Poetry of Walt Whitman

Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet,essayist,journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden ,New Jersey where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.
Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though he is usually labeled as either homosexual or bisexual, it is unclear if Whitman ever had a sexual relationship with another man and biographers continue to debate his sexuality. Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally, but did not believe in the abolitionist movement.
Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills,Town of Huntington,Long Island, to parents with interest in Quaker thought, Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. He was the second of nine children and was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father. Walter Whitman Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders: Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. The oldest was named Jesse and another boy died unnamed at the age of six months. The couple's sixth son, the youngest, was named Edward. At age four, Whitman moved with his family from West Hills to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes in part due to bad investments. Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy due to his family's difficult economic status. One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825.
At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling. He then sought employment, due to his family's financial situation, originally as an office boy for two lawyers and later as an apprentice and printer's devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements. There, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting. He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for occasional issues. Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head. Clements left the Patriot shortly after, possibly as a result of the controversy.
The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn. His family moved back to West Hills in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading Whig weekly newspaper the Long-Island Star. While at the Star, Whitman became a regular patron of the local library, joined a town debating society, began attending theater performances, and anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in the New York Mirror. At age 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn. He moved to New York City to work as a compositor though, in later years, Whitman could not remember where. He attempted to find further work but had difficulty in part due to a severe fire in the printing and publishing district and in part due to a general collapse in the economy leading up to the Panic of 1837. In May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead,Long Island. Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, though he was not satisfied as a teacher.
After his teaching attempts, Whitman went back to Huntington, New York to found his own newspaper, the Long Islander, a crimeajewel of perfection. Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, 1839. No copies of the Long-Islander published under Whitman survive. By the summer of 1839, he found a job as a typesetter in Jamaica,Queens with the Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton. He left shortly thereafter, and made another attempt at teaching from the winter of 1840 to the spring of 1841, then moved to New York City in May. There, he initially worked a low-level job at the New World, working under Park Benjamin,Sr and Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He continued working for short periods of time for various newspapers; in 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. He also contributed freelance fiction and poetry throughout the 1840s. Whitman lost his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in 1848 after siding with the "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against the newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the conservative, or "Hunker", wing of the party.
Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to become a poet. He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes of the period. As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death. Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic and used free verse with a cadence based on the Bible. At the end of June 1855, Whitman surprised his brothers with the already-printed first edition of Leaves of Grass. George "didn't think it worth reading".
Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and had it printed at a local print shop during their breaks from commercial jobs. A total of 795 copies were printed, though the author's name was not given. Instead, facing the title page was an engraved portrait done by Samuel Hollyer. The book received its strongest praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a flattering five page letter to Whitman and spoke highly of the book to friends. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was widely distributed and stirred up significant interest, in part due to Emerson's approval, but was occasionally criticized for the seemingly "obscene" nature of the poetry. Geologist John Peter Lesley wrote to Emerson, calling the book "trashy, profane & obscene" and the author "a pretentious ass". On July 11, 1855, a few days after Leaves of Grass was published, Whitman's father died at the age of 65.
In the months following the first edition of Leaves of Grass, critical responses began focusing more on the potentially offensive sexual themes. Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not release it. In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems, in August 1856. Leaves of Grass was revised and re-released in 1860 again in 1867, and several more times throughout the remainder of Whitman's life. Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.
Amidst the first publications of Leaves of Grass, Whitman had financial difficulty and was forced to work as a journalist again, specifically with the Brooklyn's Daily Times starting in May 1857. As an editor, he oversaw the paper's contents, contributed book reviews, and wrote editorials. He left the job in 1859, though it is unclear if he was fired or chose to leave. Whitman, who typically kept detailed notebooks and journals, left very little information about himself in the late 1850s.
As the American Civil War was beginning, Whitman published his poem "Beat ! Beat ! Drums!" as a patriotic rally call for the North. Whitman's brother George had joined the Union army and began sending Whitman several vividly detailed letters of the battle front. On December 16, 1862, a listing of fallen and wounded soldiers in the New York Tribune included "First Lieutenant G. W. Whitmore", which Whitman worried was a reference to his brother George. He made his way south immediately to find him, though his wallet was stolen on the way. "Walking all day and night, unable to ride, trying to get information, trying to get access to big people", Whitman later wrote, he eventually found George alive, with only a superficial wound on his cheek. Whitman, profoundly affected by seeing the wounded soldiers and the heaps of their amputated limbs, left for Washington on December 28, 1862 with the intention of never returning to New York.
In Washington, D.C., Whitman's friend Charley Eldridge helped him obtain part-time work in the army paymaster's office, leaving time for Whitman to volunteer as a nurse in the army hospitals. He would write of this experience in "The Great Army of the Sick", published in a New York newspaper in 1863 and, 12 years later, in a book called Memoranda During the War. He then contacted Emerson, this time to ask for help in obtaining a government post. Another friend, John Trowbridge, passed on a letter of recommendation from Emerson to Salmon P.Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, hoping he would grant Whitman a position in that department. Chase, however, did not want to hire the author of a disreputable book, referring to Leaves of Grass.
The Whitman family had a difficult end to 1864. On September 30, 1864, Whitman's brother George was captured by Confederates in Virginia, another brother, Andrew Jackson, died of tuberculosis compounded by alcoholism on December 3. That month, Whitman committed his brother Jesse to the Kings County Lunatic Asylum. Whitman's spirits were raised, however, when he finally got a better-paying government post – a low grade clerk in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior – thanks to his friend William Douglas O'Connor. O'Connor, a poet, daguerreotypist and an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, had written to William Tod Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, on Whitman's behalf. Whitman began the new appointment on January 24, 1865, with a yearly salary of $1,200. A month later, on February 24, 1865, George was released from capture and granted a furlough because of his poor health. By May 1, Whitman received a promotion to a slightly higher clerkship and published Drum-Taps.
Effective June 30, 1865, however, Whitman was fired from his job. His dismissal came from the new Secretary of the Interior, former Iowa Senator James Harlan. Though Harlan dismissed several clerks who "were seldom at their respective desks", he may have fired Whitman on moral grounds after finding an 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. O'Connor protested until J. Hubley Ashton had Whitman transferred to the Attorney General's office on July 1. O'Connor, though, was still upset and vindicated Whitman by publishing a biased and exaggerated biographical study, The Good Gray Poet, in January 1866. The fifty-cent pamphlet defended Whitman as a wholesome patriot, established the poet's nickname and increased his popularity. Also aiding in his popularity was the publication of "O Captain ! My Captain !", a relatively conventional poem to Abraham Lincoln, the only poem to be anthologized during Whitman's lifetime.
Part of Whitman's role in the Attorney General's office was interviewing former Confederate soldiers for Presidential pardons. "There are real characters among them", he later wrote, "and you know I have a fancy for anything out of the ordinary." In August 1866, he took a month off in order to prepare a new edition of Leaves of Grass which would not be published until 1867 after difficulty in finding a publisher. He hoped it would be its last edition. In February 1868 Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence of William Michael Rossetti, with minor changes which Whitman reluctantly approved. The edition became popular in England, especially with endorsements from the highly respected Anne Gilchrist. Another edition of Leaves of Grass was issued in 1871, the same year it was mistakenly reported that its author died in a railroad accident. As Whitman's international fame increased, he remained working in the attorney general's office until January 1872. He spent much of 1872 caring for his mother who was now nearly eighty and struggling with arthritis. He also traveled and was invited to Dartmouth College to give the commencement address on June 26, 1872.
Early in 1873, Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke; his mother died in May the same year. Both events were difficult for Whitman and left him depressed. He moved to Camden, New Jersey to live with his brother George, paying room and board until he bought his own house on Mickle St. in 1884. Around this time, he began socializing with Mary Oakes Davis, the widow of a sea captain, who lived nearby. She moved in with Whitman on February 24, 1885 to serve as his housekeeper in exchange for free rent. She brought with her a cat, a dog, two turtledoves, a canary, and other assorted animals. During this time, Whitman produced further editions of Leaves of Grass in 1876, 1881, and 1889.
