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EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
POETRY AND
THE DRAMA
LEAVES OF GRASS (I) &
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
HORACE TRAUBEL
the publishers of
llb^á'rt will be pleased to send
freely to all applicants a list
of the published and projected
volumes to be comprised under
the following thirteen headings:
travel 7^ science fiction
theology & philosophy
history 7^ classical
for young people
essays ^ oratory
poetry & drama
biography
reference
romance
in four styles of binding; cloth,
flat back, coloured top; leather,
round corners, gilt top; library
binding in cloth, & quarter pigskin
London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
N ew York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
 
 
LEAVES OF
GRASS (DS
DEMOCRATIC 1
VISTAS >36®
BY WALT ^
WHITMAN
LON DON-. PUBLISHED
byJ-M-DENT &·SONS·LS'
AND IN NEW YORK^
BY E-P- DUTTON^CO
 
INTRODUCTION
Every time a new Whitman book appears I go back to the
of
talks I had with Walt about his editions in the last years
his life. He was never wholly sure of himself. He is sup-
posed by people who know nothing about egotism to have
been the master egotist. But he was in fact quite inclined
'*
to under-accentuate his victories. I guess I've got a foot-
hold." That's about the extremest thing he said at the end.
He would playfully compare his gains and losses and ask
whether he had after all made good. He did this in the most
the
gracious spirit. Without petulance. Without censuring
world or blaming himself. He in effect stood aside from his
own career and figured up its interior and outward intimations.
This was natural to a man who had to fight all his way up.
To whom the world never willingly yielded an inch. He had
been rebel twice over. He was a rebel in his art. He was
a
a rebel in his message. Though a conservative now and then
for con-
accepts Whitman, Whitman as a rule does nothing
servatism. Though radicals now and then reject Whitman,
Whitman as a rule does everything for radicalism. I don't
mean that he offers to substitute one creed for another. He
in fact expressly avoids that. But he belongs to revolt. He
makes people dissatisfied with the conditions of modern life.
"
He said to me: We have built up things on corrupt founda-
tions. What are we going to do about it ? Keep on building
our
higher and higher with the foundations wrong ? Or get
"
foundations right before we go any farther ? And he also
said: " I want to see the whole thing challenged: I want us
to start where we should: not with property but with man."
He preached accordingly. He made up his mind to put a
man into a book. A whole man. Himself. A democrat.
In doing this he had first of all to run counter to the prejudice
of scholarship. He had chosen a peculiar medium of expres-
sion. Then he had also to meet the antagonism of the tradi-
tions. He spoke of it himself "
as two fights in one."
So, from 1855, when Leaves of Grass started on its stormy
voyage, till 1892, when the old young man, still jubilant,
sailed into port. Whitman was a war centre at which a few
vii
VIH Leaves of Grass
stalwart supporters gathered and against which the many
who looked upon him as a pretender directed their fire. Whit-
man was a new force let loose on the old earth. People had
to get acquainted with it. This they did in the usual way.
By trying to kill it they got used to it. By getting used to
it they learned to tolerate it. Toleration became respect.
Respect became love.
But the general feeling about Whitman? Where is it
to-day ? I am told that a whole native Whitman edition has
recently been destroyed in Russia. In Toronto the authori-
ties raided all the book stores and destroyed a great many of
the objectionable classics, among them the Whitmans. Now
you can't buy a copy of Leaves of Grass in Ontario. Such
things are still happening. And with them the still timid
average criticism of the periodical press. Whitman has now
lasted so long even his enemies admit he is likely to last a
while longer. They say he is bound to go out. He is after all
only a candle dip. But he has disappointed their original
prophecies. The fact remains that Leaves of Grass has been
translated as a whole into the French and Italian, and piece-
meal into the Spanish, the German and the Dutch. Whitman
is quoted everywhere. He is mentioned everywhere. Every
book of essays or addresses treating of modernism in literature
is forced to reckon with Whitman. Every lecture syllabus
which undertakes to deal with contemporary infiuences has
to explain the Whitman diversion. The colleges, some of
them, have Whitman courses. The magazines are ready to
discuss Whitman and to print the memories of his friends.
When Whitman was alive and the little group of us were
about him in Camden we were called crazy. Gilder wrote
me after reading the manuscript of volume one of my With
Walt Whitman in Camden "
: The Camden crowd is vindi-
cated." It makes no difference about the Camden crowd.
Whitman is vindicated. That is the main thing. An English-
man lecturing in America said: "Continental European
Bohemia knows only two places in America, and they are not
New York and Chicago, no: they are Camden and Concord."
I used to say to Whitman playfully: "I'll live to see you
published at fifty dollars a volume." And he would ask:
" Do "
you mean it? Shaking his head and adding: " No:
you can't: we're lucky to be printed at anything a volume."
But I did live to see the fifty-dollar book.
I seem to have travelled a long way with Whitman. When
Introduction ix
I first met him I was a small boy in Camden. Then nearly
everybody discredited him. Everybody found some reason—
it was not always the same reason—for dissent. They went
to my mother and protested against my association with
" the lecherous old man." They wondered if it was safe to
invite him into their houses. I grew up in that atmosphere of
suspicion. I got accustomed to thinking of him as an outlaw.
But I had no doubts of him. He would talk with me about
his supporters. "They are very few," he would say: "but
they are devoted." He one day gave me a bunch of letters
to take to the post-office. They were all to Englishmen. I
remember that one was to Symonds, that one was to William
Michael Rossetti, that one was to Dowden, and that one was
to Tennyson: they impressed me at that time: and there
were three or four others—one, I think, going to Carpenter,
and another to a man named Riley, who knew and wrote
about Ruskin. I said to Walt: " You have distinguished
friends even if they are few." He laughed quietly over this.
"Yes: as I said, they are devoted: and so many of them are
in England: you noticed that, I guess. Did I ever tell you
about my English friends? Well—I will do so sometime.
I want you to know just how magnificently they behaved to
me in seventy-three to seventy-six: it was truly splendid:
it quite took me off my feet." He did often tell me this story.
It always warmed him up. He was amused over one incident
related to him by a visitor who had called on Tennyson.
The visitor asked Tennyson what he thought of Whitman.
" Whitman ? Whitman ? you want to know what I think
about Whitman ? I don't know that I think about him. I
wonder if I ever really think about him ? But I am aware of
his existence: he is a vast monster of some sort—a monster,
sir: I can't make him out: but I hear the noise he makes
and see the commotion of the waters as he dashes along: I
suppose I do not think of him—think of him : but I acknow-
ledge and respect him: he is a force that without explaining
itself to me I still acquiesce in."
It was true of Whitman in England as in America. That
while he missed it with the second-rate men and the critics
the first-rate men deferred to him at once. Whitman was
convincing to Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott. He immediately
justified himself with men and women of original insight.
But the scholars insisted upon something which was in line
with their inheritance. This intruder right out of the streets
X Leaves of Grass
brought in too much dirt with him. Whitman was conclusive
as viewed by most of those who made the Victorian period
in English literature illustrious. He succeeded with the dis-
coverers. The young men came to him. Some even who in
later days reversed their decisions. Even Swinburne and
Gosse in their inspirational years. Such men. And men like
our Americans Bayard Taylor and Sidney Lanier. When
these men were fresh they realised the vivid quality of Whit-
man's intuitions. But as they cooled ofí their logic dis-
proved him. Meanwhile Whitman was going into the crowd.
He was invading continental Europe. Revolutionaries sung
him. They utilise him in music. They like his short pieces
and make them into songs. And they take the big things and
convert them into tone poems. Sibelius has done this on
your side and Converse has done it here. There is a Whit-
man symphony composed by an Englishman. They are
hearing of him in Japan and China. I suppose I have been
visited at one time or other by Whitman people from every
country on the globe. New Zealand has its life of Whitman.
He has been a bone of contention to the culture of Germany.
Books have been written there taking sides on his philosophy
of sex. This debate has been pursued almost with rancour.
I cite these indications at random to illustrate the universality
of Whitman's fame. It has gone everywhere. Everybody
has listened. Everybody has something to say about it.
Whitman is still largely negatived. But he has never been
curbed. He is one of the inevitabilities.
Whitman for years took his Sunday dinners at Harned's
house in Camden. I remember a Christmas when Ernest
Rhys was there. Harned asked Whitman "
one day: Walt,
"
do you ever have any doubts about yourself ?" What do
"
you mean, Tom ?" About the future of Leaves of Grass ;
"
whether it will arrive or not ? Walt was quiet for a minute
and then said: "Tom — that's a poser: I'm not the one to
answer it." Harned said: "I can answer it and answer it
with yes : you wiU arrive. But that's not what I want. I want
"
your answer." I put in: He wants you to look at yourself as
if you wasn't yourself and answer." Walt was again süent but
finally said in his slow way, as if thinking it out as he talked :
*' I'll tell you how it looks to me, Tom: yes I wül: how it looks
to me. I can assure you that I have had moods in which the
whole business seemed surely about to go to smash: Leaves
of Grass, Walt Whitman, everything before and after. Then
Introduction xi
other moods intervene in which I have the feeling of some-
thing in me, in the Leaves, that is vital—that may live: some-
thing not exactly mine but spoken through me that must
outlast me: something not owed to my ego but having a
race quality, fitting in with the struggle of democracy in our
" "
time to free itself from the clutter of the past." Hurrah!
cried Hamed. And the hurrah went round the table. Then
"
Walt said quietly: If I say amen when you are all so good
"
to me you will not misunderstand, will you ? That fervent
offhand utterance gave us the clue we wished. That is
Whitman's why and wherefore. That something or other
which baffled yet persuaded Tennyson. That something or
other which may for ever baffle but will finally persuade the
"
popular WÜ1 wherever Whitman is read. I do not antici-
pate ever being received in lieu of any technical philosophy :
I something different: I don't provide theories for
am people:
I ask them about their own theories—I spur them on so they
do their own speculation." That's the way he put it to me.
*'
Again I have heard him say: The main thing is having people
understand people — brothers brothers. I suppose that's
where I shine if at all: in bringing people together—in bring-
ing people together: in insisting upon it that the differences
shall not be accentuated. We are more alike than not alike:
we are more noble than not noble: that I want to say and
say again for ever and always." I asked him: "Do you
provide for to
progress ? Is your feeling about all this likely
"
weaken the fibre of those who accept you ? He thought
not. " But if it does then I stand condemned. Maybe the
best answer to all that would be your own assertion—I have
heard you make it often—that bourbons have very little
interest in Leaves of Grass : that you find practically all intense
Leaves of Grassers ardent advocates of the new humanities."
Every time we brought out a new edition of the Leaves
or brought out one of his subsidiary volumes, Walt would
call it " the conquest of a new world." When we finished
November Boughs he said: "Now what shall we do? Like
Alexander I sigh for other worlds to conquer." It is still
"
frequently said as it was in Walt's own hearing: Here is
the poet of democracy and the democracy repudiates him."
"
But Walt was not worried by that charge. I refer to a
"
democracy that is yet unborn," he said. Which means that
when your democracy comes it will know ? "
you He assented
"
off. "
to this right Exactly," he said. And it's partly
xii Leaves of Grass
your job to produce it? " " Exactly," he said again. Just
as many people misconstrued him when he said "I," just so
many people, some of them the same people, misunderstood
him when he said " America." They supposed the " I, Walt
Whitman, a cosmos," was Walt exclusively, and not just as
surely John Smith, the same cosmos. And they supposed
that his America was something geographical and not as
surely his England or his anything provided the democratic
spirit horizoned its idealism. I showed him a photograph of
a "
group of Englishmen. "How American they look! he
exclaimed. If you want to misrepresent Whitman you will
regard this as parochial. But if you want to know him accord-
ing to his own size and shape you will see that it is inter-
continental. Any Americanism that Whitman ever had in
mind was all inclusive. When you are gone so far, when you
are so big, when you are so beautiful, you are American.
That is, you are a democrat among democrats. So he would
talk of the Américanisation of the world. Not, of course,
intending to imply that we, occupying the geographical
America, were to evangelise the earth. His America came
from within not from without. It is imperative that Euro-
peans should get Whitman in this perspective. Otherwise he
has moments which they might ascribe to simple bombast.
Carlyle spoke of Whitman as one who thought he was a big
man because he lived in a big country. But Carlyle missed
the real slant. If he had been more patient he might have
seen that Whitman thought America was a big country
because it lived in him. For to Whitman the people inevit-
ably are first. That's what Leaves of Grass all comes to.
The declaration that the people are first. Not a portion of
the people. Not the saving remnant. But the everyday
people. The vast overflowing populations. They are first.
Matthew Arnold, who couldn't see Whitman, couldn't see
this. When he was asked by an American in Philadelphia
what he thought of Whitman this same Matthew Arnold
raised his eyebrows and answered his questioner with a
question: " Ah! what does Longfellow think of Whitman? "
In one of chats I said to Whitman: "
our I not only expect
to live to see you sell at fifty dollars a volume. I expect to
live to see you sell at ten cents a volume. '' Which pleased him.
" That is, you expect me to be in demand superficially among
collectors and profoundly in the crowd? Good!" I have
seen both things happen. And now I am seeing another
Introduction xiii
thing happen. And even assisting it to happen. My small
boy wonder is having my man's confirmations. That which
I looked ahead towards as a boy I look back upon as a man.
Huxley said he helped rock the cradle of evolution. I can't
say literally that I helped rock the cradle of Leaves of Grass.
I came along a little too late for that. But I was on the
ground before the youngster was through crawling. I have
had something to do with everything that has since occurred
to Leaves of Grass. Towards the close Whitman wrote his
noble "
self-survey: A backward glance o'er travell'd roads."
I have lived long enough and been intimately enough asso-
elated with the WTiitman pilgrimage to bring that backward
glance up to date. Way buried in the fifties, when he was
misrepresented by almost everybody who didn't ignore him,
WTiitman wrote a review of his own book in which he said:
" His is to prove either the most lamentable of failures, or the
most glorious of triumphs, in the known history of literature."
It looks to me as if it was the most glorious of triumphs.
HORACE TRAUBEL.
Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A.,
January 8, 1912.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works.—Leaves of Grass, 1855; other editions, 1856, 1860-1861, 1867,
1872, 1881, 1889 1892, 1897; Drum-Taps, and Sequel to Drum-Taps,
1865; Poems, selected and ed. by W. M. Rossetti, 1868; new edition,
1886; selected and ed. by E. Rhys, 1886; Democratic Vistas, 1871;
Passage to India, 1871; As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free, 1872; Two
Rivulets, 1873; Memoranda of the War, 1875; Complete Works, 2 vols.,
1876; other editions, 1882, 1888-1889, 1892; Specimen Days and Collect,
1883; November Boughs, 1888; Good-Bye My Fancy, 1891; Complete
Prose Works, 1898; Notes and Fragments, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 1899;
Complete Writings, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 10 vols., 1902.
Life and Letters.—Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, by
John Bmnroughs, 1866,1871 ; The Good Gray Poet : A Vindication, by W. D.
O'Connor, 1866; by R. M. Bucke, 1883; Autobiographia, 1892; by J.
AddingtonS)maonds, 1893 ; In re Walt Whitman, ed. by H. L. Traubel, R. M.
Bucke, and T. B. Harned, 1893; Reminiscences, by W. S. Kennedy, 1896;
Calamus; Letters written during the Years 1868-1880, ed. by R. M.
Bucke, 1897; The Wound Dresser; Letters written from the Hospitals in
Washington, ed. by R. M. Bucke, 1898; Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada,
ed. by W. S. Kennedy, 1904; With Walt Whitman in Camden, by H. L.
Traubel, 1906; Life, b}' H. B. Binns, 1906; Life and Work, by Bliss
Perry, 1906.
N.B.—The present Copyright Edition is published by special consent of
Walt Whitman^s surviving executors, T. B. Harned and Horace Traubel ;
and it follows the text recommended by him in 1871-1873. A second volume
will complete the work.
CONTENTS
INSCRIPTIONS—
One's-Self I Sing ....
As I Ponder'd in Silence
In Cabin'd Ships at Sea
To Foreign Lands 3
To a Historian 3
To Thee Old Cause • • •
. . • 3
Eidólons •••••••■■■ i
For Him I Sing ^
When I Read the Book .....•• 7
Beginning My Studies 7
Beginners 7
To the States 7
On Journeys through the States ...... 8
To a Certain Cantatrice . . • ■ • • • S
^ Me Imperturbe 8
'' Savantism 9
The Ship Starting ........ 9
I Hear America Singing 9
What Place is Besieged? . - • • • • . lo
Still though the One I Sing . . . • • • . lo
Shut not Your Doors lo
Poets to Come ....••••• lo
To You II
Thou Reader ......... n
Starting from Paumanok . . . . . . .12
Song of Myself ......... 24
CHILDREN OF ADAM—
To the Garden the World ...... 78
From Pent-up Aching Rivers ...... 78
I Sing the Body Electric ....... 80
A Woman waits for Me ....... 87
Spontaneous Me......... 89
One Hour to Madness and Joy ...... 91
Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd ..... 92
Ages and Ages returning at Intervals . . . . .92
We Two, How long We were Fool'd ..... 92
0 Hymen! O Hymenee! ....... 93
> I am He that Aches with Love ...... 93
Native Moments......... 94
Once I Pass'd through a Populous City..... 94
1 Heard You, Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ ... 94
Facing West from California's Shores ..... 95
As Adam Early in the Morning ...... 95
CALAMUS—
In Paths Untrodden ........ 96
Scented Herbage of My Breast ...... 96
Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand .... 98
1; XV
XVI Leaves of Grass
CALAMUS—continued
For You, O Democracy
These I Singing in Spring
Not Heaving from my Ribb'd Breast Only
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances .
The Base of All Metaphysics
Recorders Ages Hence
When I Heard at the Close of the Day .
Axe You the New Person Drawn toward Me?
Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
Not Heat Flames up and Consumes
Trickle Drops .....
City of Orgies .....
Behold this Swarthy Face
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
To a Stranger .....
This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
I Hear it was Charged against Me
The Prairie-Grass Dividing .
When I Peruse the Conquer'd Fame
We Two Boys together Clinging
A Promise to California
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
No Labour-Saving Machine .
A Glimpse
A Leaf for Hand in Hand
Earth, My Likeness
I Dream'd in a Dream
What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
To the East and to the West
Sometimes with One I Love
To a Western Boy
Fast-Anchor'd Eternal O Love!
Among the Multitude .
O You whom I Often and Silently Come
That Shadow My Likeness .
Full of Life now .
Salut au Monde ! .
Song of the Open Road .
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Song of the Answerer
Our Old Feuillage .
A Song of Joys
Song of the Broad-Axe .
Song of the Exposition .
Song of the Redwood-Tree
A Song for Occupations .
A Song of the Rolling Earth .
Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night
BIRDS OF PASSAGE—
Song of the Universal .
Pioneers! O Pioneers! .
To You .....
France the i8th Year of These States
Myself and Mine
Year of Meteors (1859-60)
With Antecedents
A Broadway Pageant
Contents xvii
SEA-DRIFT—
PAGE
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ..... 210
As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life . . . . .215
Tears .......... 218
To the Man-of-War Bird . . . . . . .218
Aboard at a Ship's Helm . . . . . .
On the .219
Beach at Night ....... 220
The World Below the Brine....... 221
On the Beach at Night Alone . . . . . .221
Song for All Seas, All Ships....... 222
Patrolling Bamegat ........
After 223
the Sea-Ship . . . . . . . .223
BY THE ROADSIDE—
A Boston Ballad—1854 .......
Europe the 224
72nd and 73rd Years of These States . . . 226
A Hand-Mirror
.........
Gods 227
........... 228
Germs .......... 228
Thoughts ..........
When I Heard the Leam'd 229
Astronomer ....
Perfections 229
.........
0 Me! O Life! 229
.........
To a President 230
.........
1 Sit and Look Out 230
........
To Rich Givers 230
.........
The Dalliance of 231
the Eagles.......
Roaming in 231
Thought . . . . . . .
A Farm Pictiure .231
.........
A Child's Maze 232
.........
The Runner 232
.........
Beautiful Women 232
........
Mother and Babe 232
. . . . . . . .
Thought 232
..........
Visor'd 232
..........
Thought 233
..........
Gliding o'er AH 233
.........
Hast Never Come 233
to Thee an Horn: .....
Thought 233
..........
