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
    

    From deep secluded recesses,
    

    From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
    

    Came the carol of the bird.
    

    And the charm of the carol rapt me,
    

    As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
    

    And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
    

    Come lovely and soothing death,
    

    Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
    

    In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
    

    Sooner or later delicate death.
    

    Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
    

    For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
    

    And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
    

    For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
    

    Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
    

    Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
    

    Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
    

    I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
    

    Approach strong deliveress,
    

    When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
    

    Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
    

    Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
    

    From me to thee glad serenades,
    

    Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
    

    And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
    

    And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
    

    The night in silence under many a star,
    

    The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
    

    And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
    

    And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
    

    Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
    

    Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
    

    Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
    

    I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
    

    15
    

    To the tally of my soul,
    

    Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
    

    With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
    

    Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
    

    Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
    

    And I with my comrades there in the night.
    

    While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
    

    As to long panoramas of visions.
    

    And I saw askant the armies,
    

    I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
    

    Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,
    

    And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
    

    And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
    

    And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
    

    I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
    

    And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
    

    I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
    

    But I saw they were not as was thought,
    

    They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
    

    The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
    

    And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
    

    And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
    

    16
    

    Passing the visions, passing the night,
    

    Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
    

    Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
    

    Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
    

    As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
    

    Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
    

    Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
    

    As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
    

    Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
    

    I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
    

    I cease from my song for thee,
    

    From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
    

    O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
    

    Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
    

    The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
    

    And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
    

    With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
    

    With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
    

    Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
    

    For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
    

    Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
    

    There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.