As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of Leaves of Grass, an edition which has been nicknamed the "Deathbed Edition". He wrote, "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old". Preparing for death, Whitman commissioned a granite mausoleum shaped like a house for $4,000 and visited it often during construction. In the last week of his life, he was too weak to lift a knife or fork and wrote: "I suffer all the time: I have no relief, no escape: it is monotony — monotony — monotony — in pain."
Whitman died on March 26, 1892. An autopsy revealed his lungs had diminished to one-eighth their normal breathing capacity, a result of bronchial pneumonia, and that an egg-sized abscess on his chest had eroded one of his ribs. The cause of death was officially listed as "pleurisy of the left side, consumption of the right lung, general military tuberculosis and parenchymatous nephritis." A public viewing of his body was held at his Camden home; over one thousand people visited in three hours and Whitman's oak coffin was barely visible because of all the flowers and wreaths left for him. He was buried in his tomb at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden four days after his death. Another public ceremony was held at the cemetery, with friends giving speeches, live music, and refreshments. Later, the remains of Whitman's parents and two of his brothers and their families were moved to the mausoleum.
Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like. He also used unusual images and symbols in his poetry, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris. He also openly wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution. He is often labeled as the father of free verse, though he did not invent it.
Whitman wrote in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." He believed there was a vital,symbiotic relationship between the poet and society. This connection was emphasized especially in "Song of Myself" by using an all-powerful first-person narration. As an American epic, it deviated from the historic use of an elevated hero and instead assumed the identity of the common people. Leaves of Grass also responded to the impact that recent urbanization in the United States had on the masses.
Whitman was a vocal proponent of temperance and rarely drank alcohol. He once claimed he did not taste "strong liquor" until he was thirty and occasionally argued for prohibition. One of his earliest long fiction works, the novel Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate, first published November 23, 1842, is a temperance novel. Whitman wrote the novel at the height of popularity of the Washingtonian movement though the movement itself was plagued with contradictions, as was Franklin Evans. Years later Whitman claimed he was embarrassed by the book and called it a "damned rot". He dismissed it by saying he wrote the novel in three days solely for money while he was under the influence of alcohol himself. Even so, he wrote other pieces recommending temperance, including The Madman and a short story "Reuben's Last Wish".
Whitman was deeply influenced by deism. He denied any one faith was more important than another, and embraced all religions equally. In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and indicated he respected and accepted all of them – a sentiment he further emphasized in his poem "With Antecedents", affirming: "I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, / I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception". In 1874, he was invited to write a poem about the Spiritualism movement, to which he responded, "It seems to me nearly altogether a poor, cheap, crude humbug." Whitman was a religious skeptic: though he accepted all churches, he believed in none.
Whitman's sexuality is sometimes disputed, although often assumed to be bisexual based on his poetry. The concept of heterosexual and homosexual personalities was not identified distinctly until 1868, and it was not widely promoted until Whitman was an old man. Whitman's poetry depicts love and sexuality in a more earthy, individualistic way common in American culture before the medicalization of sexuality in the late 1800s. As Whitman biographer Jerome Loving wrote, "the discussion of Whitman's sexual orientation will probably continue in spite of whatever evidence emerges." Though Leaves of Grass was often labeled pornographic or obscene, only one critic remarked on its author's presumed sexual activity: in a November 1855 review,Rufus Wilmot Griswold suggested Whitman was guilty of "that horrible sin not to be mentioned among Christians". Whitman had intense friendships with many men throughout his life. Some biographers have claimed that he may not have actually engaged in sexual relationships with men, while others cite letters, journal entries and other sources which they claim as proof of the sexual nature of some of his relationships.
Peter Doyle may be the most likely candidate for the love of Whitman's life, according to biographer David S. Reynolds. Doyle was a bus conductor whom Whitman met around 1866 and the two were inseparable for several years. Interviewed in 1895, Doyle said: "We were familiar at once — I put my hand on his knee — we understood. He did not get out at the end of the trip — in fact went all the way back with me." In his notebooks, Whitman disguised Doyle's initials using the code "16.4".A more direct second-hand account comes from Oscar Wilde. Wilde met Whitman in America in 1882, and wrote to the homosexual rights activist George Cecil Ives that there was "no doubt" about the great American poet's sexual orientation — "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips," he boasted. The only explicit description of Whitman's sexual activities is second hand. In 1924 Edward Carpenter, then an old man, described an erotic encounter he had had in his youth with Whitman to Gavin Arthur, who recorded it in detail in his journal. Late in his life, when Whitman was asked outright if his series of "Calamus"poems were homosexual, he chose not to respond.
There is also some evidence that Whitman may have had sexual relationships with women. He had a romantic friendship with a New York actress named Ellen Grey in the spring of 1862, but it is not known whether or not it was also sexual. He still had a photo of her decades later when he moved to Camden and referred to her as "an old sweetheart of mine". In a letter dated August 21, 1890 he claimed, "I have had six children - two are dead". This claim has never been corroborated. Toward the end of his life, he often told stories of previous girlfriends and sweethearts and denied an allegation from the New York Herald that he had "never had a love affair".
Whitman was a proponent of the Shakespeare authorship question, refusing to believe in the historic attribution of the works to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Whitman comments in his November Boughs (1888) regarding Shakespeare's historical plays:
Conceiv'd out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism -personifying ill unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) -only one of the "wolfish earls" so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works -works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded literature."
Whitman opposed the extension of slavery in the United States and supported the Wilmot Proviso. However, he was not an abolitionist and believed the movement did more harm than good. He once wrote that the abolitionists had, in fact, slowed the advancement of their cause by their "ultraism and officiousness". His main concern was that their methods disrupted the democratic process, as did the refusal of the Southern states to put the interests of the nation as a whole above their own. Whitman also subscribed to the widespread opinion that even free African-Americans should not vote and was concerned at the increasing number of African-Americans in the legislature.
Walt Whitman has been claimed as America's first "poet of democracy", a title meant to reflect his ability to write in a singularly American character. A British friend of Walt Whitman, Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, wrote: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him."Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America." Andrew Carnegie called him "the great poet of America so far". Whitman considered himself a messiah-like figure in poetry. Others agreed: one of his admirers, William Sloane Kennedy, speculated that "people will be celebrating the birth of Walt Whitman as they are now the birth of Christ".
The literary critic,Harold Bloom wrote, as the introduction for the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass: If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse. You can nominate a fair number of literary works as candidates for the secular Scripture of the United States. They might include Melville's Moby-Dick,Twain's Adventures of huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's two series of Essays and The Conduct of Life. None of those, not even Emerson's, are as central as the first edition of Leaves of Grass.
Whitman's vagabond lifestyle was adopted by the Beat movement and its leaders such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and 1960s as well as anti-war poets like Adrienne Rich and Gary Snyder. Whitman also influenced Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, and was the model for the character of Dracula. Stoker said in his notes that Dracula represented the quintessential male which, to Stoker, was Whitman, with whom he corresponded until Whitman's death.


Darest Thou Now
O Soul Darest thou now
O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
No map there,
nor guide,
Nor voice sounding,
nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh,
nor lips,
nor eyes,
are in that land.
I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou,
all is a blank before us,
All waits undream'd of in that region,
that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal,
Time and Space,
Nor darkness,
gravitation,
sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth,
we float,In Time and Space O soul,
prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last,
(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.
Whispers of Heavenly Death Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear,
Labial gossip of night,
sibilant chorals,
Footsteps gently ascending,
mystical breezes wafted soft and low,
Ripples of unseen rivers,
tides of a current flowing, forever flowing,
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?) I see,
just see skyward, great cloud-masses,
Mournfully slowly they roll,
silently swelling and mixing,
With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.
(Some parturition rather, some solemn immortal birth;
On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable,Some soul is passing over.)