To Old Age 233
.........
Locations and Times 233
........
Offerings 234
..........
To Identify the 234
i6th, 17th or i8th Presidentiad . . . 234
DRUM-TAPS—
First, O Songs, for a Prelude ......
Eighteen Sixty-One 235
........
Beat! Beat! Drums! 237
........
From Paumanok 238
Starting I Fly like a Bird ....
Song of the Banner at 238
Daybreak ......
Rise, O Days, from Yom: 239
Fathomless Deeps ....
Virginia—the West 245
City of Ships 247
.........
The Centenarian's 247
Story .......
Cavalry Crossing 248
a Ford
.......
Bivouac Moimtain Side 252
on a
......
An Army Corps on the 252
March
By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame 253
253
xviii Leaves of Grass
DRUM-TAPS—continued page
Come Up from the Fields, Father...... 253
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night.... 255
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest . . . . . 256
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Grey and Dim . . . 257
As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods .... 258
Not the Pilot ......... 258
Year that Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me .... 258
The Wound-Dresser ........ 259
Long, too Long, America ....... 261
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun ...... 262
Dirge for Two Veterans ....... 263
Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice . . . .264
I Saw Old General at Bay ....... 265
The Artiller3mian's Vision ....... 266
Ethiopia Saluting the Colours ...... 267
Not Youth Pertains to Me ....... 2671'
Race of Veterans ........ 268
World, Take Good Notice ....... 268
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy ....... 268
Look Down, Fair Moon ....... 268
Reconciliation ......... 268
How Solemn as One by One ...... 269
As I lay with My Head in Your Lap, Camerado . . . 269
Delicate Cluster ........ 270
To a Certain Civilian ........ 270
Lo, Victress on the Peaks ....... 270
Spirit whose Work is Done ....... 271
Adieu to a Soldier ........ 271
Tmrn, O Libertad ........ 272
To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod ...... 272
MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN—
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd .... 274
O Captain! My Captain! ....... 282
Hush'd be the Camps To-day ...... 282
This Dust was Once the Man ...... 283
By Blue Ontario's Shore........ 284
Reversals .......... 297
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS .301
LEAVES OF GRASS
INSCRIPTIONS
ONE'S-SELF I SING
One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing.
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse,
I say the Form complete is worthier far.
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power.
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine.
The Modem Man I sing.
282 AS I PONDER'D IN SILENCE
282
As I ponder'd in silence,
2^^ Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,
A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,
3°^ Terrible in beauty, age, and power.
The genius of poets of old lands.
As to me directing like flame its eyes.
With finger pointing to many immortal songs.
And menacing voice. What singesi thou 2 it said,
Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring hards ?
And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,
The making of perfect soldiers.
Be it so, then I answer'd,
I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one
than any,
A
2 Leaves of Grass
Waged in my hook with varying fortune, with flight, advance and
retreat, victory deferred and wavering,
{Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last), the field
the world.
For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,
Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,
1 above all prornote brave soldiers.
IN CABIN'D SHIPS AT SEA
In cabin'd ships at sea.
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious
waves.
Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine.
Where joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or
under many a star at night.
By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land,
be read.
In full rapport at last.
Here are our thoughts, voyagers^ thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be
said.
The sky o'erarches here, wefeel the undulating deck beneath ourfeet.
We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion.
The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the
briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables.
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy
rhythm.
The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here.
And this is ocean's poem.
Then falter not, 0 book, fulfil your destiny.
You not a reminiscence of the land alone.
You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not
whither, yet ever full of faith.
Consort to every ship that sails, sail you !
Bear forth to them folded my love (dear mariners, for you I fold
it here in every leaf);
Speed on my book! spread your white sails, my little bark,
athwart the imperious waves.
Inscriptions 3
Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every
sea.
This song for mariners and all their ships.
TO FOREIGN LANDS
I HEARD that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the
New World,
And to define America, her athletic Democracy,
Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what
you wanted.
TO A HISTORIAN
You who celebrate bygones.
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the
life that has exhibited itself.
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,.
rulers, and priests,
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself
in his own rights.
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself
(the great pride of man in himself).
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.
TO THEE, OLD CAUSE
To thee, old cause !
Thou peerless, passionate, good cause.
Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea.
Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands.
After a strange sad war, great war for thee,
(I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be
really fought, for thee).
These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.
(A war, 0 soldiers, not for itself alone.
Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in
this book.)
4 Leaves of Grass
Thou orb of many orbs !
Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou
centre !
Around the idea of thee the war revolving,
With all its angry and vehement play of causes,
(With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years).
These recitatives for thee—my book and the war are one.
Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee.
As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself.
Around the idea of thee.
EIDÓLONS
I MET a seer.
Passing the hues and objects of the world.
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense.
To glean eidolons.
Put in thy chants, said he.
No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in.
Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,
That of eidolons.
Ever the dim beginning.
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle.
Ever the summit and the merge at last (to surely start again).
Eidolons! eidolons!
Ever the mutable.
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering.
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine.
Issuing eidolons.
Lo, I or you.
Or woman, man, or state, known and unknown.
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build.
But really build eidolons.
The ostent evanescent.
The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long.
Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils.
To fashion his eidolon.
Inscriptions 5
Of every human life,
(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left
out).
The whole or large or small summ'd, added up.
In its eidolon.
The old, old urge.
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles.
From science and the modern still impell'd.
The old, old urge, eidolons.
The present now and here,
America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl.
Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing.
To-day's eidolons.
These with the past.
Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea.
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages.
Joining eidolons.
Densities, growth, façades.
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees.
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave.
Eidolons everlasting.
Exalté, rapt, ecstatic.
The visible but their womb of birth.
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape.
The mighty earth-eidolon.
All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns.
Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use),
Fill'd with eidolons only.
The noiseless m3T:iads,
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty.
The separate countless free identities, like eyesight.
The tnie realities, eidolons.
Not this the world,
Nor these the universes, they the universes,
6 Leaves of Grass
Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
Eidolons, eidolons.
Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope, observer keen; beyond
all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist
with his chemistry.
The entities of entities, eidolons.
Unfix'd yet fix'd,
Ever shall be, ever have been and are.
Sweeping the present to the infinite future.
Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.
The prophet and the bard.
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modem, to Democracy, interpret yet to
them,
God and eidolons.
And thee, my soul,
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations.
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet.
Thy mates, eidolons.
Thy body permanent.
The body lurking there within thy body.
The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
An image, an eidolon.
Thy very songs not in thy songs,
No special strains to sing, none for itself,
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
A round full-orb'd eidolon.
FOR HIM I SING
For him I sing,
I raise the present on the past,
(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past).
With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws.
To make himself by them the law unto himself.
Inscriptions 7
WHEN I READ THE BOOK
When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life.
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my
real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
BEGINNING MY STUDIES
Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much.
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion.
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love.
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther.
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
BEGINNERS
How they are provided for upon the earth (appearing at
intervals).
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth.
How they inure to themselves as much as to any—what a
paradox appears their age.
How people respond to them, yet know them not.
How there is something relentless in their fate all times.
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and
reward.
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the
same great purchase.
TO THE STATES
To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States
Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved.
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever
afterward resumes its liberty.
8 Leaves of Grass
ON JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STATES
On journeys through the States we start,
(Ay through the world, urged by these songs.
Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea).
We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of alh
We have watch'd the seasons dispensing themselves and passing
on.
And have said. Why should not a man or woman do as much
as the seasons, and effuse as much?
We dwell a while in every city and town.
We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the
Mississippi, and the Southern States,
We confer on equal terms with each of the States,
We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear.
We say to ourselves. Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge
the jDody and the soul.
Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, mag-
netic,
And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return.
And may be just as much as the seasons.
TO A CERTAIN CANTATRICE
Here, take this gift,
I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general.
One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the
progress and freedom of the race.
Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much
as to any.
ME IMPERTURBE
Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational
things.
Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they.
Inscriptions 9
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less
important than I thought.
Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Ten-
nessee, or far north or inland,
A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these
States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,
Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for con-
tingencies,
To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs,,
as the trees and animals do.
SAVANTISM
Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and
nestling close, always obligated.
Thither hours, months, years—thither trades, compacts, estab-
lishments, even the most minute.
Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;.
Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant,.
As a father to his father going takes his children along with him.
THE SHIP STARTING
Lo, the unbounded sea.
On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even
her moonsails.
The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately—
below emulous waves press forward.
They surround the ship with shining, curving motions and foam,
I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong.
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam.
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
work.
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck-
hand singing on the steamboat deck.
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing
as he stands.
Leaves of Grass
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the mom-
ing, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
or of the girl sewing or washing,
■Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly.
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
WHAT PLACE IS BESIEGED?
What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?
Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal.
And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery.
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.
STILL THOUGH THE ONE I SING
Still though the one I sing,
■(One, yet of contradictions made), I dedicate to Nationality,
I leave in him revolt (0 latent right of insurrection ! 0 quench-
less, indispensable fire !)
SHUT NOT YOUR DOORS
Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries.
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet
needed most, I bring.
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made.
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything,
A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect.
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.
POETS TO COME
Poets to come 1 orators, singers, musicians to come !
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for.
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known.
Arouse ! for you must justify me.
Inscriptions 11
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the
darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it.
Expecting the main things from you.
TO YOU
Stranger if
, you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?
THOU READER
Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants^
STARTING FROM PAUMANOK
1
Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was bom.
Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother.
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements.
Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas.
Or a soldier camp'd or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a
miner in California,
Or mde in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink
from the spring.
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess.
Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy.
Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of
mighty Niagara,
Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and
strong-breasted bull,
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain,
snow, my amaze.
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the
mountain-hawk.
And heard at dawn the unrivall'd one, the hermit thmsh from
the swamp-cedars.
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
2
Victory, union, faith, identity, time.
The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery.
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modem reports.
This then is life.
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and
convulsions.
How curious ! how real !
Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun,
12
Starting From Paumanok i 3
See revolving the globe,
The ancestor-continents away group'd together,
The present and future continents north and south, with the
isthmus between.
See, vast trackless spaces.
As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill.
Countless masses debouch upon them.
They are now cover'd with the foremost people, arts, institutions,
known.
See, projected through time.
For me an audience interminable.
With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop.
Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions.
One generation playing its part and passing on.
Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn.
With faces turn'd sideways or backward towards me to listen.
With eyes retrospective towards me.
3
Americanos 1 conquerors ! marches humanitarian !
Foremost ! century marches ! Libertad ! masses !
For you a programme of chants.
Chants of the prairies.
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican
sea.
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Min-
nesota.
Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence
equi-distant.
Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.
4
Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-
spring.
Surround them East and West, for they would surround you.
And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they
connect lovingly with you.
14 Leaves oí Grass
I conn'd old times,
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,
Now if eligible 0 that the great mastersmight return and studyme.
In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?
Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.
5
Dead poets, philosophs, priests.
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers on other shores.
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left
wafted hither,
I have perused it, own it is admirable (moving awhile among it).
Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve
more than it deserves,
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,
I stand in my place with my own day here.
Here lands female and male,
Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of
materials.
Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow'd.
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms.
The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing.
Yes, here comes my mistress the soul.
6
The soul.
Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer
than wa'ter ebbs and flows.
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the
most spiritual poems.
And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality.
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my
soul and of immortality.
I will make a song for these States that no one State may under
any circumstances be subjected to another State,
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by
night between all the States, and between any two of them.
Starting From Paumanok 15
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full o5
weapons with menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;
And a song make I of the One form'd out of all.
The fang'd and glittering One whose head is over all.
Resolute warlike One including and over all,
(However high the head of any else that head is over all). i
I will acknowledge contemporary lands,
I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courte-
ously every city large and small.
And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is
heroism upon land and sea.
And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.
I will sing the song of companionship,
I will show what alone must finally compact these,
I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love,
indicating it in me,
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were-
threatening to consume me,
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,
I will give them complete abandonment,
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love.
For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and
joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades ?
7
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,
I advance from the people in their own spirit.
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.
Omnes ! omnes ! let others ignore what they may,
I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—and I
say there is in fact no evil,
(Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or
to me, as any thing else).
I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a
religion, I descend into the arena.
Leaves of Grass
{It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the
winner's pealing shouts,
Who knows ? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every-
thing).
Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's
sake.
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough.
None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough.
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how
certain the future is.
• I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must
be their religion.
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur ;
{Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion.
Nor land nor man or woman without religion).
8
What are you doing young man ?
Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business whatever it may be?
It is well—against such I say not a word, I am their poet also.
But behold ! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion's sake.
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
life of the earth.
Any more than such are to religion.
9
What do you seek so pensive and silent?
What do you need camerado?
Dear son do you think it is love ?
Listen, dear son—listen America, daughter or son.
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet
it satisfies, it is great.
Starting From Paumanok 17
But there is something else very great, it makes the whole
coincide,
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps
and provides for all.
ID
Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater
religion.
The following chants each for its kind I sing.
My comrade !
For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising
inclusive and more resplendent.
The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of
Religion.
Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen.
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty.
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me.
Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that
we know not of.
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me.
These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.
Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him.
Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual
world.
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.
0 such themes—equalities ! 0 divine average !
Warblings under the sun, usher'd as now, or at noon, or setting.
Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,
1 take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and
cheerfully pass them forward.
II
As I have walk'd in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird set on her nest
in the briers hatching her brood.
I have seen the he-bird also,
I have paus'd to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and
joyfully singing.
B
i8 Leaves of Grass
And while I paus'd it came to me that what he really sang for
was not there only,
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes.
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.
12
Democracy ! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself
and joyfully singing.
Ma femme ! for the brood beyond us and of us.
For those who belong here and those to come,
I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger
and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.
I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,
And your songs outlaw'd offenders, for I scan you with kindred
eyes, and carry you with me the same as any.
I will make the true poem of riches.
To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes
forward and is not dropt by death ;
I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be
the bard of personality.
And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal
of the other.
And sexual oi'gans and acts ! do you concentrate in me, for I am
determin'd to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove
you illustrious.
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
can be none in the future.
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be
turn'd to beautiful results.
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than
death.
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and
events are compact.
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each
as profound as any.
I will not make poems with reference to parts.
But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to en-
semble.
Starting From Paumanok 19
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to
all days,
And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has
reference to the soul,
Because having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there
is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the
soul.
13
Was somebody asking to see the soul?
See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances,
beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks, and sands.
All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;
How can the real body ever die and be buried ?
Of your real body and any man's or woman's real body.
Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and
pass to fitting spheres.
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the
moment of death.
Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the
meaning, the main concern.
Any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance
and life return in the body and the soul.
Indifferently before death and after death.
Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern,
and includes and is the soul;
Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or
any part of it !
14
Whoever you are, to you endless announcements !
Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a fiowing mouth and indicative hand?
Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the
States,
Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.
20 • Leaves of Grass
Interlink'd, food-yielding lands !
Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar,
rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork ! land of wool and hemp ! land of the
apple and the grape !
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world ! land of
those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus !
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie !
Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the
south-west Colorado winds !
Land of the eastern Chesapeake ! land of the Delaware !
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan !
Land of the Old Thirteen ! Massachusetts land ! land of Vermont
and Connecticut !
Land of the ocean shores ! land of sierras and peaks !
Land of boatmen and sailors ! fishermen's land !
Inextricable lands ! the clutch'd together ! the passionate ones !
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-
limb'd!
The great women's land ! the feminine ! the experienced sisters
and the inexperienced sisters !
Far breath'd land ! Arctic braced ! Mexican breez'd ! the diverse !
the compact !
The Pennsylvanian ! the Virginian ! the double Carolinian !
0 all and each well-loved by me ! my intrepid nations ! 0 I at
any rate include you all with perfect love !
1 cannot be discharged from you ! not from one any sooner than
another !
O death ! 0 for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with
irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveller.
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on
Paumanok's sands,
Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in
every town.
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts.
Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls.
Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman
my neighbour.
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to
him and her.
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with
any of them,
Starting From Paumanok 21
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of
adobie,
Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,
Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice
welcome to me.
Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the
Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming
every new brother,
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they
unite with the old ones.
Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and
equal, coming personally to you now.
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.
15
With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
For your life adhere to me,
(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give
myself really to you, but what of that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)
No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
Bearded, sun-burnt, grey-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived.
To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe^^
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
16
On my way a moment I pause.
Here for you ! and here for America !
Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I
harbinge glad and sublime,
And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red
aborigines.
The red aborigines.
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of
birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chatta-
hoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
2 2 Leaves of Grass ^
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,
Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the
water and the land with names.
17
Expanding and swift, henceforth, ^
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious,
A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching,
A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new
contests.
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and |
arts.
These, my voice announcing—I will sleep no more but arise.
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,
fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and
storms.
See, steamers steaming through my poems.
See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing.
See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat- .
boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the
backwoods village.
See, on the one side the Western Sea and on the other the
Eastern Sea, how they advance and retreat upon my poems
as upon their own shores.
See, pastures and forests in my poems—see, animals wild and
tame—see, beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buflalo
feeding on short curly grass, j
See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,
with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and com-
merce.
See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press—see, the electric
telegraph stretching across the continent, i
See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reach-
ing, pulses of Europe duly retum'd.
See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting,
blowing the steam-whistle.
See, ploughmen ploughing farms—see, miners digging mines—
see, the numberless factories.
Starting From Paumanok 23
See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools—see from among
them superior judges, philosophs. Presidents, emerge, drest
in working dresses.
See lounging through the shops and fields, of the States, me
well-belov'd, close-held by day and night.
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there—read the hints come
at last.
19
0 camerado close ! 0 you and me at last, and us two only.
0 a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly !
0 something ecstatic and undemonstrable ! O music wild !
0 now I triumph—and you shall also;
0 hand in hand—0 wholesome pleasure—0 one more desirer
and lover !
0 to haste firm holding—to haste, haste on with me.
«
SONG OF MYSELF ,
1
I CELEBRATE mysclf, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my'ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air.
Bom here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin.
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in *
abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,
I harbour for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard.
Nature without check with original energy.
2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded
with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it.
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distilla-
tion, it is odourless.
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love'with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
%
The smoke of my own breath.
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch,
and vine,
24
Song of Myself 2 5 •
»
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the pass-
ing of blood and air through my lungs.
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-colour'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the bam.
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies
of the wind,
A few^ light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms.
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag.
The delight alone or in the msh of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides.
The feeling of health, the full-moon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much ? have you reckon'd
the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to leam to read ?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems ?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems.
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are
millions of suns left).
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books.
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from
me.
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the begin-
ning and the end.
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now.
Nor any more youth or age than there is now.
And will never be any more perfection than there is now.
Nor an}^ more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge.
Always the procréant urge of the world.
20 Leaves of Grass
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance
and increase, always sex.
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams.
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen.
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age.
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man
hearty and clean.
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through
the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with
stealthy tread.
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels swelling the house
with their plenty.
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realisation and scream at
my eyes.
That they turn from gazing after and down the road.
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent.
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and
which is ahead?
4
Trippers and askers surround me.
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward
and city I live in, or the nation.
Song of Myselt 27
The latest dates^ discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new.
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues.
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love.
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or
lack of money, or depressions or exaltations.
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events ;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again.
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am.
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary.
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain
rest.
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next.
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog
with linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself
to you.
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat.
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture,
not even the best.
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning.
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd
over upon me.
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your
tongue to my bare-stript heart.
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my
feet.
Swiftly rose and spread around me the peace and knowledge
that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own.
28 Leaves of Grass
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever bom are also my brothers, and the
women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love.
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields.
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein,
and poke-weed.
6
A child said. What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt.
Bearing the owner's name someway in the comers, that we may
see and remark, and say Whose ?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic.
And it means. Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones.
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass.
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men.
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon
out of their mothers' laps.
And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers.
Darker than the colourless beards of old men.
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
Song of Myself 29
0 I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.
1 wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere.
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at
the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses.
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier^
7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?'
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I
know it.
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd
babe, and am not contain'd between my hat and boots.
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good.
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal
and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know).
Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women.
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be
slighted.
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and
the mothers of mothers.
Leaves of Grass
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children. *
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no.
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be
shaken away.
8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away
flies with my hand.
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy
hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the
pistol has fallen.
The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders.
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb,
the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor.
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls.
The hurrahs for popular favourites, the fury of rous'd mobs.
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside home to the
hospital.
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall.
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working
his passage to the centre of the crowd.
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes.
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall sunstruck or
in fits.
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home
and give birth to babes.
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what
howls restrain'd by decorum.
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, accept-
anees, rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I
depart.
p
Song of Myself 31
9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready^
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon.
The clear light plays on the brown grey and green intertinged.
The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.
I am there I help, I came stretch'd
J atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy.
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.
10
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee.
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night.
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game.
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with my dog and gun by
my side.
The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
and scud.
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously
from the deck.
The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good
time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-
kettle.
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and Ins friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly
smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick
blankets hanging from their shoulders.
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins,
his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held
his bride by the hand.
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight
locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to
her feet.
I
32 Leaves of Grass
The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy
and weak.
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him.
And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and
bruis'd feet.
And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and gave him
some coarse clean clothes.
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awk-
wardness.
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and
ankles ;
He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd
north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean'd in the corner.
II
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore.
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank.
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the
window.
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you.
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather.
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their
long hair.
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies.
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
Song of Myself 33
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge
to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them.
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and
bending arch.
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his
knife at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil.
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat
in the fire.
From the cinder-strew'd threshold I follow their movements.
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive
arms.
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow,overhand so sure.
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.
13
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block
swags underneath on its tied-over chain,
The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady
and tall he stands pois'd on one leg on the string-piece.
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens
over his hip-band.
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his
hat away from his forehead.
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache, falls on the
black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.
I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop
there,
I go with the team also.
In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as
forward sluing.
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object
missing.
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.
c
34 Leaves of Grass
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade,
what is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant
and day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around,
I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me.
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional.
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not some-
thing else.
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills
pretty well to me.
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.
14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation.
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close.
Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.
The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the^^house-sill,
the chickadee, the prairie-dog.
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats.
The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred^aflections.
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
I am enamour'd of growing out-doors.
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods.
Of the builders and steerers of ships and^the wielders of axes
and mauls, and the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns.
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.
Song of Myself 35
15
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane
whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanks-
giving dinner.
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm.
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon
are ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches.
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar.
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big
wheel.
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe
and looks at the oats and rye.
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm'd case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's
bedroom);
The jour printer with grey head and gaunt jaws works at his
case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the
manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table.
What is removed drops horribly in a pail ;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard
nods by the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his
beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass.
The young fellow drives the express-wagon (I love him, though
I do not know him);
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race.
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean
on their rifles, some sit on logs.
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position,
levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee.
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views
them from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their
partners, the dancers bow to each other.
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to
the musical rain.
36 Leaves of Grass
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill thr
Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth is offering moc-
casins and bead-bags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-
shut eyes bent sideways.
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown
for the shore-going passengers.
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds
it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots.
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago
borne her first child.
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or
in the factory or mill.
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's
lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is
lettering with blue and gold.
The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at
his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread.
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers
follow him.
The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions.
The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun (how the
white sails sparkle!)
The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would
stray.
The pedlar sweats with his pack on his back (the purchaser
higgling about the odd cent);
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the
clock moves slowly.
The opium-eater declines with rigid head and just-open'd
lips.
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy
and pimpled neck.
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and
wink to each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you);
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the
great Secretaries,
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with
twined arms.
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in
the hold.
Song of Myself 37
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle.
As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by
the jingling of loose change,
The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the
roof, the masons are calling for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the labourers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather'd,
it is the fourth of Seventh-month (what salutes of cannon
and small arms !)
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower
mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in
the frozen surface.
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes
deep with his axe,
Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or
pecan-trees.
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through
those drain'd by the Tennessee, or through those of the
Arkansas,
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or
Altamahaw,
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-
grandsons around them.
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers
after their day's sport.
The city sleeps and the country sleeps.
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time.
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband
sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them.
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am.
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
16
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others.
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff
that is fine.
One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and
the largest the same.
38 Leaves of Grass
A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and
hospitable down by the Oconee I live,
A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the
limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on
earth,
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin
leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,
A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger,
Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with
fishermen off Newfoundland,
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and
tacking.
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or
the Texan ranch,
Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners
(loving their big proportions).
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake
hands and welcome to drink and meat,
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,
A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons.
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker.
Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
I resist anything better than my own diversity.
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me.
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place.
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in
their place.
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)
17
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me.
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next
to nothing.
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing.
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
Song of Myself 39
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is.
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
18
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches
for conquer'd and slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day ?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit
in which they are won.
I beat and pound for the dead,
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for
them.
Vivas to those who have fail'd !
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome
heroes !
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest
heroes known!
19
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger.
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away.
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited.
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odour of
hair.
This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning.
This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face.
This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica
on the side of a rock has.
4o Leaves of Grass
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering
through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
20
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it that I extract strength from the beef I eat?
What is a man anyhow ? what am I ? what are you ?
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own.
Else it were time lost listening to me.
I do not snivel that snivel the world over.
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.
Whimpering and truckling, fold with powders for invalids, con-
formity goes to the fourth-remov'd,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be cere-
monious ?
Having pried through the strata, analysed to a hair, counsell'd
with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn
less.
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
I know I am solid and sound.
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow.
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's
compass.
Song of Myself 41
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
stick at night.
I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologise,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house
by, after all).
I exist as I am, that is enough.
If no other in the world be aware I sit content.
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself.
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
wait.
My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite, ■
I laugh at what you call dissolution.
And I know the amplitude of time.
21
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are
with me.
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man.
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.
Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and
still pass on.
42 Leaves of Grass
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close bare-bosom'd night—press close magnetic nourishing
night !
Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night—^mad naked summer night.
Smile 0 voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees !
Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt !
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue !
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid grey of clouds brighter and clearer for my
sake!
Far-swooping elbow'd earth—rich apple-blossom'd earth !
Smile, for your lover comes.
Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love !
0 unspeakable passionate love.
22
You sea! I resign myself to you also—I guess what you mean,
1 behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me.
We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight
of the land.
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.
Sea of stretch'd ground-swells.
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths.
Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready
graves.
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.
Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and conciliation,
Extoller of amies and those that sleep in each other's arms.
I am he attesting sympathy,
(Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house
that supports them?)
Song of Myself 43
I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the
poet of wickedness also.
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice ?
Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent.
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and
rectified ?
I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance.
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.
This minute that comes to me over the past decillions.
There is no better than it and now.
What behaves well in the past or behaves well to-day is not
such a wonder,
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man
or an infidel.
23
Endless unfolding of words of ages !
And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.
A word of the faith that never balks.
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time
absolutely.
It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all.
That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.
I accept Reality and dare not question it.
Materialism first and last imbuing.
Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration
Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac.
This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar
of the old cartouches.
44 Leaves of Grass
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a
mathematician.
Gentlemen, to you the first honours always !
Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
Less the reminders of properties told my words,
And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and
extrication.
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favour
men and women fully equipt.
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them
that plot and conspire.
24
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son.
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding.
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart
from them.
No more modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors !
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !
Whoever degrades another degrades me.
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the
current and index.
I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy.
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.
Through me many long dumb voices.
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves.
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs.
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion.
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of
the father-stuff.
Song of Myself 45
And of the rights of them the others are down upon.
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices.
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil.
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and
heart.
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of
me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch
or am touch'd from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer.
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread
of my own body, or any part of it.
Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you !
Firm masculine colter it shall be you I
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you I
You my rich blood ! your milky stream pale strippings of my life !
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions !
Root of wash'd sweet-flag ! timorous pond-snipe ! nest of guarded
duplicate eggs ! it shall be you !
Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you !
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you !
Sun so generous it shall be you !
Vapours lighting and shading my face it shall be you !
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you !
Winds whose salt-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you !
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in
my winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever
touch'd, it shall be you.
46 Leaves of Grass
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my
faintest wish.
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the
friendship I take again.
That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the
metaphysics of books.
To behold the day-break !
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows.
The air tastes good to my palate.
Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising,
freshly exuding.
Scooting obliquely high and low.
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs.
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The earth by the sky stayed with, the daily close of their junction.
The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head.
The mocking taunt. See then whether you shall be master !
25
Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill me.
If I could not now and always send sun-rise oiit of me.
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun.
We found our own, 0 my soul, in the calm and cool of the day-
break.
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach.
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes
of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself.
It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,
Walt, you contain enough, why donH you let it out then 1
Song of Myself 47
Come now I will not be tantalised, you conceive too much of
articulation,
Do you not know, 0 speech, how the buds beneath you are folded ?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost.
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
I underlying causes to balance them at last.
My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning
of all things,
Happiness (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in
search of this day).
My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I
really am.
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and everything else in my face.
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the sceptic.
26
Now I will do nothing but listen.
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute
toward it.
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of
flames, clack of sticks, cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined,dur;ed, or following.
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the
day and night.
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh
of work-people at their meals.
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the
sick.
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pro-
nouncing a death-sentence.
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves,
the refrain of the anchor-lifters.
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streak-
ing engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and
colour'd lights,
48 Leaves of Grass
The steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching
cars,
The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching
two and two
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with
black muslin).
I hear the violoncello ('tis the young man's heart's complaint),
I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears.
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
Ah, this indeed is music—this suits me.
A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me.
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
I hear the train'd soprano (what work with hers is this ?)
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies.
It wrenches such ardours from me I did not know I possess'd
them,
It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent
waves,
I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,
Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in
fakes of death.
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles.
And that we call Being.
27
To be in any form, what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither).
If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell
were enough.
Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop.
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy.
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can
stand.
Song of Myself 49
28
Is this then a touch ? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them.
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs.
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose.
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist.
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pas-
ture-fields.
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away.
They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the
edges of me.
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my
anger.
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
The sentries desert every other part of me.
They have left me helpless to a red marauder.
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the
greatest traitor,
I went myself flrst to the headland, my own hands carried me
there.
You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in
its throat.
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.
29
Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd, hooded, sharp-tooth'd
touch !
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
Parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan.
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
D
5 o Leaves of Grass
Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and
vital,
Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.
30
All truths wait in all things.
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it.
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(What is less or more than a touch?)
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
(Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.)
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps.
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman.
And a summit and fiower there is the feeling they have for each
other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it
becomes omnific,
And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.
31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the joumey-work of the
stars.
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the
egg of the wren.
And the tree-load is a chef-d'œuvre for the highest.
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of heaven.
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue.
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits,
grains, esculent roots.
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over.
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons.
But call anything back again when I desire it.
Song of Myself 51
In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonio rocks send their old heat against my
approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones.
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes.
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters
lying low.
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky.
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs.
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods.
In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
32
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things.
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands
of years ago.
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them.
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in
their possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens.
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them ?
Myself moving forward then and now and forever.
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity.
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them.
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers.
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on
brotherly terms.
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my
caresses.
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears.
52 Leaves of Grass
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly
moving.
His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him.
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around
and return.
I but use you a minute, then I resign 3'·ou, stallion.
Why do I need your paces when I mj-self out-gallop them ?
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than ^mu.
33
Space and Time ! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at.
What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass.
What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed.
And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the
morning.
My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.
By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping"^with
lumbermen.
Along the ruts of the tuimpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet
bed.
Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips,
crossing savannas, trailing in forests.
Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,
Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the
shallow river.
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where
the buck turns furiouslj- at the hunter.
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the
otter is feeding on fish.
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou.
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the
beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail ;
Over the growing sugar, over the }^ellow-flower'd cotton plant,
over the rice in its low moist field.
Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and
slender shoots from the gutters,
Song of Myself 5 3
Over the western persimmon^ over the long-leav'd corn^ over
the delicate blue-flower flax^
Over the white and brown buckwheat^ a hummer and buzzer
there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the
breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on
by low scragged limbs.
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves
of the brush.
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-
lot.
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great
goldbug drops through the dark.
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows
to the meadow.
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous
shuddering of their hides,
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons
straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons
from the rafters;
Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its
cylinders.
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its
ribs.
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft (floating in it
myself and looking composedly down).
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat
hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand.
Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it.
Where the steamship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke.
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water.
Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupt-
ing below;
Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regi-
ments.
Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island.
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my counten-
ance.
Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside.
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game
of base-ball,
54 Leaves of Grass
At he-festivals^ with blackguard gibes, ironical licence, bull-
dances, drinking, laughter.
At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking
the juice through a straw.
At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find.
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-
raisings;
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles,
screams, weeps.
Where the hayrick stands in the barnyard, where the diy-
stalks are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel.
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the
stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen.
Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short
jerks.
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lone-
some prairie.
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square
miles far and near.
Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-
lived swan is curving and winding.
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs
her near-human laugh.
Where bee-hives range on a grey bench in the garden half hid by
the high weeds.
Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground
with their heads out.
Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery.
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled
trees.
Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh
at night and feeds upon small crabs.
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon.
Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree
over the well,
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired
leaves.
Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs.
Through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon, through
the office or public hall;
Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd
with the new and old,
Pleas'd with the homely woman as well as the handsome.
Song of Myself 5 5
11- Pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks
melodiously,
ng Pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the whitewash'd church,
Pleas'd with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist
preacher, impress'd seriously at the camp-meeting;
36- Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole fore-
noon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,
es. Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the
clouds, or down a lane or along the beach,
y- My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in
el, the middle;
he Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek'd bush-boy
(behind me he rides at the drape of the day),
)rt Far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or
the moccasin print,
le- By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient.
Nigh the coffin'd corpse when all is still, examining with a
ire candle;
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,
Lg- Hurrying with the modem crowd as eager and fickle as any.
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,
hs Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from
me a long while,
by Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by
my side,
ad Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars.
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the
diameter of eighty thousand miles,
ed Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest.
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in
sh its belly.
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
m, Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
:ee I tread day and night such roads.
ed I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product.
And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green.
gh I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul.
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
3'd
I help myself to material and immaterial.
No guard can shut me off , no law prevent me.
56 Leaves of Grass
I anchor my ship for a little while only,
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns
to me.
I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-
pointed ;
staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue. '
I ascend to the foretruck.
I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest.
We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough.
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful
beauty.
The '
enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the
is plain in all scenery
directions.
The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I
fancies fling out my
toward them.
We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon
to be engaged.
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we with
still feet and pass
caution,
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin'd
The blocks city.
and fallen architecture more than all the
of the living cities
globe.
I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires, I
I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself, i
I tighten-her all night to my thighs and lips. I
!
My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the
fetch stairs.
They my man's body up dripping and drowned.
I understand the large hearts of heroes.
The courage of present times and all times,
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the
steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was
faithful of days and faithful of nights.
And chalked in large letters on a board. Be of good cheer, we will
not desert you ;
How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three
and would days
not give it up.
How he saved the drifting company at last.
How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the
side of their prepared graves.
Song of Myself 57
How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the
sharp-lipp'd unshaved men;
All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there.
The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood,
her children gazing on,
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,
blowing, cover'd with sweat.
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the mur-
derous buckshot and the bullets.
All these I feel or am.
I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs.
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marks-
men,
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the
ooze of my skin,
I fall on the weeds and stones.
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close.
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with
whip-stocks.
Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become
the wounded person,
]\Iy hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken.
Tumbling walls buried me in their débris.
Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my
comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels.
They have clear'd the beams awa}^, they tenderly lift me
forth.
I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for
my sake.
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy.
White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are
bared of their fire-caps.
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
Leaves of Grass
Distant and dead resuscitate^
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the
clock myself.
I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's bombardment,
I am there again.
Again the long roll of the drummers.
Again the attacking cannon, mortars.
Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.
I take part, I see and hear the whole,
The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim'd shots.
The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip.
Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable
repairs.
The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped
explosion.
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.
Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously
waves with his hand.
He gasps through the clot. Mind not me—mind—the entrench-
ments.
34
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,
(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo),
'Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and
twelve young men.
Retreating they had formed in a hollow square with their
baggage for breastworks.
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times
their number, was the price they took in advance.
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone.
They treated for an honourable capitulation, receiv'd writing
and seal, gave up their arms and march'd back prisoners
of war.
They were the glory of the race of rangers.
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship.
Song of Myself 59
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate.
Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters.
Not a single one over thirty years of age.
The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads
and massacred, it was beautiful early summer.
The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.
None obey'd the command to kneel.
Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and
straight,
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead
lay together.
The maim'd and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw
them there.
Some half-kill'd attempted to crawl away.
These were despatch'd with bayonets or batter'd with the
blunts of muskets,
A youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till two more
came to release him.
The three were all torn and cover'd with the boy's blood.
At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies;
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve
young men.
35
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it
to me.
Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you (said he).
His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or
truer, and never was, and never will be;
Along the lower'd eve he came horribly raking us.
We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch'd.
My captain lash'd fast with his own hands.
We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water.
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first
fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.
6o Leaves of Grass
Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,
Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain,
and five feet of water reported.
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-
hold to give them a chance for themselves.
The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sen-
tinels.
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to
trust.
Our frigate takes fire.
The other asks if we demand quarter?
If our colours are struck and the fighting done?
Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain.
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our
■part of the fighting.
Only three guns are in use.
One is directed b}' the captain himself against the enemy's main-
mast.
Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry
and clear his decks.
The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the
main-top.
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.
Not a moment's cease.
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the
powder-magazine.
One'of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought
we are sinking.
Serene stands the little captain.
He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low.
His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender
to us.
Song of Myself 61
36
Stretch'd and still lies the midnight,
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass tO'
the one we have conquer'd.
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through
a countenance white as a sheet.
Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin.
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully
curl'd v/hiskers,
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and
belov/.
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty.
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of
flesh upon the masts and spars.
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of
waves.
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,.
A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining.
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by
the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors.
The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw.
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and
long, dull, tapering groan.
These so, these irretrievable.
37
You laggards there on guard ! look to your arms !
In at the conquer'd doors they crowd ! I am possess'd !
Embody all presences outlaw'd or suffering.
See myself in prison shaped like another man.
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep
watch.
It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.
Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd to
him and walk by his side,
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat
on my twitching lips).
62 Leaves of Grass
Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am
tried and sentenced.
Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the
last gasp,
My face is ash-colour'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me people
retreat.
Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.
38
Enough! enough! enough!
Somehow I have been stunn'd. Stand back !
Give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers, dreams,
gaping,
.
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
That I could forget the mockers and insults !
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the
bludgeons and hammers !
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and
bloody crowning.
I remember now,
I resume the overstayed fraction,
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to
any graves.
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.
I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average
unending procession.
Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines.
Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth.
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of
years.
Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.
39
The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilisation, or past it and mastering it?
Song of Myself 63
Is he some Southwesterner rais'd out-doors? is he Kariadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?
Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him.
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them,
stay with them.
Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, un-
comb'd head, laughter, and naïveté.
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and
emanations.
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers.
They are wafted with the odour of his body or breath, they fly
out of the glance of his eyes.
40
Flaunt of the sunshine, I need not your bask—lie over !
You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
Earth ! you seem to look for something at my hands.
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?
Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot.
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but
cannot.
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and
days.
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity.
When I give I give myself.
You there, impotent, loose in the knees.
Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you.
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to
spare.
And anything I have I bestow.
I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold
you.
64 Leaves of Grass
To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,
(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics).
To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed.
Let the physician and the priest go home.
I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
0 despairer, here is my neck.
By God, you shall not go down ! hang your whole weight upon
me.
1 dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up.
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force.
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
Sleep—I and they keep guard all night.
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself.
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you
is so.
41
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
1 heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years ;
It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all.?
Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters.
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson.
Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the
crucifix engraved.
With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and
image,
Song of Myself 65
Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent
Admitting more.
they were alive and did the work of their
(They bore days,
mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and
fly and sing for themselves),
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in
bestowing them myself,
freely on each man and woman I see.
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house.
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves
driving the mallet and chisel.
Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke
or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as
revelation. any
Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to
me than the gods of the antique wars.
Minding their voices peal through the crash of
Their destruction.
brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white
foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;
By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her
for nipple interceding
every person born.
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three
angels with shirts lusty
bagg'd out at their waists.
The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins and
to past
come,
Selling all he possesses, travelling on foot to fee lawyers for his
brother and sit by him while he is tried for
What forgery;
was strewn in the amplest strewing the rod about
me, and square
not filling the square rod
The then.
bull and the bug never worshipp'd half
Dung and dirt enough.
more admirable than was dream'd.