Chanting the Square Deific 1Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides,Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine,Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed,) from this side Jehovah am I,Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;Not Time affects me--I am Time, old, modern as any,Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments,As the Earth, the Father, the brown old Kronos, with laws,Aged beyond computation, yet never new, ever with those mighty laws rolling,Relentless I forgive no man--whoever sins dies--I will have that man's life;Therefore let none expect mercy--have the seasons, gravitation, theappointed days, mercy? no more have I,But as the seasons and gravitation, and as all the appointed daysthat forgive not,I dispense from this side judgments inexorable without the least remorse. 2Consolator most mild, the promis'd one advancing,With gentle hand extended, the mightier God am I,Foretold by prophets and poets in their most rapt prophecies and poems,From this side, lo! the Lord Christ gazes--lo! Hermes I--lo! mine isHercules' face,All sorrow, labor, suffering, I, tallying it, absorb in myself,Many times have I been rejected, taunted, put in prison, andcrucified, and many times shall be again,All the world have I given up for my dear brothers' and sisters'sake, for the soul's sake,Wanding my way through the homes of men, rich or poor, with the kissof affection,
For I am affection,
I am the cheer-bringing God,
with hope andall-enclosing charity,
With indulgent words as to children,
with fresh and sane words, mine only,
Young and strong I pass knowing well I am destin'd myself to anearly death;
But my charity has no death--my wisdom dies not,
neither early nor late,
And my sweet love bequeath'd here and elsewhere never dies.
3Aloof,
dissatisfied,
plotting revolt,
Comrade of criminals,
brother of slaves,
Crafty,
despised,
a drudge,
ignorant,With sudra face and worn brow,
black, but in the depths of my heart,
proud as any,
Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me,
Morose, full of guile,
full of reminiscences,
brooding, with many wiles,
(Though it was thought I was baffled, and dispel'd, and my wilesdone, but that will never be,)Defiant, I, Satan, still live,
still utter words,
in new lands dulyappearing,
(and old ones also,)
Permanent here from my side, warlike,
equal with any, real as any,
Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.
4Santa Spirita, breather, life,
Beyond the light, lighter than light,
Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,Including all life on earth, touching, including God, includingSaviour and Satan,Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were God?)Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive,(namely the unseen,)Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I, thegeneral soul,Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,Breathe my breath also through these songs. Of Him I Love Day and Night Of him I love day and night I dream'd I heard he was dead,And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love, but he wasnot in that place,And I dream'd I wander'd searching among burial-places to find him,And I found that every place was a burial-place;The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now,)The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead asof the living,And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every person and age,And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd,And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with them,And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere,even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied,And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be dulyrender'd to powder and pour'd in the sea, I shall be satisfied,
Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.
Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
Yet, yet, ye downcast hours,
I know ye also,
Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,
Earth to a chamber of mourning turns--I hear the o'erweening, mockingvoice,
Matter is conqueror--matter,
triumphant only,
continues onward.
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,
The call of my nearest lover,
putting forth, alarm'd,
uncertain,
The sea I am quickly to sail,
come tell me,Come tell me where I am speeding,
tell me my destination.
I understand your anguish,
but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear,
behold, the sad mouth,
the look out of the eyes,your mute inquiry,
Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me,--Old age, alarm'd, uncertain--a young woman's voice, appealing tome for comfort;
A young man's voice,
Shall I not escape?
As If a Phantom Caress'd Me As if a phantom caress'd me,
I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, theone I loved that caress'd me,
As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one hasutterly disappear'd.
And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me. Assurances I need no assurances, I am a man who is preoccupied of his own soul;I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands andface I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizantof, calm and actual faces,I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent inany iota of the world,
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,in vain I try to think how limitless,I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play theirswift sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one daybe eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years,
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors,
and exteriors havetheir exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, andthe hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men areprovided for, and that the deaths of young women and thedeaths of little children are provided for,
(Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the purportof all Life, is not well provided for?)
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea,
no matter what the horrors ofthem,
no matter whose wife,
child, husband,
father,
lover, hasgone down,
are provided for,
to the minutest points,
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at anytime,
is provided for in the inherences of things,
I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space,
but Ibelieve Heavenly Death provides for all. Quicksand Years Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me,Only the theme I sing,
the great and strong-possess'd soul,
eludes not,
One's-self must never give way--that is the final substance--thatout of all is sure,
Out of politics,
triumphs,
battles,
life,
what at last finally remains?
When shows break up what but One's-Self is sure?
That Music Always Round Me That music always round me,
unceasing,
unbeginning,
yet longuntaught I did not hear,
But now the chorus I hear and am elated,
A tenor,
strong,
ascending with power and health,
with glad notes ofdaybreak I hear,
A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,
A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,
The triumphant tutti,
the funeral wailings with sweet flutes andviolins,
all these I fill myself with,
I hear not the volumes of sound merely,
I am moved by the exquisitemeanings,
I listen to the different voices winding in and out,
striving,contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;
I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I thinkbegin to know them. What Ship Puzzled at Sea What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfectpilot needs?
Here, sailor! here, ship!
take aboard the most perfect pilot,
Whom, in a little boat,
putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.
A Noiseless Patient Spider 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 toconnect 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. O Living Always,
Always Dying O living always, always dying!
O the burials of me past and present,
O me while I stride ahead,
material, visible, imperious as ever;
O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn andlook at where I cast them,To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind. To One Shortly to Die From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,You are to die--let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,I am exact and merciless, but I love you--there is no escape for you. Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you 'ust feel it,I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that iseternal, you yourself will surely escape,The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends,I am with you,I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,I do not commiserate, I congratulate you. Night on the Prairies Night on the prairies,The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think nownever realized before. Now I absorb immortality and peace,I admire death and test propositions. How plenteous! how spiritual! how resume!The same old man and soul--the same old aspirations, and the same content. I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited,I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiselessaround me myriads of other globes. Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I willmeasure myself by them,And now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far alongas those of the earth,
Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth,I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me,
as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.
Thought As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is playing,To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of awreck at sea,
Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers andwafted kisses, and that is the last of them,Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President,Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder'doff the Northeast coast and going down--of the steamship Arcticgoing down,Of the veil'd tableau-women gather'd together on deck, pale, heroic,waiting the moment that draws so close--O the moment!
A huge sob--a few bubbles--the white foam spirting up--and then thewomen gone,
Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on--and I nowpondering,
Are those women indeed gone?
Are souls drown'd and destroy'd so?Is only matter triumphant?
The Last Invocation At the last, tenderly,From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,Let me be wafted. Let me glide noiselessly forth;With the key of softness unlock the locks--with a whisper,Set ope the doors O soul. Tenderly--be not impatient,(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,Strong is your hold O love.) } As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.) } Pensive and Faltering Pensive and faltering,The words the Dead I write,For living are the Dead,(Haply the only living, only real,And I the apparition, I the spectre.)
AUTUMN RIVULETS
As Consequent, Etc.
As consequent from store of summer rains,
Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing,
Or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations,
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,
Songs of continued years I sing.
Life's ever-modern rapids first,
(soon, soon to blend,With the old streams of death.)
Some threading Ohio's farm-fields or the woods,
Some down Colorado's canons from sources of perpetual snow,
Some half-hid in Oregon, or away southward in Texas,
Some in the north finding their way to Erie,
Niagara, Ottawa,
Some to Atlantica's bays, and so to the great salt brine. In you whoe'er you are my book perusing,In I myself, in all the world, these currents flowing,All, all toward the mystic ocean tending. Currents for starting a continent new,Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,Fusion of ocean and land, tender and pensive waves,(Not safe and peaceful only, waves rous'd and ominous too,Out of the depths the storm's abysmic waves, who knows whence?Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter'd sail.)
Or from the sea of Time, collecting vasting all, I bring,
A windrow-drift of weeds and shells. O little shells, so curious-convolute, so limpid-cold and voiceless,
Will you not little shells to the tympans of temples held,
Murmurs and echoes still call up,
eternity's music faint and far,
Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica's rim, strains for the soul ofthe prairies,
Whisper'd reverberations, chords for the ear of the West joyously sounding,
Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable,
Infinitesimals out of my life, and many a life,(For not my life and years alone I give--all, all I give,)
These waifs from the deep, cast high and dry,
Wash'd on America's shores?