The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be
one of the supremes.
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as
the best, and be as prodigious;
By my life-lumps ! becoming already a creator.
Putting myself here and now to the ambush'd womb of the
shadows.
42
A call in the midst of the crowd.
My own voice, orotund, sweeping, and final.
Come, my children.
Come, my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,
E
66 Leaves of Grass
Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude
on the reeds within.
Easily written loose-finger'd chords—I feel the thrum of your
climax and close.
My head slues round on my neck,
Music rolls, but not from the organ.
Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
Ever the hard unsunk ground.
Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward
sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides.
Ever myself and my neighbours, refreshing, wicked, real.
Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thom'd thumb, that
breath of itches and thirsts, ^
Ever the vexer's hoot 1 hoot ! till we find where the sly one hides
and bring him forth.
Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life.
Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.
Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking.
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once
going,
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chafí for
payment receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.
This is the city and I am one of the citizens.
Whatever interests the rest interests me, pohtics, wars, markets,
newspapers, schools.
The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories,
stocks, stores, real estate, and personal estate.
The little plentiful mannikins skipping around in coUars'^and
tail'd coats,
I am aware who they are (they are positively not worms or fleas),
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and
shallowest is deathless with me.
What I do and say the same waits for them.
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.
Song of Myselí 67
I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself.
Not words of routine this song of mine.
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-
office boy?
Che well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and
solid in your arms ?
The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—
but the pluck of the captain and engineers ?
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host
and hostess, and the look out of their eyes ?
The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way ?
The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology—^but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason ? and what is love ? and what is life ?
43
I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over.
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths.
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient
and modem.
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand
years.
Waiting responses from oracles, honouring the gods, saluting
the sun,
Making a fetish of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks
in the circle of obis.
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the
idols.
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and
austere in the woods a gymnosophist.
Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas
admirant, minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and
knife, beating the serpent-skin drum.
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing
assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting
patiently in a pew,
68 Leaves of Grass
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like
till my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement
and land.
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.
One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like
a man leaving charges before a journey.
Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded.
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, athe-
istical,
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt,
despair, and unbelief.
How the flukes splash!
How they contort rapid as lightnings with spasms and spouts of
blood !
Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
I take my place among you as much as among any.
The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same.
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all,
precisely the same.
I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.
Each who passes is consider'd, each who stops is consider'd, not
a single one can it fail.
It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side.
Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew
back and was never seen again.
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with
bitterness worse than gall.
Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad dis-
order.
Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish
koboo call'd the ordure of humanity.
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
Nor anything in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the
earth,
Song of Myself 69
Nor anything in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of
myriads that inhabit them,
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.
44
It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.
What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity
indicate ?
We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety.
I do not call one greater and one smaller.
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my
sister?
I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,
All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,
(What have I to do with lamentation?)
I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things
to be.
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs.
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the
steps.
All below duly travell'd, and still I mount and mount.
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me.
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic
mist,
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.
Long I was hugg'd close—long and long.
7 o Leaves of Grass
Immense have been the preparations for me,
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boat-
men,
For room to me stars kept aside in their own
They influences rings.
sent to look after what was to hold me.
Before I was born out of my mother generations
My embryo has guided me.
never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.
For it the nebula cohered to an orb,
The long slow strata piled to rest it on.
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance.
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and
it with deposited
care.
All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight
me.
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
45
0 span of youth ! ever-push'd elasticity !
0 manhood, balanced, florid, and full.
My lovers suffocate me.
Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin.
Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to
me at night.
Crying by day Ahoy / from the rocks of the river, swinging and
chirping over my head.
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled
Lighting underbrush.
on every moment of my life.
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses.
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them
to be mine.
Old age superbly rising! 0 welcome, ineffable grace of
days! dying
Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what
grows after and out of itself.
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
Song of Myself 71
I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim
of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding.
Outward and outward and for ever outward.
My sun has his sun and around him obediently wheels,
•
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest nside
them.
There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage.
If I, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their
you, surfaces,
were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would
not avail in the long run.
We should surely bring up again where we now stand.
And surely as much farther, and then farther and farther.
go
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do
not hazard the span or make it impatient.
They are but parts, anything is but a part.
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that.
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect
terms.
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.
46
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured
and never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey (come listen all !)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from
the woods.
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange.
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll.
72 Leaves of Grass
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the
public oad.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for
You you,
must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were bom and did not
know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten
forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand
on my hip.
And in due time you shall repay the same service to
For after me,
we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded
heaven,
And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those
orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of
shall everything in them,
we befilVd and satisfied then ?
And my spirit said. No, we but level that lift to pass and continm
beyond.
Vou are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Sit a while, dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is miUc to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I
kiss you with a good-bye kiss and open the gate for your
egress hence.
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams.
Now I wash the gum from your eyes.
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of
of every
moment your life.
T
Song of Myself 73
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout,
and laughingly dash with your hair.
47
I am the teacher of athletes.
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the
width of my own,
He most honours my style who leams under it to
, destroy the
; teacher.
The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived
I power, but in his own right.
Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
i Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak.
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp stee
; cuts.
First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to
sing a song or play on the banjo.
Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox
over all latherers,
\ And those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun.
ii
! I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour.
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
i I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I
'
wait for a boat,
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd).
, I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house,
i And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or
I her who privately stays with me in the open air.
I If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of
j waves a key,
! The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
74 Leaves of Grass
No shutter'd room or school can commune with me,
But roughs and little children better than they.
The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well.
The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me
with him all day.
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of
my voice.
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and
seamen and love them.
The soldier camp'd or upon the march is mine.
On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not
fail them.
On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me
seek me.
My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his
blanket.
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his
wagon.
The young mother and old mother comprehend me.
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where
they are.
They and all would resume what I have told them.
48
I have said that the soul is not more than the body.
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is.
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his
own funeral drest in his shroud,
And 1 or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the
earth.
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
the learning of all times.
And there is no trade or employment but the young man
following it may become a hero.
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd
universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and
composed before a million universes.
Song of Myself 75
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God
and about death).
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not
in the least.
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than
myself.
Why should I wish"to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each
moment then.
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face
in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is
sign'd by God's name.
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er
I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever^
49
And as to you. Death, and you, bitter hug of mortality, it is
idle to try to alarm me.
To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
I see the elder-hand pressing, receiving, supporting,
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors.
And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.
And as to you. Corpse, I think you are good manure, but that
does not offend me,
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,
I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons.
And as to you. Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before).
I hear you whispering there, 0 stars of heaven,
0 suns—0 grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and pro-
motions,
If you do not say anything how can I say anything?
76 Leaves of Grass
Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that
decay in the muck.
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.
I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams
reflected.
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great
or small.
50
There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is
in me.
Wrench'd and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,
I sleep—I sleep long.
I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on.
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines ! I plead for my brothers
and sisters.
Do you see, 0 my brothers and sisters ?
It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal
hfe—it is Happiness.
51
The past and present wilt—I have flll'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listen up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute
longer).
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes).
Song of Myself 77
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work ? who will soonest be through with
his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me ?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too
late?
52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my
gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me.
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the
shadow'd wilds.
It coaxes me to the vapour and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grov/ from the grass I love.
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
CHILDREN OF ADAM
TO THE GARDEN THE WORLD
To the garden the world anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding.
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being.
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber.
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me
again.
Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous.
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
reasons, most wondrous.
Existing I peer and penetrate still.
Content with the present, content with the past.
By my side or back of me Eve following.
Or in front, and I following her just the same.
FROM PENT-UP ACHING RIVERS
From pent-up aching rivers.
From that of myself without which I were nothing.
From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand
sole among men.
From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus.
Singing the song of procreation.
Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown
people.
Singing the muscular urge and the blending.
Singing the bedfellow's song (0 resistless yearning !
O for any and each the body correlative attracting !
O for you, whoever you are, your correlative body ! 0 it, more
than all else, you delighting !)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day.
From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them.
Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently
it sought
many a long year.
Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,
78
Children of Adam 79
Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,
Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing.
Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds.
Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves.
Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting.
The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating.
The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body.
The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his
back lying and floating.
The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous,
aching,
The divine list for myself or you or for any one making.
The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it
arouses.
The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandon-
ment,
(Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,
I love you, 0 you entirely possess me,
0 that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free
and lawless.
Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more
lawless than we;)
The furious storm through me careering, I passionately
trembling.
The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman
that loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath
swearing,
(O I willingly stake all for you,
0 let me be lost if it must be so !
0 you and I ! what is it to us what the rest do or think ?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and
exhaust each other if it must be so;)
From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,
The general commanding me, commanding all, from him per-
mission taking.
From time the programme hastening (I have loiter'd too long
as it is).
From sex, from the warp and from the woof.
From privacy, from frequent repinings alone.
From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near.
From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers
through my hair and beard,
From the long sustain'd kiss upon the mouth or bosom.
8o Leaves of Grass
From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk,
fainting with excess,
From what the divine husband knows, from the work of
fatherhood.
From exultation, victory, and relief, from the bedfellow's em-
brace in the night,
From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips, and bosoms.
From the cling of the trembling arm,
From the bending curve and the clinch.
From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,
From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as
unwilling to leave,
(Yet a moment, O tender waiter, and I return).
From the hour of shining stars and drooping dews,
From the night a moment I em.erging flitting out,
Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for.
And you stalwart loins.
I SING OF THE BODY ELECTRIC
1
I SING the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them.
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them.
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of
the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal
themselves ?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile
the dead ?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul ?
And if the body were not the soul, wliat is the soul ?
2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body
itself balks account.
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account.
But the expressions of a well-made man appears not only in liis
face,
Children of Adam 8i
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
and knees, dress does not hide him.
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and
broadcloth.
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps
more.
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-
side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of
women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the
street, the contour of their shape downwards.
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims
through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face
up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water.
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
horseman in his saddle.
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of labourers seated at noon-time with their open
dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting.
The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden
or cow-yard.
The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown,
lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at
sun-down after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and
resistance.
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blind-
ing the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of mascu-
line muscle through clean-setting trousers and waist-straps.
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
suddenly again, and the listening on the alert.
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd
neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's
breast with the little child.
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line
with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.
F
82 Leaves of Grass
3
I knew a man^ a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.
This man was of wonderful vigour, calmness, beauty of person.
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the
richness and breadth of his manners.
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also.
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome.
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved
him.
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with
personal love.
He drank water only, the blood show'd like scarlet through the
clear-brown skin of his face.
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail'd his boat himself,
he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he
had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved
him.
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt
or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and
vigorous of the gang.
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish
to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch
each other.
4
I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough.
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough.
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing
flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so
lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this
then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and look-
ing on them, and in the contact and odour of them, that
pleases the soul well.
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
Children of Adam 83
5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless
vapour, all falls aside but myself and it.
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now consumed.
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable.
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused.
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh
swelling and deliciously aching.
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly
of love, white-blow and delirious juice.
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn.
Undulating into the willing and yielding day.
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.
This the nucleus—after the child is bom of woman, man is
bom of woman.
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and
the outlet again.
Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and
is the exit of the rest.
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the
soul.
The female contains all qualities and tempers them.
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance.
She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active.
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
daughters.
As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist. One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty.
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female
I see.
84 Leaves of Grass
6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place.
He too is all qualities, he is action and power.
The flush of the known universe is in him.
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him
well.
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that
is utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the
soul.
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every-
thing to the test of himself.
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes
soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)
The man's body is sacred, and the woman's body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
labourers' gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off,
just as much as you.
Each has his or her place in the procession.
(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)
Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest
ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she
has no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float,
and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegeta-
tion sprouts
For you only, and not for him and her?
7
A man's body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the
sale),
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.
Children of Adam 8s
Gentlemen look on this wonder.
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough
for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one
animal or plant.
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.
In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.
Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in
tendon and nerve.
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition.
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not
flabby, good-sized arms and legs.
And wonders within there yet.
Within there runs blood.
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reach-
ings, aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express'd
in parlours and lecture-rooms?)
This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be
fathers in their turns.
In him the start of populous states and rich republics.
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments
and enjoyments.
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his
offspring through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could
trace back through the centuries?)
8
A woman's body at auction.
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the
mothers.
86 Leaves of Grass
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all
nations and times all over the earth?
If anything is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood
untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body is more
beautiful than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or
the fool that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal them-
selves»
9
0 my body ! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and
women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
1 believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of ,
the soul (and that they are the soul),
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
that they are my poems,
Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,
father's, young man's, young woman's poems.
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and t}unpan of the ears.
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
sleeping of the lids.
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition.
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-
slue.
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and
the ample side-round of the chest.
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-
bones.
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails.
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone,
breast-side.
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone.
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,
man-balls, man-root,
i
i
Children of Adam 87
Strong set of thighs^ well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg.
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or
your body or of any one's body, male or female.
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and
clean.
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame.
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity.
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes
from woman.
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter,
weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings.
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud.
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming.
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving
and tightening.
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the
eyes.
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair.
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the
naked meat of the body.
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out.
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence
downward toward the knees.
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
marrow in the bones.
The exquisite realisation of health;
0 I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only,
but of the soul,
0 I say now these are the soul !
A WOMAN WAITS FOR ME
A WOMAN waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking.
Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of
the right man were lacking.
Sex contains all, bodies, souls.
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations.
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the
seminal milk.
88 Leaves of Grass
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
beauties, delights of the earth.
All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth.
These are contain'd in sex as parts of itself and justifications of
itself.
Without shame the man I like knows and avows the delicious-
ness of his sex.
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women
that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,
I see that they understand me and do not deny me,
I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband
of those women.
They are not one jot less than I am.
They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds.
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength.
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves.
They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, well
possess'd of themselves.
I draw you close to me, you women,
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake,
but for others' sakes,
Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards.
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.
It is I, you women, I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States,
I press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated
within me.
Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself.
In you I wrap a thousand onward years.
Children of Adam 89
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,
new artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I
count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immor-
tality, I plant so lovingly now.
SPONTANEOUS ME
Spontaneous me. Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with.
The arm of my friend's hanging idly over my shoulder.
The hillside whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple,
and light and dark green.
The rich coverlet of the grass, animals, and birds, the private
untrimm'd bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones.
Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after
another as I happen to call them to me or think of them.
The real poems (what we call poems being merely pictures),
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and
that all men carry,
(Know once for all, avow'd on purpose, wherever are men like
me, are our lusty lurking masculine poems).
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odour, love-yielding, love-
climbers, and the climbing sap.
Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love,
breasts of love, bellies press'd and glued together with love.
Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love.
The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body
of the man, the body of the earth.
Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west.
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down,
that gripes the full-grown lady-flower, curves upon her with
amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself
tremulous and tight till he is satisfied;
90 Leaves of Grass
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with
an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the
other.
The smell of apples, aromas from crush'd sage-plant, mint,
birch-bark.
The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me
what he was dreaming.
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and con-
tent to the ground.
The no-form'd stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with.
The hubb'd sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can
any one.
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd brothers, that only privileged
feelers may be intimate where they are.
The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the
bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly
pause and edge themselves.
The limpid liquid within the young man.
The vex'd corrosion so pensive and so painful,
The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest.
The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others.
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman
that flushes and flushes.
The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking
to repress what would master him.
The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs,
visions, sweats.
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling
fingers, the young man all colour'd, red, ashamed, angry;
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and
naked.
The merriment of the twin babes that crawl over the grass in
the sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from
them.
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen'd
long-round walnuts,
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals.
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself
indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find
themselves indecent.
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of
maternity.
Children oí Adam
The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh
daughters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I
saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I
am through.
The wholesome relief, repose, content.
And this bunch pluck'd at random from myself.
It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall where it ma}^
ONE HOUR TO MADNESS AND JOY
One hour to madness and joy ! 0 furious ! 0 confine me not !
(What is this that frees me so in storms ?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean ?)
0 to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man !
0 savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my
children,
1 tell them to you, for reasons, 0 bridegroom and bride.)
0 to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded
to me in defiance of the world !
O to return to Paradise ! O bashful and feminine !
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips
of a determin'd man.
0 the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
untied and illumin'd !
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
To be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine
and you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature !
To have the gag remov'd from one's mouth !
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.
0 something unprov'd ! something in a trance !
To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds !
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations !
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me !
To rise thither with my inebriate soul !
To be lost if it must be so !
g 2 Leaves of Grass
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and
freedom !
With one brief hour of madness and joy.
OUT OF THE ROLLING OCEAN THE CROWD
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, 1 love you, before long I die,
I have travelVd a long way merely to look on you to touch you.
For I could not die till I once looked on you.
For IfeaFd I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe.
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much sepa-
rated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect !
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us.
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse
forever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know you I salute the air,
the ocean and the land.
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love.
AGES AND AGES RETURNING AT INTERVALS
Ages and ages returning at intervals,
Undestroy'd, wandering immortal.
Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,
I, chanter of Adamic songs,
Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,
Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering
myself,
Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,
Offspring of my loins.
WE TWO, HOW LONG WE WERE FOOL'D
We two, how long we were fool'd.
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes.
Children of Adam 93
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we
return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark.
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side.
We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as
any.
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together.
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes
mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals.
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down.
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves
orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on
prey.
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling
over each other and interwetting each other,
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious,
impervious.
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and
influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again,
we two.
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.
O HYMEN!O HYMENEE! j
0 hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalise me thus?
0 why sting me for a swift moment only?
Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you
would soon certainly kill me?
I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH LOVE
I am he that aches with amorous love;
Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract
all matter?
So the body of me to all I meet or know.
94 Leaves of Grass
NATIVE MOMENTS
Native moments—^when you come upon me—ah, you are here
now,
Give me now libidinous joys only.
Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and
rank.
To-day I go consort with Nature's darlings, to-night too,
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the mid-
night orgies of young men,
I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low
person for my dearest friend.
He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn'd
by others for deeds done,
I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my
companions ?
0 you shunn'd persons, I at least do not shun you,
1 come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,
I will be more to you than to any of the rest.
ONCE I PASS'D THROUGH A POPULOUS CITY
Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for
future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions.
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman ! casually
met there who detain'd me for love of me,
Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has
long been forgotten by me,
I remember, I say,only that woman who passionately clung to me.
Again we wander, we love, we separate again.
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,
I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.
I HEARD YOU SOLEMN-SWEET PIPES OF THE ORGAN
I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday
mom I pass'd the church.
Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
long-stretch'd sighs up above so moumful,
Children of Adam 95
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard
the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love ! you too I heard murmuring low through one
of the wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last
night under my ear.
FACING WEST FROM CALIFORNIA'S SHORES
Facing west from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kash-
mere.
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the
hero.
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice
islands,
Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,
Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago ?
And why is it yet unfound ?)
AS ADAM EARLY IN THE MORNING
As Adam early in the morning,
Walking forth from the bower refresh'd with sleep.
Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach.
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass.
Be not afraid of my body.
CALAMUS
IN PATHS UNTRODDEN
In paths untrodden,
In the growth by margins ,of pond-waters,
Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,
From all the standards hitherto publish'd, from the pleasures,
profits, conformities.
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul.
Clear to me now standards not yet publish'd, clear to me that
my soul,
That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades.
Here by myself away from the clank of the world.
Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic.
No longer abash'd (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I
would not dare elsewhere).
Strong me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains
upon
all the rest,
Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment.
Projecting them along that substantial life.
Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,
Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,
I proceed for all who are or have been young men.
To tell the secret of 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, 0 the winter shall not freeze you,
delicate leaves.
Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired
you shall emerge again;
O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or
inhale your faint odour, but I believe a few will;
96
Calamus 97
O slender leaves! 0 blossoms of my blood! I
tell in permit you to
your own way of the heart that is under
O I you,
do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves,
you are not happiness.
You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting
me.
Yet you are beautiful to me you faint-tinged roots, you make
me think of death.
Death is beautiful from you (what indeed is finally beautiful
except death and love?)
0 I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of
I think it be lovers,
must for death.
For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the
of atmosphere
lovers.
Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to
(I prefer,
am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death
Indeed, 0 death, I think most).
now these leaves mean precisely the
same as you mean.
Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see ! grow up out of
breast ! my
Spring away from the conceal'd heart there !
Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots' timid leaves !
Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!
Come, I am determin'd to unbare this broad breast of mine, I
have long enough stifled and choked;
Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve
me not,
1 will say what I have to say by itself,
I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter
a call only their call,
I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the
I will States,
give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and
will through the States,
Through me shall the words be said to make death
Give exhilarating,
me your tone therefore, 0 death, that I may accord with
Give it.
me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above
all, and are folded inseparably together, you love and
death are,
Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was
calling life.
For now it is convey'd to me that you are the purports essential.
That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for and
that reasons,
they are mainly for you,
G
98 Leaves of Grass
That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,
That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter
how long,
That you will one day perhaps take control of all.
That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,
That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so
very long.
But you will last very long.
WHOEVER YOU ARE HOLDING ME NOW IN HAND
Whoever you are holding me now in hand.
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive.
You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be
your sole and exclusive standard.
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting.
The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the
lives around you would have to be abandon'd,
Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further,
let go your hand from my shoulders.
Put me down and depart on your way.
Or else by stealth in some wood for trial.
Or back of a rock in the open air,
(For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company.
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or
dead).
But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any
person for miles around approach unawares.
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or
some quiet island.
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you.
With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's
kiss.
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.
Calamus 99
Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip.
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best.
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried
eternally.
But these leaves conning you con at peril.
For these leaves and me you will not understand.
They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will
certainly elude you.
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught
me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.
For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this
book.
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly
praise me.
Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)
prove victorious.
Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,
perhaps more.
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many
times and not hit, that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.
FOR YOU, O DEMOCRACY
Come , I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands.
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of
America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all
over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's
necks.
By the love of comrades.
By the manly love of comrades.
loo Leaves of Grass
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, picked from the fields, have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones
and partly cover them, beyond these I pass).
Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I
think where I go.
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in
the silence.
Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me.
Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my
arms or neck.
They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come,
a great crowd, and I in the middle.
Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them.
Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near
me.
Here, lilac, with a branch of pine.
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull'd off a live-oak
in Florida as it hung trailing down.
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage.
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond-
side,
(0 here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again
never to separate from me.
And this, 0 this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this
calamus-root shall.
Interchange it youths with each other ! let none
And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange
■
Calamus lOl
And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
These I compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits.
Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely
from me.
Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to
each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am
capable of loving.
NOT HEAVING FROM MY RIBB'D BREAST ONLY
Not heaving from my ribb'd breast only.
Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,
Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs.
Not in many an oath and promise broken.
Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition.
Not in the subtle nourishment of the air.
Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists.
Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day
cease.
Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only.
Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone far
in the wilds.
Not in husky pantings through clinched teeth,
Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes,
dead words.
Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep.
Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day.
Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and
dismiss you continually—not there.
Not in any or all of them, O adhesiveness ! O pulse of my life !
Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these
songs.
OF THE TERRIBLE DOUBT OF APPEARANCES
Of the terrible doubt of appearances.
Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all.
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only.
102 Leaves of Grass
May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,
shining and flowing waters.
The skies of day and night, colours, densities, forms, may-be
these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the
real something has yet to be known,
(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and
mock me !
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of
them).
May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed
but seem) as from my present point of view, and might
prove (as of course they would) nought of what they
appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely changed points
of view;
To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by my
lovers, my dear friends.
When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding
me by the hand.
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and
reason hold not, surround us and pervade us.
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am
silent, I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity
beyond the grave.
But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied.
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.
THE BASE OF ALL METAPHYSICS
And now, gentlemen,
A word I give to remain in your memories and minds.
As base and finale too for all metaphysics.
(So to the students the old professor.
At the close of his crowded course.)
Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic
systems,
Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,
Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,
And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine
having studied long.
Calamus
I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,
See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see.
Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the
divine I see^
The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to
friend.
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,
Of city for city and land for land.
RECORDERS AGES HENCE
Recorders ages hence.
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior,
I will tell you what to say of me.
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the
tenderest lover,
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was
fondest.
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of
love within him, and freely pour'd it forth,
Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends,
his lovers.
Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and
dissatisfied at night.
Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd
might secretly be indifferent to him,
Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on
hills, he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain
apart from other men,
Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the
shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested
upon him also.
WHEN I HEARD AT THE CLOSE OF THE DAY
When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been
receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy
night for me that follow'd.
And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd,
still I was not happy,
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,
refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,
I04 Leaves of Grass
When I saw the full moon in the west
in the grow pale and
morning light, disappear
When I wander'd alone over the beach, and
laughing with the cool undressing bathed,
waters, and saw the sun
And when I rise.
thought how my dear friend, my lover, was on his
way coming, 0 then I was
0 then happy,
each breath tasted sweeter, and all that
nourish'd day my food
me more, and the beautiful
And the day
next with pass'd well.
came equal joy, and with the next at
came friend. evening
my
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll
continually up the slowly
shores,
1 heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to
me whispering to
For congratulate me.
the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same
in cover
the cool night.
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
toward me.
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that
was happy. night I
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 lover?
Do you think your
the friendship of me would be satis-
faction? unalloy'd
Do you think I am trusty and faithful ?
Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a
heroic real
man ?
Have you no thought, 0 dreamer, that it be all
illusion? may maya,
ROOTS AND LEAVES THEMSELVES ALONE
Roots and leaves themselves alone are
Scents these.
brought to men and women from the wild woods and
pond-side,
Calamus
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love, fingers that wind around tighter
than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds hid in the foliage of trees as the
sun is risen.
Breezes of land and love set from living shores to you on the
living sea, to you 0 sailors !
Frost-mellow'd berries and Third-month twigs offer'd fresh to
young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter
breaks up.
Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are.
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms.
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them they will open and
bring form, colour, perfume, to you.
If you become the aliment and the wet they will become fiowers,
fruits, tall branches, and trees.
NOT HEAT FLAMES UP AND CONSUMES
Not heat flames up and consumes,
Not sea-waves hurry in and out.
Not the air delicious and dry, the air of ripe summer, bears
lightly along white down-balls of myriads of seeds.
Wafted, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may;
Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me, consum-
ing, burning for his love whom I love,
0 none more than I hurrying in and out;
Does the tide hurry, seeking something, and never give up?
O I the same,
0 nor down-balls nor perfumes, nor the high rain-emitting
clouds, are home through the open air.
Any more than my soul is borne through the open air.
Wafted in all directions 0 love, for friendship, for you.
TRICKLE DROPS
Trickle drops ! my blue veins leaving !
0 drops of me ! trickle, slow drops.
Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops.
From wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd.
From my face, from my forehead and lips.
From my breast, from within where I was conceal'd, press forth
red drops, confession drops.
Leaves of Grass
Stain every page, stain every song I sing, every word I say,
bloody drops.
Let them know your scarlet heat, let them glisten.
Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,
Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops.
Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.
CITY OF ORGIES
City of orgies, walks, and joys.
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day
make you illustrious,
Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus, your spec-
tacles, repay me.
Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships at the
wharves.
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows with
goods in them.
Nor to converse with learn'd persons, or bear my share in the
soiree or feast;
Not those, but as I pass, 0 Manhattan, your frequent and swift
flash of eyes offering me love.
Offering response to my own—these repay me.
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.
BEHOLD THIS SWARTHY FACE
Behold this swarthy face, these grey eyes.
This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck.
My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;
Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me
lightly on the lips with robust love.
And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship's deck give a
kiss in return.
We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea.
We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.
I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing.
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches.
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of
dark green.
Calamus
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself.
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone
there without its friend near, for I knew I could not.
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss.
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room.
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them).
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of
manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide flat space.
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
TO A STRANGER
Passing stranger ! you do not know how longingly I look upon
you, .
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to
me as of a dream),
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you.
All is recall'd as we flit iDy each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste,
matured.
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not
yours only nor left my body mine only.
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass,
you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone
or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
THIS MOMENT YEARNING AND THOUGHTFUL
This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone.
It seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and
thoughtful.
It seems to me I can look over and behold them in Germany,
Italy, France, Spain,
Or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or Japan, talking other
dialects.
Leaves of Grass
And it seems to me if I could know those men I should become
attached to them as I do to men in my own
0 I know lands,
we should be brethren and lovers,
1 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
institutions, destroy
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the
destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in of
these every
States city
inland and seaboard.
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or
that dents the large
water.
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any
The institution argument.
of the dear love of comrades.
THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING
The prairie-grass dividing, its special odour
I demand breathing,
of it the spiritual corresponding.
Demand the most copious and close companionship of
Demand the men.
blades to rise of words, acts,
Those beings,
of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh,
Those that nutritious.
go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and
command, leading not following.
Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and
flesh clear lusty
of taint.
Those that look carelessly in the faces of presidents and gover-
nors, as to say. Who are you}
Those of earth-bom passion, simple, never constrain'd, never
obedient,
Tliose of inland America.
WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUER'D FAME
When I pemse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories
of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals.
Nor the President in his presidency, nor the rich in his great
house.
Calamus 109
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with
them,
How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging,
long and long,
Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfalter-
ing, how affectionate and faithful they were,
Then I am pensive—I hastily walk away fill'd with the bitterest
envy.
WE TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING
We two boys together clinging.
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going. North and South excursions
making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening.
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking,
on the turf of 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 soimd
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.
I lO Leaves of Grass
NO LABOUR-SAVING MACHINE
No labour-saving machine,
Nor discovery have I made,
Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to
found a hospital or library.
Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,
Nor literary success nor intellect, nor book for the book-shelf,
But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave.
For comrades and lovers.
A GLIMPSE
A GLIMPSE through an interstice caught.
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the
stove late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a
corner.
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching
and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking
and oath and smutty jest.
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.
A LEAF FOR HAND IN HAND
A LEAF for hand in hand; I
You natural persons old and young!
You the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the i
on
Mississippi !
You friendly boatmen and mechanics I you roughs ! |
You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!
I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you
to walk hand in hand.
EARTH, MY LIKENESS
Earth , my likeness.
Though you look so impassive, ample, and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
Calamus 111
I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst
forth,
For an athlete is enamour'd of me, and I of him.
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me
eligible to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.
I DREAM'D IN A DREAM
I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of
the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dreamed that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led
the rest.
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city.
And in all their looks and words,
WHAT THINK YOU I TAKE MY PEN IN HAND.?
What think you I take my pen in hand to record?
The battle-ship, perfect-modell'd, majestic, that I saw pass the
offing to-day under full sail ?
The splendours of the past day? or the splendour of the night
that envelops me ?
Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around
me ?—no ;
But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the
midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends.
The one to remain hung on the other's neck and passionately
kiss'd him.
While the one to depart tightlyprest the one to remain in his arms.
TO THE EAST AND TO THE WEST
To the East and to the West,
To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,
To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love.
These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are
in all men,
I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb
friendship, exalté, previously unknown.
Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent
in all men.
I I 2 Leaves of Grass
SOMETIMES WITH ONE I LOVE
Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain
one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd.
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)
TO A WESTERN BOY
Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins.
If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select
lovers.
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine ?
FAST-ANCHOR'D ETERNAL 0 LOVE!
Fast-anchor'd eternal 0 love ! 0 woman I love !
0 bride ! 0 wife 1 more resistless than I can tell, the thought of
you!
Then separate, as disembodied or another born.
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
1 ascend, I float in the regions of your love, 0 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.
Calamus
O YOU WHOM I OFTEN AND SILENTLY COME
0 you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may
be with you,
As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room
with you.
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is
playing within me.
THAT SHADOW MY LIKENESS
That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a liveli-
hood, 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 carolling these songs,
0 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, realising 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.)
h
SALUT AU MONDE !
1
0 TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman !
Such gliding wonders ! such sights and sounds !
Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next.
Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.
What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding?
What climes ? what persons and cities are here ?
Who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering?
Who are the girls ? who are the married women ?
Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms
about each other's necks ?
What rivers are these ? what forests and fruits are these ?
What are the mountains call'd that rise so high in the mists ?
What myriads of dwellings are they fill'd with dwellers ?
2
Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,
Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for
in the west.
Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator.
Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends.
Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it
does not set for months.
Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises
above the horizon and sinks again.
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,
Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
3
What do you hear, Walt Whitman?
1 hear the workman singing and the farmer's wife singing,
I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early
in the day,
114
Salut au Monde !
I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,
I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade,
to the rebeck and guitar,
I hear continual echoes from the Thames,
I hear fierce French liberty songs,
I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old
poems,
I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with
the showers of their terrible clouds,
I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on
the breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the
mule,
I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,
I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear
the responsive base and soprano,
I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice putting to
sea at Okotsk,
I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffie as the slaves march on, as
the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten'd to-
gether with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends
of the Romans,
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful
God the Christ,
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favourite pupil the loves, wars,
adages, transmitted safely to this, day from poets who wrote
three thousand years ago.
4
What do you see, Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you ?
I see a great round wonder rolling through space,
I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,
palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon
the surface,
I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,
and the sunlit part on the other side,
I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as
my land is to me.
Leaves of Grass
I see plenteous waters,
I see mountain peaks, I see the sierras of Andes where they range,
I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,
I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,
I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,
I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the
Dofrafields, and off at sea Mount Hecla,
I see Vesuvius and Etna, the Mountains of the Moon, and the
Red Mountains of Madagascar,
I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,
I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,
I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the Atlantic and
Pacific, the Sea of Mexico, the Brazilian Sea, and the Sea
of Peru,
The waters of Hindustan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea,
The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki, land-lock'd in
its mountains.
The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores,
and the Bay of Biscay,
The clear-sunn'd Mediterranean, and from one to another of its
islands.
The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.
I behold the mariners of the world.
Some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the
lookout.
Some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.
I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters
in port, some on their voyages.
Some double the Cape of Storms, some Cape Verde, others Capes
Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,
Others Dondra Head, others pass the Straits of Sunda, others
Cape Lopatka, others Behring's Straits,
Others Cape Horn, others sail the Gulf of Mexico or along Cuba
or Hayti, others Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay,
Others pass the Straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others
the Firth of Solway, others round Cape Clear, others the
Land's End,
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-
packs.
Salut au Monde ! 117
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Buram-
pooter and Cambodia,
Others wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,
Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.
5
I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,
I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,
I see them in Asia and in Africa.
I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,
I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,
passions, of my race.
I see the long river-stripes of the earth,
I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,
I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow
River, the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl.
I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire, the
Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,
I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along
the Po,
I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina Bay.
6
I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and
that of India,
I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.
I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in
human forms,
I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles,
sacriflcers, brahmins, sabians, llamas, monks, muftis, ex-
horters,
I see where druids walk'd the groves of Mona, I see the mistletoe
and vervain,
I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of gods, I see the
old signiflers.
ii8 Leaves of Grass
I see Christ eating the bread of His last supper in the midst of
youths and old persons,
I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil'd
faithfully and long and then died,
I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the
beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb'd Bacchus,
I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers
on his head,
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov'd, saying to the
people. Do not weep for me,
This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true
country, I now go hack there,
I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his ttirn.
7
I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and
blossoms and corn,
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.
I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown
events, heroes, records of the earth.
I see the places of the sagas,
I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,
I see granite boulders and cliffs, I see green meadows and lakes,
I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,
I see them raised high with stones by the marge of restless oceans,
that the dead men's spirits when they wearied of their quiet
graves might rise up through the mounds and gaze on the
tossing billows, and be refresh'd by storms, immensity,
liberty, action.
I see the steppes of Asia,
I see the tumuli of Mongolia, I see the tents of Kalmucks and
Baskirs,
I see the nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows,
I see the table-lands notch'd with ravines, I see the jungles and
deserts
I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tail'd sheep,
the antelope, and the burrowing wolf.
I see the highlands of Abyssinia,
I see fiocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree, tamarind, date.
And see fields of teff-wheat and places of verdure and gold.
Salut au Monde ! 119
I see the Brazilian vaquero,
I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata,
I see the Wacho crossing the plains, I see the incomparable rider
of horses with his lasso on his arm,
I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.
8
I see the regions of snow and ice,
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,
I see the seal-seeker in his boat poising his lance,
I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge drawn by dogs,
I see the porpoise-hunters, I see the whale-crews of the South
Pacific and the North Atlantic,
I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland—I mark
the long winters and the isolation.
9
I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of
them,
I am a real Parisian,
I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople,
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,
I am of London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels,
Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence,
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw, or northward in Christiania
or Stockholm, or in Siberian Irkutsk, or in some street in
Iceland,
I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.
ID
I see vapours exhaling from unexplored countries,
I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison'd splint,
the fetich, and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns,
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Deme, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia,
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta,
Tokio,
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-
man in their huts.
120 Leaves of Grass
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo^
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva and those of
Herat,
I see Teheran, I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening
sands, I see the caravans toiling onward,
I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks,
I look on chisell'd histories,records of conquering kings, dynasties,
cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks,
I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd,
swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,
I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-droop-
ing neck, the hands folded across the breast.
I see all the menials of the earth, labouring,
I see all the prisoners in the prisons,
I see the defective human bodies of the earth.
The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics.
The pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the
earth.
The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
I see male and female everywhere,
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,
I see the constructiveness of my race,
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,
I see ranks, colours, barbarisms, civilisations, I go among them,
I mix indiscriminately.
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
II
You whoever you are!
You daughter or son of England !
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires I you Russ in Russia !
You dim-descended, black, divine-soul'd African, large, fine-
headed, nobly-form'd, superbly destin'd, on equal terms
with me !
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese !
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Beige! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! (you stock
whence I myself have descended) ;
You sturdy Austrian ! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer
of Styria !
Salut au Monde ! I 2 I
You neighbour of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you
working-woman too !
You Sardinian 1 you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian!
Bulgarian !
You Roman! Neapolitan! you Greek!
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle shooting
arrows to the mark !
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of
Tartary !
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks !
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand
once on Syrian ground !
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the
Euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you
ascending Mount Ararat !
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the
minarets of Mecca !
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb ruling
your families and tribes !
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth,
Damascus, or Lake Tiberias !
You Thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the shops
of Lassa !
You Japanese man or woman ! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon,
Sumatra, Borneo !
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, in-
different of place !
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea !
And you of centuries hence when you listen to me !
And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include
just the same !
Health to you ! good will to you all, from me and America sent !
Each of us inevitable.
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the
earth.
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth.
Each of us here as divinely as any is here^
122 Leaves of Grass
12
You Hottentot with clicking palate ! you woolly-hair'd hordes !
You own'd persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops !
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive counten-
anees of brutes !
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon
for all your glimmering language and spirituality !.
You dwarf'd Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp !
You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,
grovelling, seeking your food !
You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese !
You haggard, uncouth, untutor'd Bedowee !
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you
Feejeeman!
I do not prefer others so very much before you either,
Idonotsayoneword against you,awayback therewhere you stand,
(You will come forward in due time to my side).
13
My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the
whole earth,
I have look'd for equals and lovers and found them ready for me
in all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalised me with them.
You vapours, I think I have risen with you, moved away to
distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you you winds ;
You waters I have finger'd every shore with you,
I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run
through,
I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas and on the
high embedded rocks, to cry thence;
Salut au monde I
What cities the light or warmth penetrates I penetrate those
cities myself.
All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way myself.
Toward you all, in America's name,
I raise high the perpendicular hand, I make the signal.
To remain after me in sight for ever.
For all the haunts and homes of men.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing.
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms.
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever
I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)
2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial.
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas'd, the
illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp,
the drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics.
The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping
couple.
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into
the town, the return back from the town,
123
Leaves of Grass
They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted.
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them
shape !
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable
showers !
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear
to me.
You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries ! you planks and posts of wharves ! you timber-lined
sides ! you distant ships !
You rows of houses ! you window-pierc'd façades ! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps ! you arches !
You grey stones of interminable pavements! you trodden
crossings !
From all that has touch'd you I believe you have imparted to
yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me.
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive
surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and
amicable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand.
The picture alive, every part in its best light.
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is
not wanted.
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of
the road.
O highway I travel, do you say to me. Do not leave me ?
Do you say. Venture not—if you leave me you are lost ?
Do you say, I am already prepared, I am weü-beaten and un-
denied, adhere to me ?
0 public road, I say back I am not afraid to leaVfe you, yet I love
you,
Song of the Open Road 125
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all
free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and who-
ever beholds me shall like me.
I think whoever I see must be happy,
5
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary
lines.
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute.
Listening to others, considering well what they say.
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating.
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds
that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space.
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are
mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good
to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them.
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me.
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze
me.
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear'd it would
not astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons.
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earthj,
Leaves of Grass
Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
authority and all argument against it).
Here is the test of wisdom.
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools.
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not
having it.
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content.
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions.
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under
the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing
currents.
Here is realisation.
Here is a man tallied—he realises here what he has in him.
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you,
you are vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me ?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and
me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion'd, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers ?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls ?
7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower'd
gates, ever provoking questions.
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness
why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the
sunlight expands my blood ?
Song of the Open Road i 27
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and
lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and
always drop fruit as I pass);
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers ?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side ?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I
walk by and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will?
what gives them to be free to mine ?
8
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times.
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character.
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness
of man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every
day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh
and sweet continually out of itself).
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the
love of young and old.
From it falls distill'd the charm that mocks beauty and attain-
ments.
Toward it heaves the shuddering, longing ache of contact.
9
Allons ! whoever you are come travel with me !
Travelling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires.
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first. Nature is rude
and incomprehensible at first.
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well
envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words
can tell.
Leaves of Grass
Allons 1 we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this
dwelling we cannot remain here.
However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we
must not anchor here.
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are
permitted to receive it but a little while.
10
Allons ! the inducements shall be greater.
We will sail pathless and wild seas.
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee
clipper speeds by under full sail.
Allons ! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements.
Health, defiance, gaiety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons ! from all formules !
From your formules, 0 bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no
longer.
Allons ! yet take warning !
He travelling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance.
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and
health.
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself.
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin'd bodies.
No diseas'd person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted
here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)
11
Listen ! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you :
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches.
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an
irresistible call to depart.
Song of the Open Road 129
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those
who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd
hands toward you.
12
Allons ! after the great Companions, and to belong to them !
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—
they are the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas.
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitués of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant
dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the
shore.
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of
children, bearers of children.
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of
coffins.
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious
years each emerging from that which preceded it.
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealised baby-days,
Joumeyers gaily with their own youth, joumeyers with their
bearded and well-grain'd manhood,
Joumeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass'd, content,
Joumeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or woman-
hood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the
universe.
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
13
Allons ! to that which is endless as it was beginningless.
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights.
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights
they tend to.
Again to merge them in the start of superior joumeys.
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
I
130 Leaves of Grass
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it
and pass it.
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you,
however long but it stretches and waits for you.
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither.
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without
labour or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting
one particle of it.
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant
villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple,
and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens.
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through.
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter
them, to gather the love out of their hearts.
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave
them behind you.
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
travelling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls.
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and
comers before the procession of souls along the grand roads
of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward.
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
dissatisfied.
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men.
They go ! they go ! I know that they go, but I know not where
they go.
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something
great.
Whoever you are, come forth ! or man or woman come forth !
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house,
though you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Song of the Open Road
Out of the dark confinement ! out from behind the screen !
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping of people.
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash'd and
trimm'd faces.
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes.
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite
and bland in the parlours.
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly.
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bed-
room, everywhere.
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under
the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial
flowers.
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself.
Allons ! through struggles and wars !
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded ?
What has succeeded ? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things
that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.
He going with me must go well arm'd,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry
enemies, desertions.
15
Allons ! the road is before us !
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be
not detain'd !
132 Leaves of Grass
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the
shelf unopen'd !
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain
uneam'd 1
Let the school stand ! mind not the cry of the teacher !
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit I let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand !
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live ? .
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY
Flood-tide below me ! I see you face to face !
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you
also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how
curious you are to me !
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, return-
^ ; ing home, are more curious to me than you suppose.
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are
more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might
suppose.
2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of
the day.
The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme, myself disintegrated,
every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme.
The similitudes of the past and those of the future.
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings,
on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away.
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and
them.
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to
shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide.
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and
the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east.
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun
half an hour high,
133
t34 Leaves of Grass
A hundred years hence^ or ever so many hundred years hence,
others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-
back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so
many generations hence.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt.
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd.
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh'd.
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried.
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-
stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.
I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old.
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-guUs, saw them high in the air
floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies.
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and
left the rest in strong shadow.
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the
south.
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water.
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of fight round the shape of
my head in the sunlit water,
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look'd on the vapour as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me.
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at
anchor.
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
serpentine pennants.
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-
houses.
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl
of the wheels,
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 135
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the grey walls of
the granite storehouses by the docks.
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd
each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated
on
lighter.
On the neighbouring shore the fires from the foundry
chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of
streets.
4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid
river.
The men and women I saw were all near to me.
Others the same—others who look back on me because I look'd
forward to them
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night).
5
What is it then between us ?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails
not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the
waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me.
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon
me.
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came
upon me,
I too had been struck from the float for ever held in solution,
I too had receiv'd identity by my body.
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew
I should be of my body.
13 6 Leaves of Grass
6
It is not upon you alone the dark
The dark patches fall,
threw its patches down upon me
The also,
best I had done seem'd to me blank and
My suspicious,
great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in
? reality
meagre
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be
I am he evil,
who knew what it was to be
I evil,
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
Was speak.
wayward, vain, greedy, shallow,
The sly, cowardly,
wolf, the malignant,
snake, the hog, not in
The wanting me.
cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous not
wanting. wish,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of
these wanting.
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the
Was call'd rest.
by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young
men as they saw me approaching or
Felt their passing.
arms on my neck as I stood, or the
of their negligent
flesh leaning
against me as I sat.
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or
told public assembly,
yet never them a word.
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing,
ing, sleeping, gnaw-
Play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or
The same old actress.
rôle, the rôle that is what we make it, as as
we like. great
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
7
Closer yet I approach you.
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of
laid in you—I
my stores in advance,
I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were bom.
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 at
you now, for all looking
you cannot see me?
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 137
8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than
mast-hemm'd Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood-tide ?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the
twilight, and the belated lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and
with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my
nighest name as I approach ?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or
man that looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you ?
We understand then do we not?
What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted ?
What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not
accomplish is accomplish'd, is it not?
9
Flow on, river ! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-
tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves !
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset ! drench with your splendour me,
or the men and women generations after me !
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers !
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills
of Brooklyn !
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and
answers !
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution !
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public
assembly !
Sound out, voices of young men ! loudly and musically call me
by my nighest name !
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or
actress !
Play the old rôle, the rôle that is great or small according as one
makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown
ways be looking upon you ;
Leaves of Grass
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet
haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds ! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in
the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
downcast eyes have time to take it from you !
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any
one's head, in the sunlit water !
Come on, ships from the lower bay ! pass up or down, white-sail'd
schooners, sloops, lighters !
Flaunt away, flags of all nations ! be duly lower'd at sunset !
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys ! cast black shadows at
nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the
houses !
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are.
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul.
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our
divinest aromas.
Thrive, cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
sufficient rivers.
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual.
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful
ministers.
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate hence-
forward.
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves
from us.
We use you, and do not cast you aside—weplant 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 soufi
SONG OF THE ANSWERER
I
Now list to my morning's romanza, I tell the signs of the
iVnswerer,
To the cities and farms I sing as they spread in the sunshine
before me.
A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,
How shall the young man know the whether and when of his
brother?
Tell him to send me the signs.
And I stand before the young man face to face, and take his
right hand in my left hand and his left hand in my right hand.
And I answer for his brother and for men, and I answer for him
that answers for all, and send these signs.
Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and
final.
Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as
amid light.
Him they immerse and he immerses them.
Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape,
people, animals.
The profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean (so
tell I my morning's romanza).
All enjoyments and properties and money, and whatever money
will buy.
The best farms, others toiling and planting and he unavoidably
reaps.
The noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building and
he domiciles there.
Nothing for any one but what is for him, near and far are for
him, the ships in the offing.
The perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if they
are for anybody.
He puts things in their attitudes.
He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,
139
140 Leaves of Grass
He places his own times^ reminiscences, parents, brothers and
sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest
never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.
He is the Answerer,
What can be answer'd he answers, and what cannot be answer'd
he shows how it cannot be answer'd.
A man is a summons and challenge,
(It is vain to skulk—do you hear that mocking and laughter?
do you hear the ironical echoes ?)
Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride,
beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction,
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up
and down also.
Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go
freshly and gently and safely by day or by night.
He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying
of hands on the knobs.
His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome
or universal than he is.
The person he favours by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.
Every existence has its idiom, everything has an idiom and
tongue.
He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men,
and any man translates, and any man translates himself also.
One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he
sees how they join.
He says indifferently and alike How are you, friend ? to the
President at his levee.
And he says Good-day, my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the
sugar-field.
And both understand him and know that his speech is right.
He walks with perfect ease in the capitol.
He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to
another. Here is our equal appearing and new.
Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic.
And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that
he has follow'd the sea.
Song of the Answerer 141
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an
artist,
And the labourers perceive he could labour with them and love
them.
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has
follow'd it.
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and
sisters there.
The English believe he comes of their English stock,
A Jew to the Jew he seems, a Russ to the Russ, usual and near,
removed from none.
Whoever he looks at in the traveller's coffee-house claims him.
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the German is sure, the
Spaniard is sure, and the island Cuban is sure.
The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Missis-
sippi or St. Lawrence or Sacramento, or Hudson or Pau-
manok sound, claims him.
The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood.
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes
them.
They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they
are so grown.
2
The indications and tally of time.
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs.
Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts.
What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant
company of singers, and their words.
The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or
dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general
light and dark.
The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality.
His insight and power encircle things and the human race.
He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human
race.
The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets.
The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but
rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the
maker of poems, the Answerer
142 Leaves of Grass
(Not every century nor every five centuries has contain'd such a
day, for all its names).
The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible
names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,
The name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-
singer, night-singer, parlour-singer, love-singer, weird-
singer, or something else.
All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
The words of true poems do not merely please.
The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters
of beauty ;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers
and fathers.
The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of
science.
Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health,-
rudeness of body, withclrawnness.
Gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of
poems.
The sailor and traveller underlie the maker of poems, the
Answerer,
The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist,
all these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems.
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics,
war, peace, behaviour, histories, essays, daily life, and
everything else.
They balance ranks, colours, races, creeds, and the sexes.
They do not seek beauty, they are sought.
For ever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, long-
ing, fain, love-sick.
They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather
the outset.
They bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and full.
Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of
stars, to learn one of the meanings.
To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the cease-
less rings and never be quiet again.
OUR OLD FEUILLAGE
Always our old feuillage !
Always Florida's green peninsula—always the priceless delta of
Louisiana—always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,
Always California's golden hills and hollows, and the silver
mountains of New Mexico—always soft-breath'd Cuba,
Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern sea, inseparable
with the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and Western seas.
The area the eighty-third year of these States, the three and a
half millions of square miles,
The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the
main, the thirty thousand miles of river navigation,
The seven millions of distinct families and the same number of
dwellings—always these, and more, Imanching forth into
numberless branches,
Always the free range and diversity—always the continent of
Democracy;
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers,
Kanada, the snows ;
Always these compact lands tied at the hips with the belt string-
ing the huge oval lakes ;
Always the West with strong native persons, the increasing
density there, the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical,
scorning invaders;
All sights. South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done
at all times,
All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads
unnoticed.
Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering,
On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats
wooding up.
Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the
valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys
of the Roanoke and Delaware,
In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks
the hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink.
In a lonesome inlet a sheldrake lost from the flock, sitting on the
water rocking silently,
M3
144 Leaves of Grass
In fanners' bams oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done,
they rest standing, they are too tired.
Afar on arctic ice the she-walms lying drowsily while her cubs
play around.
The hawk sailing where men have not yet sail'd, the farthest
polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes.
White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes.
On solid land what is done in cities as the bells strike midnight
together,
In primitive woods the sounds there also sounding, the howl of
the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoarse bellow of
the elk.
In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead lake, in
summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout
swimming.
In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black
buzzard floating slowly high beyond the tree-tops.
Below, the red cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines and
cypresses growing out of the white sand that spreads far
and flat.
Rude boats descending the big Pedee, climbing plants, parasites
with colour'd flowers and berries enveloping huge trees.
The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low, noise-
lessly waved by the wind.
The camp of Georgia wagoners just after dark, the supper-fires
and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes.
Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding
from troughs.
The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-
trees, the flames with the black smoke from the pitch-pine
curling and rising;
Southem fishermen fishing, the sounds and inlets of North
Carolina's coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery,
the large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work'd by
horses, the clearing, curing, and packing-houses;
Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the
incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works.
There are the negroes at work in good health, the ground in all
directions is cover'd with pine straw;
In Tennessee and Kentucky slaves busy in the coalings, at the
forge, by the fumace-blaze, or at the com-shucking.
In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence,
joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse,
Our Old Feuillage 145
On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under
shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or
fiddle, others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking ;
Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic,
singing in the Great Dismal Swamp,
There are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous
moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;
Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company
from an excursion returning home at evening, the musket-
muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women;
Children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep
(how his lips move ! how he smiles in his sleep !) ;
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Missis-
sippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;
California life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume,
the stanch California friendship, the sweet air, the graves
one in passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;
Down in Texas the cotton-field, the negro-cabins, drivers driving
mules or oxen before rude carts, cotton bales piled on
banks and wharves ;
Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the American Soul,
with equal hemispheres, one Love, one Dilation or Pride;
In arrière the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines, the
calumet, the pipe of good-wül, arbitration, and indorse-
ment.
The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then
toward the earth.
The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and
guttural exclamations.
The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march.
The single file, the swinging hatchets, the surprise and slaughter
of enemies;
All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States,
reminiscences, institutions.
All these States compact, every square mile of these States
without excepting a particle;
Me pleas'd, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's
fields.
Observing the spiral flight of two little yellow butterflies shuffling
between each other, ascending high in the air.
The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveller
southward but returning northward early in the spring.
146 Leaves of Grass
The country boy at the close of the day driving the herd of cows
and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the road-
side,
The cit}'^ wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston,
New Orleans, San Francisco,
The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;
Evening—^me in my room—the setting sun,
The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the
swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre
of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift
shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is ;
The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of
listeners,
Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the
individuality of the ^States, each for itself—the money-
makers,
Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever,
pulley, all certainties.
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity.
In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the
firm earth, the lands, my lands,
0 lands! all so dear to me—what you are (whatever it is), I
putting it at random in these songs, become a part of that,
whatever it is.
Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the
myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,
Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio
Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red
River, the Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the spring
waters laughing and skipping and running.
Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I
with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek
worms and aquatic plants,
Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing
the crow with its bill, for amusement—and I triumphantly
twittering.
The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh
themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside
move around with erect heads watching, and are from time
to time reliev'd by other sentinels—and I feeding and
taking turns with the rest.
In Kanadian forests the moose, large as an ox, corner'd by
hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging
Our Old Feuillage 147
with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives—and I,
plunging at the hunters, comer'd and desperate.
In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, shipping, store-houses, and
the countless workmen working in the shops.
And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof—and no less in
myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself.
Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands—my body no
more inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a
thousand diverse contributions one identity, any more than
my lands are inevitably united and made One identity;
Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,
Cities, labours, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—
these me,
These affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me
and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of
the union of them, to afford the like to you ?
Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that
you also be eligible as I am ?
How can I but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to collect
bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?
A SONG OF JOYS
0 TO make the most jubilant song !
Full of music—full of manhood, womanhood, infancy !
Full of common employments—full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals—0 for the swiftness and balance of
fishes !
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song !
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song !
0 the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
1 will have thousands of globes and all time.
O the engineer's joys I to go with a locomotive !
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle,
the laughing locomotive !
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.
0 the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides !
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh
stillness of the woods.
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through
the forenoon.
0 the horseman's and horsewoman's joys 1
The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool
gurgling by the ears and hair.
0 the fireman's joys !
1 hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells, shouts 1 I pass the crowd, I run !
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
0 the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in
perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his
opponent.
148
A Song of Joys 149
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human
soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and
limitless floods.
O the mother's joys !
The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish,
the patiently yielded life.
0 the joy of increase, growth, recuperation.
The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and
harnaony.
0 to go back to the place where I was born.
To hear the birds sing once more,
To ramble about the house and bam and over the fields once
more.
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
0 to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the
coast.
To continue and be employ'd there all my life.
The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at
low water,
The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;
1 come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear.
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome
young man;
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on
foot on the ice—I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
Behold me well-clothed going gaily or returning in the afternoon,
my brood of tough boys accompanying me.
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no
one else so well as they love to be with me.
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.
Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-
pots where they are sunk with heavy stones (I know the
buoys),
0 the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I
row just before sunrise toward the buoys,
1 pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are
desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert
wooden pegs in the joints of their pincers.
Leaves of Grass
I go to all the places one after another^ and then row back to
the shore,
There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be
boil'd till their colour becomes scarlet.
Another time mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill
the water for miles ;
Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the
brown-faced crew;
Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with
braced body.
My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the
coüs of slender rope.
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs,
my companions.
O boat on the rivers.
The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the
steamers.
The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-
raft and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars.
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they
cook supper at evening.
(O something pernicious and dread !
Something far away from a puny and pious life !
Something unproved ! something in a trance !
Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)
0 to work in mines, or forging iron,
Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample
and shadow'd space.
The furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running.
0 to resume the joys of the soldier !
To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer—to feel his
sympathy !
To behold his calnmess—to be warm'd in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle—to hear the bugles play and the drums beat !
To hear the crash of artillery—to see the glittering of the
bayonets and musket-barrels in the sun 1
To see men fall and die and not complain !
A Song of Joys 151
To taste the savage taste of blood—to be so devilish !
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.
0 the whaleman's joys ! O I cruise my old cruise again !
1 feel the ship's motion under me^ I feel the Atlantic breezes
fanning me^
I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, There—she
blows !
Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest-—we descend,
wild with excitement,
I leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies.
We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass,
lethargic, basking,
I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
vigorous arm;
0 swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling,
running to windward, tows me.
Again I see him rise to breathe, we now close again,
1 see a lance driven through his side, press'd deep, turn'd in
the wound.
Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him
fast.
As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower
and narrower, swiftly cutting the water—I see him die.
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then
falls flat and still in the bloody foam.
0 the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all !
My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my
life.
0 ripen'd joy of womanhood ! 0 happiness at last !
1 am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable
mother.
How clear is my mind—how all people draw nigh to me !
What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom
more than the bloom of youth?
What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me ?
0 the orator's joys !
To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the
ribs and throat.
152 Leaves of Grass
To make the people rage, weep^ hate, desire, with yourself.
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.
0 the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself, receiving identity
through materials and loving them, observing characters
and absorbing them.
My sour vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing,
touch, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the
like.
The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and
flesh.
My body done with materials, my sight done with my material
eyes.
Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material
eyes which finally see.
Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,
embraces, procreates,
0 the farmer's joys!
Ohioan's, Illinoisian's, Wisconsinese', Kanadian's, lowan's
Kansian's, Missourian's, Oregonese' joys !
To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work, ^
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops.
To plough land in the spring for maize.
To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.
0 to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore.
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along
the shore.
0 to realise space !
The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds.
To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying
clouds, as one with them.
0 the joy of a manly self-hood !
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known
or unknown.
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic.
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye.
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest.
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of
the earth.
A Song of Joys 153
Know'st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laugh-
ing face?
Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath'd
games ?
Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers ?
Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse, and drinking?
Yet 0 my soul supreme!
Know'st thou the joys of pensive thought ?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow'd yet proud, the suffer-
ing and the struggle ?
The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings
day or night?
Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres, Time and Space ?
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife,
the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own undying onfe, joys worthy thee, 0 soul.
0 while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave.
To meet life as a powerful conqueror.
No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms.
To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground,
proving my interior soul impregnable.
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating—the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few
moments, for reasons.
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be bum'd, or
render'd to powder, or buried.
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres.
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifica-
tions, further offices, eternal uses of the earth.
O to attract by more than attraction !
How it is I know not—yet behold ! the something which obeys
none of the rest.
It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.
O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted !
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand !
154 Leaves of Grass
To look strife^ torture^ prison, popular odium, face to face !