The Return of the Heroes 1
For the lands and for these passionate days and for myself,
Now I awhile retire to thee O soil of autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast,
giving myself to thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
Turning 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 liliput countless armies of the grass,The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,The scenery of the snows, the winds' free orchestra,The stretching light-hung roof of clouds, the clear cerulean and thesilvery fringes,The high-dilating stars, the placid beckoning stars,The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,The shows of all the varied lands and all the growths and products. 3Fecund America--today,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 earth, so havethe 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 uponthy world, and lookest East and lookest West,Dispensatress, that by a word givest a thousand miles, a millionfarms, and missest nothing,Thou all-acceptress--thou hospitable, (thou only art hospitable asGod is hospitable.) 4When late I sang sad was my voice,Sad were the shows around me with deafening noises of hatred andsmoke 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 diarrhoea,
with your fever,O my land's maim'd darlings,
with the plenteous bloody bandage andthe crutch,Lo, your pallid army follows.)
5But on these days of brightness,
On the far-stretching beauteous landscape,
the roads and lanes thehigh-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.
6I 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 ofmighty 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.
7Loud 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, 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. 8Toil 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 therevolving hay-rakes,The steam-power reaping-machines and the horse-power machinesThe engines, thrashers of grain and cleaners of grain, wellseparating the straw, the nimble work of the patent pitchfork,Beholdest the newer saw-mill, the southern cotton-gin, and therice-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 greatface only,Harvest the wheat of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, every barbed spearunder thee,Harvest the maize of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, each ear in itslight-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 thegolden 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 bunchesof grapes from the vines,Or aught that ripens in all these States or North or South,Under the beaming sun and under thee. There Was a Child Went Forth There was a child went forth every day,And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,Or for many years or stretching cycles of years. The early lilacs became part of this child,And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and redclover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and themare's foal and the cow's calf,And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side,And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and thebeautiful curious liquid,And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him. The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him,Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and theesculent roots of the garden,And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms and the fruit afterward,and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of thetavern whence he had lately risen,And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,And the friendly boys that pass'd, and the quarrelsome boys,And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,And all the changes of city and country wherever he went. His own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'dhim in her womb and birth'd him,They gave this child more of themselves than that,They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him. The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesomeodor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, theyearning and swelling heart,Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the sense of what is real, thethought if after all it should prove unreal,The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curiouswhether and how,Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashesand specks what are they?The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing atthe ferries,The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river between,Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables ofwhite or brown two miles off,The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the littleboat slack-tow'd astern,The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint awaysolitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marshand shore mud,These became part of that child who went forth every day, and whonow goes, and will always go forth every day. Old Ireland Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders,
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,Long silent, she too long silent,
mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.
Yet a word ancient mother,
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with foreheadbetween your knees,
O you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead,
The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another country,
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country.
} The City Dead-House By the city dead-house by the gate,
As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor,
I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form,
a poor dead prostitute brought,
Her corpse they deposit unclaim'd,
it lies on the damp brick pavement,
The divine woman,
her body,
I see the body, I look on it alone,
That house once full of passion and beauty,
all else I notice not,
Nor stillness so cold,
nor running water from faucet, nor odorsmorbific impress me,
But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house--that ruin!
That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings ever built!
Or white-domed capitol with majestic figure surmounted,
or all theold high-spired cathedrals,
That little house alone more than them all--poor,
desperate house!
Fair, fearful wreck--tenement of a soul--itself a soul,
Unclaim'd, avoided house--take one breath from my tremulous lips,
Take one tear dropt aside as I go for thought of you,
Dead house of love--house of madness and sin,
crumbled,
crush'd,
House of life, erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house,
dead even then,Months,
years, an echoing, garnish'd house--but dead, dead, dead. }
This Compost 1
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 itself 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? 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 throughthe sod and turn it up underneath,I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2
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 noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit ontheir nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
The new-
born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow,
thecolt 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 inthe dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strataof sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea whichis 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 depositedthemselves 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 the orange-orchard, thatmelons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of
what was oncecatching 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 endlesssuccessions of diseas'd corpses,
It distills 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 leavingsfrom them at last.
To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire Courage yet,
my brother or my sister!Keep on--Liberty is to be subserv'd whatever occurs;
That is nothing that is quell'd by one or two failures, or anynumber of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by anyunfaithfulness,
Or the show of the tushes of power, sold
iers, cannon, penal statutes. What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,Invites no one,
promises nothing,
sits in calmness and light,
ispositive and composed,
knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.
(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also,
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)
The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold,

garrote,
handcuffs, iron necklace andleadballs do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor theinfidel enter'd into full possession. When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor thesecond or third to go,It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.
When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are dischargedfrom any part of the earth,Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty
be discharged fromthat part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.
Then courage European revolter, revoltress!
For till all ceases neither must you cease.
I do not know what you are for,
(I do not know what I am for myself,nor what any thing is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foil'd,
In defeat,
poverty,
misconception, imprisonment--for they too are great.
Did we think victory great?
So it is--but now it seems to me,
when it cannot be help'd,
thatdefeat is great,
And that death and dismay are great.
Unnamed Land Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times tenthousand years before these States,Garner'd clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up andtravel'd their course and pass'd on,What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribesand nomads,What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of deathand the soul,Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish andundevelop'd,Not a mark, not a record remains--and yet all remains. O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any morethan we are for nothing,I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as muchas we now belong to it. Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,Some with oval countenances learn'd and calm,Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,laboring, reaping, filling barns,Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.Are those billions of men really gone?Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves? I believe of all those men and women that fill'd the unnamed lands,every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us.In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out ofwhat he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn'd, in life. I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person ofthem, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,I suspect I shall meet them there,I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands. Song of Prudence Manhattan's streets I saunter'd pondering,On Time, Space, Reality--on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence. The last explanation always remains to be made about prudence,Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence thatsuits immortality.
The soul is of itself,
All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,
Not a move can a man or woman make,
that affects him or her in a day,
month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death,
But the same affects him or her onward afterward through theindirect lifetime.
The indirect is just as much as the direct,
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to thebody,
if not more.
Not one word or deed, not venereal sore,
discoloration, privacy ofthe onanist,
Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers,
peculation, cunning,betrayal,
murder, seduction, prostitution,
But has results beyond death as really as before death.
Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any thing.
No specification is necessary,
all that a male or female does,
thatis vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her,
In the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scopeof it forever.
Who has been wise receives interest,
Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer,
sailor, mechanic, literat,young, old, it is the same,The interest will come round--all will come round. Singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever affect,all of the past and all of the present and all of the future,All the brave actions of war and peace,All help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful,young children, widows, the sick, and to shunn'd persons,All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and sawothers fill the seats of the boats,All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for afriend's sake, or opinion's sake,All pains of enthusiasts scoff'd at by their neighbors,All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers,All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded,All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit,All the good of the dozens of ancient nations unknown to us by name,date, location,All that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no,All suggestions of the divine mind of man or the divinity of hismouth, or the shaping of his great hands,All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe,or on any of the wandering stars, or on any of the fix'd stars,by those there as we are here,All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you whoever you are,or by any one,These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from whichthey sprang, or shall spring. Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,No consummation exists without being from some long previousconsummation, and that from some other,Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer thebeginning than any. Whatever satisfies souls is true;Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,Itself only finally satisfies the soul,The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lessonbut its own. Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time,space, reality,That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own. What is prudence is indivisible,Declines to separate one part of life from every part,Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous or the living from the dead,Matches every thought or act by its correlative,Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,Knows that the young man who composedly peril'd his life and lost ithas done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,That he who never peril'd his life, but retains it to old age inriches and ease, has probably achiev'd nothing for himself worthmentioning,Knows that only that person has really learn'd who has learn'd toprefer results,Who favors body and soul the same,Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries noravoids death. The Singer in the Prison O sight of pity, shame and dole!O fearful thought--a convict soul. 1Rang 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 thelike 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 ecstasy and awe. 2The sun was low in the west one winter day,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-armed, watching with vigilant eyes,)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. A soul confined by bars and bands,Cries, help! O help! and wrings her hands,Blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast,Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest. Ceaseless she paces to and fro,O heart-sick days! O nights of woe!Nor hand of friend, nor loving face,Nor favor comes, nor word of grace. 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. Dear prison'd soul bear up a space,For soon or late the certain grace;To set thee free and bear thee home,The heavenly pardoner death shall come. Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole!Depart--a God-enfranchis'd soul! 3The 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,(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, O sight of pity, shame and dole!O fearful thought--a convict soul. Warble for Lilac-Time Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing hisgolden wings,The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nestof his mate,The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in itand from it?Thou, soul, unloosen'd--the restlessness after I know not what;Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!O if one could but fly like a bird!O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!To glide with thee O soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters;Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, themorning drops of dew,The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds,A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence. } Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870] 1What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire?The life thou lived'st we know not,But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts ofbrokers,Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory. 2Silent, my soul,With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd,Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes. While through the interior vistas,Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,)Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes,Spiritual projections. In one, among the city streets a laborer's home appear'd,After his day's work done, cleanly, sweet-air'd, the gaslight burning,The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove. In one, the sacred parturition scene,A happy painless mother birth'd a perfect child. In one, at a bounteous morning meal,Sat peaceful parents with contented sons. In one, by twos and threes, young people,Hundreds concentring, walk'd the paths and streets and roads,Toward a tall-domed school. In one a trio beautiful,Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's daughter, sat,Chatting and sewing. In one, along a suite of noble rooms,'Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes,Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old,Reading, conversing. All, all the shows of laboring life,City and country, women's, men's and children's,Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy,Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room,
Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college,
The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught,
The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father'd and mother'd,
The hungry fed, the houseless housed;
(The intentions perfect and divine,
The workings, details, haply human.)
3O thou within this tomb,From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver,
Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth,
Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides.
Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,By you, your banks Connecticut,
By you and all your teeming life old Thames,
By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you Patapsco,
You Hudson, you endless Mississippi--nor you alone,But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory. Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]
1Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,
These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,
This common curtain of the face contain'd in me for me, in you foryou, in each for each,(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears--0 heaven!
The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)
This glaze of God's serenest purest sky,
This film of Satan's seething pit,This heart's geography's map, this limitless small continent, thissoundless sea;Out from the convolutions of this globe,
This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,
This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe,Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)
These burin'd eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,
To launch and spin through space revolving sideling,
from these to emanate,
To you whoe'er you are--a look.
2A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,
Of youth long sped and middle age declining,
(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open'd window,Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,Then travel travel on. Vocalism 1Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divinepower to speak words;Are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long trial? from vigorouspractice? from physique?
Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?Come duly to the divine power to speak words?
For only at last after many years, after chastity,
friendship,procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
After treading ground and breasting river and lake,
After a loosen'd throat,
after absorbing eras, temperaments,
races,after knowledge, freedom, crimes,
After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations,
and removingobstructions,
After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,
woman, the divine power to speak words;
Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all--nonerefuse, all attend,Armies, ships, antiquities,
libraries, paintings, machines,
cities,hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form inclose ranks,
They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through themouth of that man or that woman. 2O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywherearound the globe.
All waits for the right voices;Where is the practis'd and perfect organ? where is the develop'd soul?For I see every word utter'd thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,impossible on less terms. I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck,Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what liesslumbering forever ready in all words. To Him That Was Crucified My spirit to yours dear brother,Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you,I do not sound your name, but I understand you,I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salutethose who are with you, before and since, and those to come also,That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession,We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times,We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies,Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not thedisputers nor any thing that is asserted,We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions,jealousies, recriminations on every side,They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade,Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up anddown till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras,Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races,ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are. You Felons on Trial in Courts You felons on trial in courts,You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd andhandcuff'd with iron,Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd withiron, or my ankles with iron? You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms,Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself? O culpable! I acknowledge--I expose!(O admirers, praise not me--compliment not me--you make me wince,I see what you do not--I know what you do not.) Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked,Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell's tides continually run,Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,I walk with delinquents with passionate love,I feel I am of them--I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,And henceforth I will not deny them--for how can I deny myself? Laws for Creations Laws for creations,For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers andperfect literats for America,For noble savans and coming musicians.All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and thecompact truth of the world,There shall be no subject too pronounced--all works shall illustratethe divine law of indirections. What do you suppose creation is?What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free andown no superior?What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, butthat man or woman is as good as God?And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws? To a Common Common Lady Be composed--be at ease with me--I am Walt Whitman, liberal andlusty as Nature,Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves torustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that youmake preparation to be worthy to meet me,And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come. Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me. I Was Looking a Long While I was looking a long while for Intentions,For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for thesechants--and now I have found it,It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neitheraccept nor reject,)It is no more in the legends than in all else,It is in the present--it is this earth to-day,It is in Democracy--(the purport and aim of all the past,)It is the life of one man or one woman to-day--the average man of to-day,It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts,crimeajewels,It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery,politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations,All for the modern--all for the average man of to-day. Thought Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth,scholarships, and the like;(To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them,except as it results to their bodies and souls,So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked,And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of therotten excrement of maggots,And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the truerealities of life, and go toward false realities,And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them,but nothing more,And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.) Miracles Why, who makes much of a miracle?As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,Or stand under trees in the woods,Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at nightwith any one I love,Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,Or animals feeding in the fields,Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quietand bright,Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.To me the sea is a continual miracle,The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--theships with men in them,What stranger miracles are there? Sparkles from the Wheel Where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day,Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them. By the curb toward the edge of the flagging,A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife,Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee,With measur'd tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light butfirm hand,Forth issue then in copious golden jets,Sparkles from the wheel. The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me,The sad sharp-chinn'd old man with worn clothes and broadshoulder-band of leather,Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now hereabsorb'd and arrested,The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,)The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets,The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press'd blade,Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold,Sparkles from the wheel. To a Pupil Is reform needed? is it through you?The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you needto accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood,complexion, clean and sweet?Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul thatwhen you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and commandenters with you, and every one is impress'd with your Personality? O the magnet! the flesh over and over!Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day toinure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,elevatedness,Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality. Unfolded out of the Folds Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and isalways to come unfolded,Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come thesuperbest man of the earth,Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man,Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man beform'd of perfect body,Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come thepoems of man, (only thence have my poems come;)Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thencecan appear the strong and arrogant man I love,Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled womanlove, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain come all the foldsof the man's brain, duly obedient,Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded,Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, butevery of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman;First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself. What Am I After All What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my ownname? repeating it over and over;I stand apart to hear--it never tires me.To you your name also;Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations inthe sound of your name? Kosmos Who includes diversity and is Nature,Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality ofthe earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also,Who has not look'd forth from the windows the eyes for nothing,or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover,Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism,spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual,Who having consider'd the body finds all its organs and parts good,Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her bodyunderstands by subtle analogies all other theories,The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States;Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but inother globes with their suns and moons,Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a daybut for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. Others May Praise What They Like Others may praise what they like;But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in artor aught else,Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also thewestern prairie-scent,And exudes it all again. Who Learns My Lesson Complete? Who learns my lesson complete?Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,clerk, porter and customer,Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy--draw nigh and commence;It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson,And that to another, and every one to another still. The great laws take and effuse without argument,I am of the same style, for I am their friend,I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams. I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasonsof things,They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen. I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--it is very wonderful. It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving soexactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt orthe untruth of a single second,I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,nor ten billions of years,Nor plann'd and built one thing after another as an architect plansand builds a house. I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else. Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, andhow I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,And pass'd from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple ofsummers and winters to articulate and walk--all this isequally wonderful. And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each otherwithout ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to seeeach other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them tobe true, is just as wonderful. And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, isequally wonderful,And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equallywonderful. Tests All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable toanalysis in the soul,Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges,They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves,and touches themselves;For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate farand near without one exception. The Torch On my Northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen's groupstands watching,Out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon,The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water,Bearing a torch ablaze at the prow. O Star of France [1870-71] O star of France,The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk,And 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds,Nor helm nor helmsman. Dim smitten star,Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes,The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty,Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood,Of terror to the tyrant and the priest. Star crucified--by traitors sold,Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land,Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land. Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee,Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all,And left thee sacred. In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly,In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price,In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep,In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the onesthat shamed thee,In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains,This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,The spear thrust in thy side. O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!Bear up O smitten orb! O ship continue on! Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself,Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,Onward beneath the sun following its course,So thee O ship of France! Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'dThe travail o'er, the long-sought extrication,When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world,(In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting oursColumbia,)Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star,In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,Shall beam immortal. The Ox-Tamer In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region,Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen,There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds tobreak them,He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him,He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullockchafes up and down the yard,The bullock's head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes,Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides--how soon this tamer tames him;See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old,and he is the man who has tamed them,They all know him, all are affectionate to him;See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking;Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line runningalong his back, some are brindled,Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)--see you! the bright hides,See, the two with stars on their foreheads--see, the round bodiesand broad backs,How straight and square they stand on their legs--what fine sagacious eyes!How straight they watch their tamer--they wish him near them--howthey turn to look after him!
What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them;
Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics,poems, depart--all else departs,)
I confess I envy only his fascination--my silent, illiterate friend,
Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms,
In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.
An Old Man's Thought of School[For the Inauguration of a Public School, Camden, New Jersey, 1874] An old man's thought of school,An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.
Now only do I know you,
O fair auroral skies--O morning dew upon the grass!
And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the soul's voyage.
Only a lot of boys and girls?Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?Only a public school? Ah more, infinitely more;(As George Fox rais'd his warning cry, "Is it this pile of brick andmortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church?Why this is not the church at all--the church is living, ever livingsouls.")
And you America,Cast you the real reckoning for your present?The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school. Wandering at Morn Wandering at morn,Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts,Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine!Thee coil'd in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay,with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee,This common marvel I beheld--the parent thrush I watch'd feeding its young,
The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.
There ponder'd, felt I,If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn'd,If vermin so transposed,
so used and bless'd may be,
Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;
Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?
From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,
Destin'd to fill the world.
Italian Music in Dakota"The Seventeenth--the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.
" Through the soft evening crimeajewel air enwinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,(Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,
Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera house,Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,
Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish,And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,Music, Italian music in Dakota.
While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm,
Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd,(As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)
Listens well pleas'd.
With All Thy Gifts With all thy gifts America,
Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--with these and like ofthese vouchsafed to thee,What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,)
The gift of perfect women fit for thee--what if that gift of giftsthou lackest?

The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee?The mothers fit for thee?
My Picture-Gallery In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix'd house,It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories!Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death;Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,With finger rais'd he points to the prodigal pictures. The Prairie States A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,With iron interlaced, composite, #
tied, many in one,By all the world contributed--freedom's and law's and thrift's society,
The crown and teeming paradise,
so far, of time's accumulations,
To justify the past.
SEA-DRIFT Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 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 childleaving 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 theywere 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 disturbingthem,
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 sightsafter 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 againif 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 belie
ve 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 ofthe sea almost touching,
The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair theatmosphere dallying,
The love in the heart long pent,
now loose, now at last tumultuouslybursting,
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,
louderand 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 whatthere 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 clue! (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 daybreak,
Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death,
And again death, death, death, deathHissing 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 sweetgarments, bending aside,)
The sea whisper'd me.
As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life 1As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day,
gazing off southward,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the landof the globe.
Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt,
to follow thoseslender windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks,
leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,
Miles walking,
the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,
Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses,
These you presented to me you fish-shaped island,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd with that electric self seeking types.
2As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge,
the voices of men and women wreck'd,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,

I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I havenot once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yetuntouch'd,
untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far,
mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing,
not a singleobject,
and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart uponme and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
3You oceans both, I close with you,We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing not why,These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all. You friable shore with trails of debris,
You fish-shaped island,
I take what is underfoot,
What is yours is mine my father.
I too Paumanok,
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float,
and beenwash'd on your shores,
I too am but a trail of drift and debris,
I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island.
I throw myself upon your breast my father,
I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm till you answer me something.
Kiss me my father,
Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,
Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy.
4Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways,
but fear not, deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you orgather from you. I mean tenderly by you and all,
I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead,
and following me and mine.
Me and mine, loose windrows,
little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,
See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another,From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,drifted at random,Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you,
You up there walking or sitting,
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.
Tears Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears,
On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,
Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;
O who is that ghost?
that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that,
bent, crouch'd there on the sand?
Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes,
choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the beach!
O wild and dismal night storm,
with wind--O belching and desperate!
O shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance andregulated pace,But away at night as you fly,
none looking--O then the unloosen'd ocean,Of tears! tears! tears! To the Man-of-War-Bird Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Now a blue point, far,
far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)
Far, far at sea,
After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
The limpid spread of air cerulean,
Thou also re-appearest.
Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,
Days, even weeks untired and onward,
through spaces, realms gyrating,
At dusk that lookist on Senegal,
at morn America,
That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder-cloud,
In them, in thy experiences,
had'st thou my soul,What joys! what joys were thine!
Aboard at a Ship's Helm Aboard at a ship's helm,
A young steersman steering with care.
Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell--O a warning bell,
rock'd by the waves. O you give good notice indeed,
you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing,
to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
For as on the alert O steersman,
you mind the loud admonition,
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her gray sails,
The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speedsaway gayly and safe.
But O the ship, the immortal ship!
O ship aboard the ship!
Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.
On the Beach at Night On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds,
the burial clouds,
in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky,
they devour the stars only inapparition,
Jupiter shall emerge,
be patient,
watch again another night,
thePleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal,
all those stars both silvery and golden shallshine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again,
they endure,
#The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shallagain shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee,
adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
The World below the Brine The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thicktangle openings, and pink turf,
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white,
and gold, theplay of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten,
grass, rushes,and the aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended,
or slowly crawlingclose to the bottom,
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray,
or disportingwith his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark,
the walrus, the turtle,
the hairysea-leopard,
and the sting-ray,
Passions there, wars, pursuits,
tribes,
sight in those ocean-depths,

breathing that thick-breathing air,
as so many do,
The change thence to the sight here,
and to the subtle air breathedby beings like us who walk this sphere,
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.
On the Beach at Night Alone On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clefof the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all,
ll spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or indifferent worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe,
or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
Song for All Seas,
All Ships 1To-day a rude brief recitative,
Of ships sailing the seas,
each with its special flag or ship-signal,
Of unnamed heroes in the ships--of waves spreading and spreadingfar as the eye can reach,
Of dashing spray,
and the winds piping and blowing,
And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations,
Fitful, like a surge.
Of sea-captains young or old,
and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors,
Of the few, very choice,
taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nordeath dismay.
Pick'd sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee,
Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time,
and unitest nations,
Suckled by thee, old husky nurse,
embodying thee,
Indomitable, untamed as thee.
(Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing,
Ever the stock preserv'd and never lost,
though rare, enough forseed preserv'd.)
2Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!
Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!
But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of manone flag above all the rest,
A spiritual woven signal for all nations,
emblem of man elate above death,
Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates,
And all that went down doing their duty,
Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old,
A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o'er all brave sailors,
All seas, all ships.
Patroling Barnegat Wild,
wild the storm,
and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,
Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,
Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,
(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms,
struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.
After the Sea-Ship After the sea-ship,
after the whistling winds,
After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling,
blithely prying,Waves, undulating waves,
liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface,
Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing,
The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsomeunder the sun,
A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,
Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.

CALAMUS
In Paths Untrodden In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins of pond-waters,
Escaped from the lite that exhibits itself,
From all the standards hitherto publish'd, from the pleasures,
profits, conformities,
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,
Clear to me now standards not yet publish'd,
clear to me that my soul,
That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades,
Here by myself away from the clank of the world,
Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic,
No longer abash'd, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as Iwould not dare elsewhere,)
Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet containsall the rest,
Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,
Projecting them along that substantial life,Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,
Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,
I proceed for all who are or have been young men,
To tell the secret my nights and days,
To celebrate the need of comrades.
Scented Herbage of My Breast Scented herbage of my breast,
Leaves from you I glean,
I write, to be perused best afterwards,
Tomb-leaves,
body-leaves growing up above me above death,
Perennial roots, tall leaves,
O the winter shall not freeze youdelicate leaves,
very year shall you bloom again,
out from where you retired youshall emerge again;
O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or inhaleyour faint odor,
but I believe a few will;
O slender leaves!
O blossoms of my blood!
I permit you to tell inyour own way of the heart that is under you,
O I do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves,
you arenot happiness,
You are often more bitter than I can bear,
you burn and sting me,
Yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots,
you make methink of death,
Death is beautiful from you,
(what indeed is finally beautifulexcept death and love?)
O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers,
I think it must be for death,
For how calm,
how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers,
Death or life I am then indifferent,
my soul declines to prefer,
(I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)
Indeed O death,
I think now these leaves mean precisely the same asyou mean,
Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my breast!
Spring away from the conceal'd heart there!
Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves!
Do not remain down there so ashamed,
herbage of my breast!
Come I am determin'd to unbare this broad breast of mine,
I havelong enough stifled and choked;
Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you,
now you serve me not,
I will say what I have to say by itself,
I will sound myself and comrades only,
I will never again utter acall only their call,
I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States,
I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and willthrough the States,
Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating,
Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with it,
Give me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above all,
andare folded inseparably together,
you love and death are,
Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life,
For now it is convey'd to me that you are the purports essential,
That you hide in these shifting forms of life,
for reasons, and thatthey are mainly for you,
That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,
That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long,
That you will one day perhaps take control of all,
That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,
That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very long,
But you will last very long.
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,
You would have to give up all else,
I alone would expect to be yoursole and exclusive standard,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the livesaround you would have to be abandon'd,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further,
letgo your hand from my shoulders,
Put me down and depart on your way.
Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air,
(For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill,
first watching lest anyperson for miles around approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea orsome quiet island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
But these leaves conning you con at peril,
For these leaves and me you will not understand,
They will elude you at first and still more afterward,
I willcertainly elude you.
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me,
behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.
For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)prove victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only,
they will do just as much evil,perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many timesand not hit,
that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.
For You, O Democracy Come,
I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes,
and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.
For you these from me,
O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.
These I Singing in Spring These I singing in spring collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side,
now wading in a little,
fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there,
pick'd from the fields, have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones andpartly cover them,
beyond these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest,
or sauntering later in summer,
before Ithink where I go,S
olitary, smelling the earthy smell,
stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought,
yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side and some behind,
and some embrace my arms or neck,
They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive,
thicker they come, agreat crowd,
and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing,
there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens,
tossing toward whoever is near me,
Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket,
some moss which I pull'd off a live-oak inFlorida 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 againnever to separate from me,
And this,
O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades,
thiscalamus-root shall,
Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,
And stems of currants and plum-blows,
and the aromatic cedar,
These I compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to or touch as I pass,
or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have,
giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side,
that I reserve,I will give of it,
but only to them that love as I myself am capableof loving.
Not Heaving from My Ribb'd Breast
Only Not heaving from my ribb'd breast only,
Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,
Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,
Not in many an oath and promise broken,
Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition,
Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,
Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,
Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease,
Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,
Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far inthe wilds,
Not in husky pantings through clinch'd teeth,
Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words,
Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,
Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss youcontinually--not there,
Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive,
the animals, plants, men, hills,shining and flowing waters,
The skies of day and night, colors, densities,
forms, may-be theseare (as doubtless they are) only apparitions,
and the realsomething has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know,
nor any man knows, aught of them,)
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem)as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course theywould) nought of what they appear,
or nought anyhow, from entirelychanged points of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by mylovers, my dear friends,
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding meby the hand,
When the subtle air,
the impalpable,
the sense that words and reasonhold not,
surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom,
I am silent, Irequire nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identitybeyond the grave,
But I walk or sit indifferent,
I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.
The Base of All Metaphysics And now gentlemen,
A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,
As base and finale too for all metaphysics. (So to the students the old professor,
At the close of his crowded course.) Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,Stated the lore of Plato,
#and Socrates greater than Plato,And greater than Socrates sought and stated,
Christ divine havingstudied long,I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,See the philosophies all,
Christian churches and tenets see,
Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see,
The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,Of city for city and land for land. Recorders Ages Hence Recorders ages hence,Come,
I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, Iwill tell you what to say of me,
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of lovewithin him, and freely pour'd it forth,Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless anddissatisfied at night,
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd mightsecretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills,he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the shoulderof his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.
When I Heard at the Close of the Day When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'dwith plaudits in the capitol,
still it was not a happy night forme that follow'd,
And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, stillI was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in themorning light,When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,
And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his waycoming,
O then I was happy,O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my foodnourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening camemy friend,And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowlycontinually up the shores,I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to mewhispering to congratulate me,For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover inthe cool night,In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy. Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me? Are you the new person drawn toward me?To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?Do you think I am trusty and faithful?Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerantmanner of me?Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?Have you no thought O dreamer that it may be all maya, illusion? Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods and pond-side,Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighterthan vines,Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as thesun is risen,Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the livingsea, to you O sailors!Frost-mellow'd berries and Third-month twigs offer'd fresh to youngpersons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up,Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and bringform, color, perfume, to you,If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,fruits, tall branches and trees. Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes Not heat flames up and consumes,Not sea-waves hurry in and out,Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears lightlyalong white down-balls of myriads of seeds,Waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may;Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me, consuming,burning for his love whom I love,O none more than I hurrying in and out;Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up? O I the same,O nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting clouds,are borne through the open air,Any more than my soul is borne through the open air,Wafted in all directions O love, for friendship, for you. Trickle Drops Trickle drops! my blue veins leaving!O drops of me! trickle, slow drops,Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,From wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd,From my face, from my forehead and lips,From my breast, from within where I was conceal'd, press forth reddrops, confession drops,Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops,Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten,Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops. City of Orgies City of orgies, walks and joys,City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day makeNot the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, yourspectacles, repay me,Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the wharves,Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows withgoods in them,Nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the soireeor feast;Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent and swift flashof eyes offering me love,Offering response to my own--these repay me,Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me. Behold This Swarthy Face Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightlyon the lips with robust love,And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship's deck give akiss in return,We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea,We are those two natural and nonchalant persons. I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green,And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone therewithout its friend near, for I knew I could not,And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it andtwined 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 Louisianasolitary in a wide in a wide flat space,Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,I know very well I could not. To a Stranger Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to meas 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 yoursonly nor left my body mine only,You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, youtake of my beard, breast, hands, in return,I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone orwake at night alone,I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,I am to see to it that I do not lose you. This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone,It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful,It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany, Italy,France, Spain,Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or talking other dialects,And it seems to me if I could know those men I should becomeattached to them as I do to men in my own lands,O I know we should be brethren and lovers,I know I should be happy with them. I Hear It Was Charged Against Me I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions,But really I am neither for nor against institutions,(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with thedestruction of them?)Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of theseStates inland and seaboard,And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or largethat dents the water,Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,The institution of the dear love of comrades. The Prairie-Grass Dividing The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing,I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom andcommand, leading not following,Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lustyflesh clear of taint,Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors,as to say Who are you?Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient,Those of inland America. When I Persue the Conquer'd Fame When I peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories ofmighty generals, I do not envy the generals,Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house,But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, longand long,Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, howaffectionate and faithful they were,Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away fill'd with the bitterest envy. We Two Boys Together Clinging We two boys together clinging,One the other never leaving,Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,threatening,Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, onthe turf or the sea-beach dancing,Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,Fulfilling our foray. A Promise to California A promise to California,Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget sound and Oregon;Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain,to teach robust American love,For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,inland, and along the Western sea;For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and I will also. Here the Frailest Leaves of Me Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them,And yet they expose me more than all my other poems. No Labor-Saving Machine No labor-saving machine,Nor discovery have I made,Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to foundhospital or library,Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,Nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-shelf,But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,For comrades and lovers. A Glimpse A glimpse through an interstice caught,Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stovelate of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner,Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching andseating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking andoath and smutty jest,There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,perhaps not a word. A Leaf for Hand in Hand A leaf for hand in hand;You natural persons old and young!You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous ofthe Mississippi!You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you towalk hand in hand. Earth, My Likeness Earth, my likeness,Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,I now suspect that is not all;I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,For an athlete is enamour'd of me, and I of him,But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligibleto burst forth,I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs. I Dream'd in a Dream I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of thewhole of the rest of the earth,I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,And in all their looks and words. What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand? What think you I take my pen in hand to record?The battle-ship, perfect-model'd, majestic, that I saw pass theoffing to-day under full sail?The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night thatenvelops me?Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? --no;But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the midstof the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends,The one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately kiss'd him,While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms. To the East and to the West To the East and to the West,To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men,I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superbfriendship, exalte, previously unknown,Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men. Sometimes with One I Love Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuseunreturn'd love,But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain oneway or another,(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,Yet out of that I have written these songs.) To a Western Boy Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers,Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine? Fast Anchor'd Eternal O Love! Fast-anchor'd eternal O love! O woman I love!O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!Then separate, as disembodied or another born,Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,O sharer of my roving life. Among the Multitude Among the men and women the multitude,I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,any nearer than I am,Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me. Ah lover and perfect equal,I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you. O You Whom I Often and Silently Come O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake isplaying within me. That Shadow My Likeness That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,chattering, chaffering,How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;But among my lovers and caroling these songs,O I never doubt whether that is really me. Full of Life Now Full of life now, compact, visible,I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,To you yet unborn these, seeking you. When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 1Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!Clouds of the west--sun there half an hour high--I see you also faceto face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curiousyou are to me!On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returninghome, are more curious to me than you suppose,And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are moreto me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose. 2The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme, myself disintegrated, everyone disintegrated yet part of the scheme,The similitudes of the past and those of the future,The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, onthe walk in the street and the passage over the river,The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others. Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and theheights of Brooklyn to the south and east,Others will see the islands large and small;Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun halfan hour high,A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, otherswill see them,Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, thefalling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide. 3It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so manygenerations hence,Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and thebright flow, I was refresh'd,Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swiftcurrent, I stood yet was hurried,Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and thethick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd. I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old,Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the airfloating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and leftthe rest in strong shadow,Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of myhead in the sunlit water,Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slenderserpentine pennants,The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses,The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, thefrolic-some crests and glistening,The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of thegranite storehouses by the docks,On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd oneach side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burninghigh and glaringly into the night,Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellowlight over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets. 4These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,The men and women I saw were all near to me,Others the same--others who look back on me because I look'd forwardto them,(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.) 5What is it then between us?What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not--distance avails not, and place avails not,I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in thewaters around it,I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,I too had receiv'd identity by my body,That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew Ishould be of my body. 6It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,The dark threw its patches down upon me also,The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,I am he who knew what it was to be evil,I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting, Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,Was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men asthey saw me approaching or passing,Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning oftheir flesh against me as I sat,Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yetnever told them a word,Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,Play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,Or as small as we like, or both great and small. 7Closer yet I approach you,What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you--I laid in mystores in advance,I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born. Who was to know what should come home to me?Who knows but I am enjoying this?Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at younow, for all you cannot see me? 8Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me thanmast-hemm'd Manhattan?River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood-tide?The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in thetwilight, and the belated lighter?What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices Ilove call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as approach?What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man thatlooks in my face?Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you? We understand then do we not?What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted?What the study could not teach--what the preaching could notaccomplish is accomplish'd, is it not? 9Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or themen and women generations after me!Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by mynighest name!Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as onemakes it!Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways belooking upon you;Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yethaste with the hasting current;Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till alldowncast eyes have time to take it from you!Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or anyone's head, in the sunlit water!Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'dschooners, sloops, lighters!Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset!Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows atnightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,Thrive, cities--bring your freight, bring your shows, ample andsufficient rivers,Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting. You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within us,We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also,You furnish your parts toward eternity,Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
A Song for Occupations 1A song for occupations!In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I findthe developments,And find the eternal meanings. Workmen and Workwomen!Were all educations practical and ornamental well display'd out ofme, what would it amount to?Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman,what would it amount to?Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you? The learn'd, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,A man like me and never the usual terms. Neither a servant nor a master I,I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have myown whoever enjoys me,I will be even with you and you shall be even with me. If you stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as the nighest in thesame shop,If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand asgood as your brother or dearest friend,If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must bepersonally as welcome,If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think Icannot remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the table,If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, whyI often meet strangers in the street and love them. Why what have you thought of yourself?Is it you then that thought yourself less?Is it you that thought the President greater than you?Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you? (Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a thief,Or that you are diseas'd, or rheumatic, or a prostitute,Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and neversaw your name in print,Do you give in that you are any less immortal?) 2Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard,untouchable and untouching,It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whetheryou are alive or no,I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns. Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,And all else behind or through them. The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father. Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me. I bring what you much need yet always have,Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, butoffer the value itself. There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,It is not what is printed, preach'd, discussed, it eludes discussionand print,It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than yourhearing and sight are from you,It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them. You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,You may read the President's message and read nothing about it there,Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasurydepartment, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accountsof stock. 3The sun and stars that float in the open air,The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them issomething grand,I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation orbon-mot or reconnoissance,And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us,and without luck must be a failure for us,And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency. The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, thegreed that with perfect complaisance devours all things,The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wondersthat fill each minute of time forever,What have you reckon'd them for, camerado?Have you reckon'd them for your trade or farm-work? or for theprofits of your store?Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure,or a lady's leisure? Have you reckon'd that the landscape took substance and form that itmight be painted in a picture?Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinationsand the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans?Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, oragriculture itself? Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, andthe practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,I rate them as high as the highest--then a child born of a woman andman I rate beyond all rate. We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,I am this day just as much in love with them as you,Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the earth. We consider bibles and religions divine--I do not say they are not divine,I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth,than they are shed out of you. 4The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you whoare here for him,The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you,Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, thegoing and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you. List close my scholars dear,Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you,The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the recordsreach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?The most renown'd poems would be ashes, orations and plays wouldbe vacuums. All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,(Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines ofthe arches and cornices?) All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments,It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor thebeating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing hissweet romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of thewomen's chorus,It is nearer and farther than they. 5Will the whole come back then?Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? isthere nothing greater or more?Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul? Strange and hard that paradox true I give,Objects gross and the unseen soul are one. House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing,shingle-dressing,Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers,The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brickkiln,Coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness,echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughtslooking through smutch'd faces,Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, menaround feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, thedue combining of ore, limestone, coal,The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at thebottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy barsof pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped Trail for railroads,Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house,steam-saws, the great mills and factories,Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades or window or door-lintels,the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb,The calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fireunder the kettle,The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of thesawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of thebutcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,The work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker,Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making,glazier's implements,The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the decanterand glasses, the shears and flat-iron,The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, thecounter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the makingof all sorts of edged tools,The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every thing that is doneby brewers, wine-makers, vinegar-makers,Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting,distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking,electroplating, electrotyping, stereotyping,Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,Pyrotechny, letting off color'd fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets;Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, thebutcher in his killing-clothes,The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, thescalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul,and the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing,Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels andthe half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high pileson wharves and levees,The men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters,fish-boats, canals;The hourly routine of your own or any man's life, the shop, yard,store, or factory,These shows all near you by day and night--workman! whoever youare, your daily life! In that and them the heft of the heaviest--in that and them far morethan you estimated, (and far less also,)In them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me,In them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things,regardless of estimation,In them the development good--in them all themes, hints, possibilities. I do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile, I do not adviseyou to stop,I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to. 6Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not foranother hour but this hour,Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother,nighest neighbor--woman in mother, sister, wife,The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divineand strong life,And all else giving place to men and women like you.When the psalm sings instead of the singer, When the script preaches instead of the preacher,When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carvedthe supporting desk,When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when theytouch my body back again,When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and childconvince,When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's daughter,When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendlycompanions,I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I doof men and women like you.