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with
perfect nonchalance !
To be indeed a God !
O to sail to sea in a ship !
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks
and the houses.
To leave you, 0 you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail and sail and sail!
0 to have life henceforth a poem of new joys !
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air),
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.
SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE
I
Weapon shapely, naked, wan.
Head from the mother's bowels drawn,
Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only
one.
Grey-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little
seed sown.
Resting the grass amid and upon.
To be lean'd and to lean on.
Strong shapes and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades,
sights, and sounds.
Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music.
Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the
great organ.
Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind.
Welcome are lands of pine and oak.
Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig.
Welcome are lands of gold.
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize, welcome those of the
grape.
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice.
Welcome the cotton-lands, welcome those of the white potato
and sweet potato.
Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies, •
Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings.
Welcome the measureless grazing-lands, welcome the teeming
soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp;
Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands.
Lands rich as lands of gold or wheat and fruit lands,
Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores.
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc.
Lands of iron—lands of the make of the axe.
155
156 Leaves of Grass
3 .
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,
The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear'd
for a garden.
The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm
is lull'd.
The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the
sea.
The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their
beam ends, and the cutting away of masts.
The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion'd houses and
bams.
The remember'd print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of
men, families, goods.
The disembarkation, the founding of a new city.
The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it,
the outset anywhere.
The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags ;
The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons.
The beauty of wood-boys, and wood-men with their clear
untrimm'd faces.
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on
themselves.
The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the bound-
less impatience of restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types,
the solidification;
The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners
and sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer.
Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods,
stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, theoccasional snapping.
The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the
natural life of the woods, the strong day's work.
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk,
the bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;
The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere.
The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising.
The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying
them regular.
Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as
they were prepared.
Song of the Broad-Axe 157
The blows of mallets and hammers^ the attitudes of the men,
their curv'd limbs,
Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding
on by posts and braces.
The hooic'd arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the
axe.
The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail'd.
Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
The echoes resounding through the vacant building;
The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way.
The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end,
carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a
cross-beam.
The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands
rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from
front to rear.
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the
trowels striking the bricks.
The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its
place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle.
The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and
the steady replenishing by the hod-men;
Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown
apprentices.
The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it
toward the shape of a mast.
The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the
pine,
The butter-colour'd chips flying ofl in great flakes and slivers.
The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy
costumes.
The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats,
stays against the sea;
The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the
close-pack'd square.
The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping
and daring.
The strong command through the flre-trumpets, the falling in
line, the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of
the hooks and ladders and their execution.
The crash and cut-away of connecting wood-work, or through
floors if the fire smoulders under them.
Leaves of Grass
The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense
shadows;
The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,
The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and
temperer.
The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying
the edge with his thumb.
The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the
socket;
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also.
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers.
The far-ofí Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice.
The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,
The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend
and foe thither,
The siege of revolted lieges determin'd for liberty.
The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the
truce and parley.
The sack of an old city in its time,
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and
disorderly.
Roar, ñames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women
in the gripe of brigands.
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons
despairing, *
The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds.
The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust.
The power of personality just or unjust.
4
Muscle and pluck for ever 1
What invigorates life invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance.
And the future is no more uncertain than the present, ^
For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as
the delicatesse of the earth and of man.
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures?
Do you think a great city endures ?
Song of the Broad-Axe 159
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution?
or the best built steamships ?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'œuvres of engineer-
ing, forts, armaments?
Away ! these are not to be cherish'd for themselves,
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for
them,
The show passes, all does well enough of course.
All does very well till one flash of defiance.
A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole
world.
5
The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch'd
wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-
lifters of the departing.
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops
selling goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place
where money is plentiest.
Nor the place of the most numerous population.
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and
bards,
Where the city stands that is belov'd by these, and loves them
in return and understands them.
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words
and deeds.
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases.
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending
audacity of elected persons.
Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle
of death pours its sweeping and unript waves.
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of
inside authority.
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,
Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
Leaves of Grass
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to
depend on themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs.
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged.
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same
as the men.
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same
as the men;
Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands.
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands.
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands.
There the great city stands.
6
How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed !
How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a
man's or woman's look.
^\11 waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;
A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the
universe.
When he or she appears materials are overaw'd,
The dispute on the soul stops.
The old customs and phrases are confronted, tum'd back, or
laid away.
What is your money-making now.? what can it do now?
What is your respectability now?
What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-
books, now?
Where are your jibes of being now?
Where are your cavils about the soul now?
7
A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best
for all the forbidding appearance.
There is the mine, there are the miners.
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish'd, the ham-
mersmen are at hand with their tongs and hammers.
What always served and always serves is at hand.
Song of the Broad-Axe 16 r
Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long
ere the Greek,
Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,
Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustanee,
Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose
relics remain in Central America,
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars
and the druids.
Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-
cover'd hills of Scandinavia,
Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls
rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean
waves,
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the
pastoral tribes and nomads.
Served the long distant Kelt, served the hardy pirates of the
Baltic,
Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of
Ethiopia,
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the
making of those for war.
Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea.
For the mediaeval ages and before the mediaeval ages.
Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.
8
I see the European headsman.
He stands mask'd, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong
naked arms.
And leans on a ponderous axe.
(Whom have you slaughter'd lately, European headsman?
Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)
I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts.
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown'd ladies, impeach'd ministers,
rejected kings.
Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.
I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,
L
102 Leaves of Grass
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,
(Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run
out).
I see the blood wash'd entirely away from the axe.
Both blade and helve are clean.
They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasp
no more the necks of queens.
I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,
I see the scaiSold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe
upon it,
I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own
race, the newest, largest race.
9
(America ! I do not vaunt my love for you,
I have what I have.)
The axe leaps !
The solid forest gives fluid utterances.
They tumble forth, they rise and form.
Hut, tent, landing, survey.
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade.
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable.
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house,
library.
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch.
Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane,
mallet, wedge, rounce.
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor.
Work-box, chest, string'd instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the
poor or sick,
Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all
seas.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that
neighbours them.
Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or
Kennebec,
Song of the Broad-Axe 163
Dwellers in cabins among the Califomian mountains or by the
little lakes, or on the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly
gatherings, the characters and fun,
Dwellers along the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down
by the Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts.
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through
the ice.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets.
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads.
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches.
Shapes of the fieets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river
craft.
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas,
and in many a bay and by-place.
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hack-
matack-roots for knees.
The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the
workmen busy outside and inside.
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the
adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.
10
The shapes arise!
The shape measur'd, saw'd, jack'd, join'd, stain'd.
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud.
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts
of the bride's bed.
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,
the shape of the babe's cradle.
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers'
feet,
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the
friendly parents and children.
The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and
woman, the roof over the well-married young man and
woman.
The roof over the supper joyously cook'd by the chaste wife,
and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after
his day's work.
164 Leaves of Grass
The shapes arise !
The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-room, and of him
or her seated in the place,
The shape of the liquor-bar lean'd against by the young rum-
drinker and the old rum-drinker.
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking
footsteps.
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome
couple.
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and
losings.
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced
murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion'd
arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp'd
crowd, the dangling of the rope.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances.
The door passing the dissever'd friend ñush'd and in haste.
The door that admits good news and bad news.
The door whence the son left home confident and puff'd up.
The door he enter'd again from a long and scandalous absence,
diseas'd, broken down, without innocence, without means.
II
Her shape arises.
She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever.
The gross and soil'd she moves among do not make her gross
and soil'd.
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal'd from
her.
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor.
She is the best belov'd, it is without exception, she has no reason
to fear and she does not fear.
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty expressions, are idle
to her as she passes.
She is silent, she is possess'd of herself, they do not offend her.
She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is
strong,
She too is a law of Nature—there is no law stronger than
she is.
Song of the Broad-Axe 165
12
The main shapes arise !
Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,
Shapes ever projecting other shapes.
Shapes of turbulent manly cities.
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth.
Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
SONG OF THE EXPOSITION
1
(Ah , little recks the labourer,
How near his work is holding him to God,
The loving Labourer through space and time.)
After all not to create only, or found only,
But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded.
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free.
To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire.
Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate.
To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead.
These also are the lessons of our New World;
While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old
World!
Long and long has the grass been growing.
Long and long has the rain been falling.
Long has the globe been rolling round.
2
Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts.
That matter of Troy and Achilles' wrath, and Eneas', Odysseus'
wanderings.
Placard " Removed " and "To Let "
on the rocks of your snowy
Parnassus,
Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa's gate and
on Mount Moriah,
The same on the walls of your German, French, and Spanish
castles, and Italian collections.
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.
3
Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs'd inclination,
i66
Song of the Exposition 167
Join'd with an irresistible, natural gravitation,
She comes ! I hear the rustling of her gown,
I scent the odour of her breath's delicious fragrance,
I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-tuming, rolling.
Upon this very scene.
The dame of dames ! can I believe then.
Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them
retain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems,
old associations, magnetise and hold on to her?
But that she's left them all—and here ?
Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her.
The same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's
expression.
Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her
former themes.
Hidden and cover'd by to-day's, foundation of to-day's.
Ended, deceas'd through time, her voice by Castaly's fountain.
Silent the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those cen-
tury-baíïiing tombs.
Ended for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors,
ended the primitive call of the muses.
Calliope's call for ever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead.
Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest
of the holy Graal,
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct.
The Crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with
the sunrise,
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver
gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from
its waters reflected,
Arthur vanish'd with all his knights. Merlin and Lancelot and
Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation;
Pass'd! pass'd! for us, for ever pass'd, that once so mighty
world, now void, inanimate, phantom world,
Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous
legends, myths.
Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
courtly dames.
i68 Leaves of Grass
Pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armour on,
Blazon'd with Shakespeare's purple page.
And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.
I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigré
(having it is true in her day, although the same, changed,
journey'd considerable).
Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path
for herself, striding through the confusion.
By thüd of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd,
Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilisers.
Smiling and pleas'd with palpable intent to stay.
She's here, install'd amid the kitchen ware !
4
But hold—don't I forget my manners?
To introduce the stranger (what else indeed do I live to chant
for?) to thee Columbia;
In liberty's name welcome immortal ! clasp hands,
And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.
Fear not, O Muse ! truly new ways and days receive, surround
you,
I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion.
And yet the same old human race, the same within, without.
Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the
same.
The same old love, beauty and use the same.
5
We do not blame thee, elder World, nor really separate ourselves
from thee,
(Would the son separate himself from the father?)
Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs,
through past ages bending, building.
We build to ours to-day.
Mightier than Egypt's tombs.
Fairer than Greek's, Roma's temples.
Prouder than Milan's statued, spired cathedral.
More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps.
We plan even now to raise, beyond them all.
Song of the Exposition 169
Thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb,
A keep for life for practical invention.
As in a waking vision.
E'en while I chant I see it rise, I scan and prophesy outside
and in.
Its manifold ensemble.
Around the palace, loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
Earth's modern wonder, history's seven outstripping.
High rising tier on tier with glass and iron façades.
Gladdening the sun and sky, enhued in cheerfullest hues,
Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine, and crimson.
Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy bannerFreedom,
The banners of the States and flags of every land,
A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster.
Somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect
human life be started.
Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.
Not only all the world of works, trade, products.
But all the workmen of the world here to be represented.
Here shall you trace in flowing operation.
In every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilisation.
Materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by
magic.
The cotton shall be pick'd almost in the very field.
Shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth
before you.
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the
new ones,
You shall see the various grains and how flour is made and then
bread baked by the bakers.
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on
and on till they become bullion.
You shall watch how the printer sets type, and leam what a
composing-stick is.
You shall mark in amazement the Hoe press whirling its cylinder,
shedding the printed leaves steady and fast.
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created before
you.
170 Leaves of Grass
In large calm halls, a stately museum shall teach you the infinite
lessons of minerals,
In another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustrated—in
another, animals, animal life and development.
One stately house shall be the music house.
Others for other arts—^learning, the sciences, shall all be here.
None shall be slighted, none but shall here be honour'd, help'd,
exampled.
6
(This, this and these, America, shall be your p3nramids and
obelisks.
Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
Your temple at Olympia.)
The male and female many labouring not.
Shall ever here confront the labouring many.
With precious benefits to both, glory to all.
To thee America, and thee eternal Muse.
And here shall ye inhabit powerful Matrons !
In your vast state vaster than all the old.
Echoed through long, long centuries to come.
To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes.
Practical, peaceful life, the people's life, the People themselves.
Lifted, illumin'd, bathed in peace—elate, secure in peace.
7
Away with themes of war! away with war itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show
of blacken'd, mutilated corpses !
That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-
tongued wolves, not reasoning men.
And in its stead speed industry's campaigns.
With thy undaunted armies, engineering.
Thy pennants labour, loosen'd to the breeze,
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear.
Away with old romance !
Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts.
Away with love-verses sugar'd in rhyme, the intrigues, amours
of idlers.
Song of the Exposition 171
Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late
music slide,
The unhealthy pleasures," extravagant dissipations of the few.
With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.
To you, ye reverent sane sisters,
I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art.
To exalt the present and the real.
To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade.
To sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be
baffled.
To manual work for each and all, to plough, hoe, dig.
To plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers.
For every man to see to it that he really do something, for every
woman too;
To use the hammer and the saw (rip, or cross-cut).
To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter.
To invent a little, something ingenious, to aid the washing, cook-
ing, cleaning.
And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.
I say I bring thee Muse to-day and here.
All occupations, duties broad and close.
Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,
The old, old practical burdens, interests, joys.
The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife.
The house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings,
Food and its preservation, chemistry applied to it.
Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded
man or woman, the perfect longeve personality,
And helps its present life to health and happiness, and shapes its
soul.
For the eternal real life to come.
With latest connections, works, the inter-transportation of the
world.
Steam-power, the great express lines, gas, petroleum.
These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic's delicate cable.
The Pacific railroad, the Suez Canal, the Mont Genis and Gothard
and Hoosac tunnels, the Brooklyn Bridge,
This earth all spann'd with iron rails, with lines of steamships
threading every sea.
Our own rondure, the current globe I bring.
1/2 Leaves of Grass
8
And thou America,
Thy offspring towering e'er so high, yet higher Thee above all
towering.
With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all.
Thee, ever thee, I sing.
Thou, also thou, a World,
With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant.
Rounded by thee in one—one common orbic language,^
One common indivisible destiny for All.
And by the spells which ye vouchsafe to those your ministers in
earnest,
I here personify and call my themes, to make them pass before ye.
Behold, America ! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister !)
For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands;
Behold ! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains.
As in procession coming.
Behold, the sea itself.
And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships;
See, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the
green and blue.
See, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port,
See, dusky and undulating, the long pennants of smoke.
Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west.
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
Wielding all day their axes.
Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels, thy oarsmen.
How the ash writhes under those muscular arms !
There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths swinging their sledges,
Overhand so steady, overhand they turn and fall with joyous
clank.
Like a tumult of laughter.
Song of the Exposition 173
Mark the spirit of invention ever3rvvhere, thy rapid patents,
Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising.
See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.
Mark, thy interminable farms. North, South,
Thy wealthy daughter-states. Eastern and Western,
The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia,
Texas, and the rest,
Thy limitless crops,grass, wheat, sugar, oil, com, rice, hemp, hops.
Thy barns all fill'd, the endless freight-train and the bulging
storehouse.
The grapes that ripen on thy vines, the apples in thy orchards.
Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold
and silver.
The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.
All thine, 0 sacred Union !
Ships, farms, shops, bams, factories, mines.
City and State, North, South, item and aggregate.
We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee !
Protectress absolute, thou ! bulwark of all !
For well we know that while thou givest each and all (generous
as God),
Without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home.
Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure,
Nor aught, nor any day secure.
9
And thou, the Emblem waving over all !
Delicate beauty, a word to thee (it may be salutary).
Remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so com-
fortably ensovereign'd.
In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee flag.
Not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of
stainless silk.
But I have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinter'd
staff.
Or clutch'd to some young colour-bearer's breast with desperate
hands.
Savagely stmggled for, for life or death, fought over long,
'Mid cannons' thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and
yell, and rifle-volleys cracking sharp.
174 Leaves of Grass
And moving masses as wild demons surging, and lives as
nothing risk'd,
For thy mere remnant grimed with dirt and smoke and sopp'd
in blood,
For sake of that, my beauty, and that thou might'st dally as now
secure up there.
Many a good man have I seen go under.
Now here and these and hence in peace, all thine, O Flag !
And here and hence for thee, 0 universal Muse! and thou for
them!
And here and hence, 0 Union, all the work and workmen thine !
None separate from thee—henceforth One only, we and thou
(For the blood of the children, what is it, only the blood
maternal ?
And lives and works, what are they all at last, except the roads
to faith and death ?).
While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear
Mother,
We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in thee;
Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross or lucre
—it is for thee, the soul in thee, electric, spiritual !
Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee ! cities and States in
thee!
Our freedom all in thee ! our very lives in thee !
SONG OF THE REDWOOD-TREE
I
A California song,
A prophecyand indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe asair,
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadiyads departing,
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky.
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.
Farewell my brethren,
Farewell 0 earth and sky, farewell ye neighbouring waters,
My time has ended, my term has come.
Along the northern coast.
Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,
In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country.
With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse.
With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by
strong arms.
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the red-
wood forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.
The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not.
The quick-ear'd teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard
not.
As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years
to join the refrain.
But in my soul I plainly heard.
Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high.
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark.
That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only
but the future.
You untold life of me.
And all you venerable and innocent joys,
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176 Leaves of Grass
Perennial hardy life of me with joys 'mid rain and many a
summer sun,
And the white snows and night and the wild winds ;
0 the great patient rugged joys, my soul's strong joys unreck'd by
man
{For know I hear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness,
identity.
And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth),
foys of the life befitting me and brothers mine.
Our time, our term has come.
Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers.
We who have grandlyfill'd our time;
With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight.
We welcome what we wrought for through the past.
And leave thefieldfor them.
For them predicted long,
For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time.
For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings I
In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta,
Nevadas,
These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far
Yosemite,
To be in them absorb'd, assimilated.
Then to a loftier strain^
Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,
As if the heirs, the deities of the West,
Joining with master-tongue bore part.
Not wan from Asia'sfetiches.
Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house
{Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and
scaffolds everywhere).
But come from Nature's long and harmless throes, peacefully
builded thence.
These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore,
To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new.
You promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate.
You occult deep volitions.
You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself,
giving not taking law.
Song of the Redwood-Tree 177
You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life
and love and aught that comesfrom life and love.
You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America
{age upon age working in death the same as life).
You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and
mould the New World, adjusting it to Time and Space,
You hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceaVd hut ever
alert.
You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, maybe un-
conscious of yourselves,
Unswerv'd by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface ;
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,
statutes, literatures.
Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire,
lands of the Western shore.
We pledge, we dedicate to you.
For man of you, your characteristic race.
Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate
to Nature,
Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, unchecked by wall or
roof.
Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure.
Here heed himself, unfold himself {not others^ formulas heed),
herefill his time.
To duly fall, to aid, unrecKd at last.
To disappear, to serve.
Thus on the northern coast,
In the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains, and the
music of choppers' axes.
The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the
groan.
Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices
ecstatic, ancient and rustling.
The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing.
All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving.
From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or
Utah,
To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding.
The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the
settlements, features all,
In the Mendocino woods I caught.
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2
The flashing and golden pageant of California,
The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands,
The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound to Colorado south,
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and moun-
tain cliffs.
The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic
chemistry.
The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripen-
ing, the rich ores forming beneath;
At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
A swarming and busy race settling and organising everywhere.
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to
the whole world.
To India and China and Australia and the thousand island
paradises of the Pacific,
Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers,
the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery.
And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold.
3
But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore
(These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground),
I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,
till now deferr'd,
Promis'd to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the race.
The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,
In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees
imperial.
In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even
vital air.
Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,
I see the genius of the modem, child of the real and ideal.
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the tme America, heir
of the past so grand.
To build a grander future.
A SONG FOR OCCUPATIONS
I
A SONG for occupations !
In the labour of engines and trades and the labour of fields I find
the developments,
And find the eternal meanings.
Workmen and Workwomen !
Were all educations practical and ornamental well display'd out
of me, what would it amount to ?
Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise states-
man, 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 my
own whoever enjoys me,
I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.
If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in
the same shop.
If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as
good as your brother or dearest friend.
If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must
be personally as welcome.
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your
sake.
If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think
I cannot 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, why
I often meet strangers in the street and love them.
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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
never saw your name in print.
Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)
2
Souls 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 whether
you are alive or no,
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.
Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,
indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see.
And all else behind or through them.
The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband.
The daughter, and she is just as good as the son.
The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.
Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades.
Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on
farms,
Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants.
All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,
None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.
I bring what you much need yet always have.
Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but
offer the value itself.
There is something that comes to one now and perpetually.
It is not what is printed, preach'd, discussed, it eludes discussion
and print.
A Song for Occupations 181
It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,
It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your
hearing and sight are from you.
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked
by them.
You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,
You may read the President's message and read nothing about
it there,
Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury
department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers.
Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any
accounts of stock.
3
The sun and stars that float in the open air.
The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them
is something grand,
I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is
happiness.
And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or
bon-mot or reconnoissance.
And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for
us, and without luck must be a failure for us.
And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain
contingency.
The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the
greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things,
The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys
and sorrows.
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the
wonders that fill each minute of time for ever.
What have you reckon'd them for, camerado ?
Have you reckon'd them for your trade or farm-work? or for
the profits 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 it might be painted in a picture ?
Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs
sung?
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Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious
combinations and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the
savans ?
Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts ?
Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names ?
Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agricul-
ture itself? ^
Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the '
practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them
so high?
Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection, .
I rate them as high as the highest—then a child born of a
woman and man I rate beyond all rate.
We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,
I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,
I am this day just as much in love with them as you.
Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the
earth. '
We consider bibles and 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.
4
The 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
who are here for him.
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for
them.
The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you.
Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the
going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.
List close my scholars dear.
Doctrines, politics and civilisation exurge from you.
Sculpture and monuments and anything inscribed anywhere are
tallied in you.
A Song for Occupations 183
The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach
is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,
If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they
all be?
The most renown'd poems would be ashes, orations and plays
would be vacuums.
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it
(Did think it was in the white or grey stone ? or the lines of
you
the 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 the
beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing
his sweet romanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that
of the women's chorus.
It is nearer and farther than they.
5
Will the whole come back then?
Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass ? is
there nothing greater or more ?
Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul ?
Strange and hard that paradox true I give.
Objects gross and the unseen soul are one.
House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,
Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roof-
ing, 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
brick-kiln—
Coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness,
echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts
looking through smutch'd faces.
Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men
around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore,
the due combining of ore, limestone, coal,
The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the
bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy
bars of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped T-rail for railroads.
Leaves of Grass
Oil-works^ silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-
saws, the great mills and factories.
Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for façades or window or door-
lintels, the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the
thumb.
The calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire
under the kettle.
The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the
sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of
the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice.
The work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-
maker.
Goods of gutta-percha, papier-maché, colours, brushes, brush-
making, glazier's implements.
The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's ornaments, the
decanter and glasses, the shears and flat-iron.
The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the
counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the
making of all sorts of edged tools.
The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, everything that is done
by 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, plough-
ing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons.
The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,
Pyrotechny, letting off colour'd fireworks at night, fancy
and figures
jets;
Beef on the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher,
the butcher in his killing-clothes.
The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the
scalder's hog-hook, the
tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul,
and the plenteous winter-work of pork-packing.
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and
the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the
piles high
on 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
you are, your daily life !
A Song for Occupations 185
In that and them the heft of the heaviest—in that and them far
more than you estimated (and far less also),
In them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me,
In them, not yourself—^you and your soul enclose all things,
regardless of estimation.
In them the development good—in them all themes, hints,
possibilities.
I do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile, I do not advise
you to stop,
I do not say leadings you thought great are not great.
But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to.
6
Will you seek afar off ? you surely come back at last.
In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the
best.
In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest.
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for
another hour but this hour,
Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother,
nighest neighbour—^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
divine and 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,
W^hen the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that
carved the supporting desk.
When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and
when they touch my body back again.
When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and
child convince.
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watch-
man's daughter.
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly
companions,
I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as
I do of men and women like you.
A SONG OF THE ROLLING EARTH
I
A SONG of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines ?
those curves, angles, dots ?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the
ground and sea.
They are in the air, they are in you.
Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious
sounds out of your friends' mouths ?
No, the real words are more delicious than they.
Human bodies are words, myriads of words
(In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-
shaped, natural, gay.
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of
shame).
Air, soil, water, fire—those are words,
I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with
theirs—my name is nothing to them.
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
air, soil, water, fire, know of my name ?
A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,
sayings, meanings.
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,
are sayings and meanings also.
The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the
earth.
The masters know the earth's words and use them more than
audible words.
Amelioration is one of the earth's words.
The earth neither lags nor hastens,
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A Song of the Rolling Earth 187
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the
jump.
It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences-show just
as much as perfections show.
The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough.
The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal'd
either.
They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print.
They are imbued through all things conveying themselves
willingly.
Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,
I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you ?
To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I ?
(Accouche! accouchez!
Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there.?
Will you squat and stiffe there.?)
The earth does not argue.
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements.
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise.
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out.
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.
The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,
possesses still underneath.
Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes,
the wail of slaves.
Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of
young people, accents of bargainers.
Underneath these possessing words that never fail.
To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother
never fail.
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection
does not fail.
Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue
does not fail.
Of the interminable sisters.
Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,
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Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger
sisters.
The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.
With her ample back towards every beholder.
With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of
age.
Sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undisturb'd.
Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while
her eyes glance back from it.
Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none.
Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.
Seen at hand or seen at a distance.
Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day.
Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion.
Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the
countenances of those who are with them.
From the countenances of children or women or the manly
countenance.
From the open countenances of animals or from inanimate
things.
From the landscape or waters or from the exquisite apparition of
the sky,
From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning
them.
Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with
the same companions.
Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and
sixty-five resistlessly round the sun;
Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred
and sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they.
Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading.
Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, for ever withstanding, passing,
carrying.
The soul's realisation and determination still inheriting.
The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking.
Swift, glad, content, unbereav'd, nothing losing.
Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account.
The divine ship sails the divine sea.
A Song of the Rolling Earth 189
2
Whoever you are ! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
Whoever you are ! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid
and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky.
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.
Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of
the past and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another—not one.
Not one can grow for another—not one.
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him.
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him.
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him.
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him.
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him.
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot
fail.
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
not to the audience.
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own,
or the indication of his own.
3
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who
shall be complete.
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who
remains jagged and broken.
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate
those of the earth.
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the
theory of the earth.
No politics, song, religion, behaviour, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of
the earth.
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I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which
responds love^
It is that which contains itself^ which never invites and never
refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words^
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings
of the earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths
of the earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print
cannot touch.
I swear I see what is better than to tell the best.
It is always to leave the best untold.
When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot.
My tongue is inefíectual on its pivots.
My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
I become a dumb man.
The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow, all or any is best.
It is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer,
Things are not dismiss'd from the places they held before.
The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before.
Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as
before.
But the soul is also real, it too is positive and direct.
No reasoning, no proof has establish'd it.
Undeniable growth has establish'd it.
4
These to echo the tones of souls and the phrases of souls,
(If they did not echo the phrases of souls what were they then?
If they had not reference to you in especial what were they
then?)
I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that
tells the best,
I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
Say on, sayers ! sing on, singers !
Delve ! mould ! pile the words of the earth !
A Song of the Rolling Earth 191
Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,
It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use.
When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects
shall appear.
I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail,
I swear to you they will understand you and justify you.
The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and
encloses all and is faithful to all.
He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you
are not an iota less than they.
You shall be fully glorified in them.
YOUTH, DAY, OLD AGE, AND NIGHT
Youth , large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascina-
tion.
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,
force, fascination?
Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action,
ambition, laughter.
The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and
restoring darkness.
BIRDS OF PASSAGE
SONG OF THE UNIVERSAI
1
Come , said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the universal.
In this broad earth of ours.
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart.
Nestles the seed perfection.
By every life a share or more or less.
None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is
waiting.
2
Lo ! keen-eyed towering science.
As from tall peaks the modem overlooking.
Successive absolute fiats issuing.
Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science,
For it has history gather'd like husks around the globe.
For it the entire starrmyriads roll through the sky.
In spiral routes by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea).
For it the partial to the permanent flowing.
For it the real to the ideal tends.
For it the mystic evolution.
Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.
Forth from their masks, no matter what.
From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears.
Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.
192
Birds of Passage
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and
states.
Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all.
Only the good is universal,
3
Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow.
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering.
High in the purer, happier air.
From imperfection's murkiest cloud.
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light.
One flash of heaven's glory.
To fashion's, custom's discord.
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies.
Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard.
From some far shore the final chorus sounding.
0 the blest eyes, the happy hearts.
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine.
Along the mighty labyrinth.
4
And thou, America,
For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality.
For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.
Thou too surroundest all.
Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too by pathwa}^
broad and new.
To the ideal tendest.
The measur'd faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past.
Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all.
All eligible to all.
All, all for immortality.
Love like the light silently wrapping all,
Nature's amelioration blessing all,
K
194 Leaves of Grass
The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain.
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening
Give me, O God, to sing that thought.
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith.
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us.
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is it a dream ?
Nay but the lack of it the dream.
And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream.
And all the world a dream.
PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!
Come my tan-faced children.
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols ? have you your sharp-edged axes ?
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
For we cannot tarry here.
We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
0 you youths. Western youths.
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship.
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the
foremost.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Have the elder races halted ?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond
the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world.
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the
march.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Birds of Passage 195
We detachments steady throwing,
Down tfie^^dges^through the passes, up the mountains steep.
Conquering, holding, Haring^ venturing as we go the unknown
~
ways, ——
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
We primeval forests felling.
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines
within.
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Colorado men are we.
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high
plateaus.
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we
come.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
blood intervein'd.
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the
Northern,
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
0 resistless, restless race !
0 beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love
for all !
0 I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all).
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stem, impassive, weapon'd
mistress.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers 1
See my children, resolute children.
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter.
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
196 Leaves of Grass
On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly
fill'd.
Through the btittle, through defeat, moving yet and never
stopping,
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
0 to die advancing on !
Are there some of us to droop and die ? has the hour come ?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is
fill'd.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
All the pulses of the world.
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat.
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Life's involv'd and varied pageants.
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work.
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves.
Pioneers ! O pioneers !
All the hapless silent lovers.
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked.
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying.
Pioneers ! O pioneers !
1 too with my soul and body.
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way.
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions
pressing.
Pioneers ! O pioneers !
Lo, the darting, bowling orb !
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets.
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams.
Pioneers ! O pioneers !
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo
wait behind.
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Birds of Passage 197
0 you daughters of the West!
0 you young and elder daughters ! 0 you mothers and you wives !
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Minstrels latent on the prairies !
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done
your work).
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp
amid us.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Not for delectations sweet.
Not the cushion and theslipper, not the peaceful and the studious.
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted
doors ?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground.
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Has the night descended ?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged
nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers ! 0 pioneers !
Till with sound of trumpet.
Far, far off the daybreak call—hark ! how loud and clear I hear
it wind.
Swift ! to the head of the army !—swift ! spring to your places.
Pioneers ! O pioneers !
TO YOU
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet
and hands.
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you.
Your true soul and body appear before me.
Leaves of Grass
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be
my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than
you.
0 I have been dilatory and dumb,
1 should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted
nothing but you.
I will leave all and come and make hymns of you.
None has understood you, but I understand you.
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to
yourself.
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection
in you.
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never
consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-
figure of all.
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-
colour'd light,
But I paint m3TÍads of heads, but paint no head without its
nimbus of gold-colour'd light.
From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it
streams, effulgently flowing for ever.
0 I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you !
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon
yourself all your life.
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time.
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
mockeries, what is their return?)
Birds of Passage 199
The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you.
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accus-
tom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from
yourself, they do not conceal you from me.
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if
these balk others they do not balk me.
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,
premature death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in
•
^
is
There is no virtue, no beauty m man or woman, but as good
in you.
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you.
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for
you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like care-
fully to you,
sooner than I
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God,
sing the songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are ! claim your own at any hazard !
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to
you.
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are
immense and interminable as they.
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of
apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or
mistress over them.
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain
passion, dissolution.
The hopples fall from suffi-
your ankles, you find an unfailing
ciency.
Old the
or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by rest,
whatever you are promulges itself.
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided,
nothing is scanted.
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you
are picks its way.
20o Leaves of Grass
FRANCE
The iSth Year of these States
A GREAT year and place,
A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the
mother's heart closer than any yet.
I walk'd the shores of my Eastern sea.
Heard over the waves the little voice.
Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid
the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings.
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from
the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away
in the tumbrils.
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so
shock'd at the repeated fusillades of the guns.
Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribu-
tion?
Could I wish humanity different?
Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time ?
0 Liberty ! 0 mate for me !
Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to
fetch them out in case of need.
Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy'd.
Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic.
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.
Hence I sign this salute over the sea.
And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,
But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with
perfect trust, no matter how long.
And from to-day, sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath'd
cause, as for all lands,
And I send these words to Paris with my love.
And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them.
For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,
O I hear already the bustle of instruments, thev^
drowning all that would interrupt them, /i
r
Birds of Passage 20I
0 I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march.
It reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness,
1 will run transpose it in words, to justify it,
I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.
MYSELF AND MINE
Myself and mine gymnastic ever.
To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a
boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children.
To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common
people.
And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.
Not for an embroiderer,
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them
also).
But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women.
Not to chisel ornaments.
But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous
supreme Gods, that the States may realise them walking
and talking.
Let me have my own way.
Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws.
Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up
agitation and conflict,
I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was
thought most worthy.
(Who are you ? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life ?
Will you turn aside all your life ? will you grub and chatter all
your life ?
And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages,
reminiscences.
Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly
a single word ?)
Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,
I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and
modem continually.
202 Leaves of Grass
I give nothing as duties,
What others give as duties I give as living impulses,
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?)
Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse
unanswerable questions.
Who are they I see and touch, and what about them ?
What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender
directions and indirections?
I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but
listen to my enemies, as I myself do,
I charge you for ever reject those who would expound me, for I
cannot expound myself,
I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.
After me, vista !
0 I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,
1 henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser,
a steady grower.
Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.
I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,
I perceive I have no time to lose.
YEAR OF METEORS
(1859-60)
Year of meteors! brooding year 1
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the
scaffold in Virginia,
(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, T watch'd,
I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but
trembling with age and your unheal'd wounds you mounted
the scaffold);
I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,
The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships
and their cargoes.
Birds of Passage 203
The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill'd with
immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold.
Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I
welcome give.
And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me,
young prince of England!
(Remember you surging Manhattan's crowds as you pass'd with
your cortege of nobles ?
There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attach-
ment);
Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my
bay.
Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she
was six hundred feet long.
Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I
forget not to sing;
Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring
in heaven.
Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear
shooting over our heads,
(A moment, a moment long it sail'd its balls of unearthly light
over our heads.
Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone);
Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with gleams from them would
I gleam and patch these chants.
Your chants, 0 year all mottled with evil and good—year of
forebodings !
Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—^lo! even
here one equally transient and strange !
As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is
this chant.
What am Ifmyself but one of your meteors ?
WITH ANTECEDENTS
I
With antecedents.
With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past
ages.
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I
am.
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece, and Rome,
204 Leaves of Grass
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon,
With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars, and
journeys.
With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle.
With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour,
the crusader, and the monk.
With those old continents whence we have come to this new
continent,
With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,
With the fading religions and priests,
With the small shores we look back to from our own large and
present shores.
With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at
these years.
You and me arrived—America arrived and making this year,
This year ! sending itself ahead countless years to come.
2
0 but it is not the years—it is I, it is You,
We touch all laws and tally all antecedents.
We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily
include them and more.
We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid
evil and good,
All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light.
The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around
Its us.
sun, and its again, all swing around us.
As for me (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days),
1 have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,
I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject
no part.
(Have I forgotten any part? anything in the past?
Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)
I respect Assyria, China, Teu tonia, and the Hebrews,
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god,
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true without
exception,
I assert that all past days were what they must have been.
And that they could no-how have been better than they were,
Birds of Passage 205
And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is.
And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they
are.
3
In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past,
And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the
Present time,
I know that the past was great and the future will be great,
And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,
(For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man's
sake, your sake if you are he),
And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the
centre of all days, all races.
And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races
and days, or ever will come.
A BROADWAY PAGEANT
I
Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys.
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive.
Ride to-day through Manhattan.
Libertad ! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errand-
bearers.
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks
marching.
But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.
When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pave-
ments.
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar
I love.
When the round-mouth'd guns out of the smoke and smell I love
spit their salutes.
When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heaven-
clouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze.
When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the
wharves, thicken with colours.
When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak.
When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows.
When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-
standers, when the mass is densest.
When the façades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes
gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time.
When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant
moves forward visible.
When the summons is made, when the answer that waited
thousands of years answers,
I too rising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with
the crowd, and gaze with them.
206
A Broadway Pageant 207
2
Superb-faced Manhattan !
Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.
To us, my city.
Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite
sides, to walk in the space between.
To-day our Antipodes comes.
The Originatress comes.
The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld.
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion.
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments.
With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes.
The race of Brahma comes.
See my cantabile! these and more are flashing to us from the
procession.
As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing
before us.
For not the envoys nor the tann'd Japanee from his island only.
Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself
appears, the past, the dead.
The murky night-moming, of wonder and fable inscrutable.
The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees.
The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews,
the ancient of ancients,
Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more
are in the pageant-procession.
Geography, the world, is in it.
The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond.
The coast you henceforth are facing—you Libertad ! from your
Western golden shores.
The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse
are curiously here.
The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along
the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama.
Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman.
The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the
secluded emperors.
2o8 Leaves of Grass
Confucius himself^ the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the
castes, all.
Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay
mountains.
From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of
China,
From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands,
from Malaysia,
These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me,
and are seiz'd by me.
And I am seiz'd by them, and friendlily held by them.
Till as here them all I chant, Libertad ! for themselves and for
you.
For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,
I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,
I chant the world on my Western sea,
I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,
I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision
it comes to me,
I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,
I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on
those groups of sea-islands.
My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes.
My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind.
Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races
reborn, refresh'd.
Lives, works resumed—the object I know not—but the old, the
Asiatic renew'd as it must be.
Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.
3
And you Libertad of the world !
You shall sit in the middle well-pois'd thousands and thousands
of years.
As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you.
As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends
her eldest son to you.
The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed.
The ring is circled, the journey is done.
The box-lid is but perceptibly open'd, nevertheless the perfume
pours copiously out of the whole box.
A Broadway Pageant 209
Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,
Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for you
are all.
Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending
messages over the archipelagoes to you.
Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.
Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the
tramping ?
Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from
Paradise so long?
Were the centuries steadily footing it that way, all the while
unknown, for you, for reasons?
They are justified, they are accomplish'd, they shall now be
turn'd the other way also, to travel toward you thence.
They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake,
Libertad.
o
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 child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo.
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if
they were alive.
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries.
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me.
From your memories, sad brother, from the fitful risings and
fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if
with tears.
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the
mist.
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease.
From the myriad thence-arous'd words.
From the word stronger and more delicious than any.
From such as now they start the scene revisiting.
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing.
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again.
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter.
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
Once Paumanok,
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was
growing.
Up this seashore in some briers.
Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together.
And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,
2io
Sea-Drift 21 I
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,
And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with
bright eyes.
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing
them.
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
Shine ! shine ! shine I
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 mountainsfrom 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 PaumanoHs shore ;
I wait and 1 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.
2 I 2 Leaves of Grass
Yes, my brother, I know.
The rest might not, but I have treasur'd every note.
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding.
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the
shadows.
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and
sights after their sorts,
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listen'd long and long.
Listen'd to keep, to sing, now translating the notes.
Following you, my brother.
Soothe ! soothe ! soothe !
Close on its waves 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—0 I think it is heavy with love, with love.
0 madly the sea pushes upon the land.
With love, with love.
0 night ! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers 2
What is that little black thing 1 see there in the white 2
Loud ! loud ! loud 1
Loud I call to you, my love I
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 I
What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow 2
0 it is the shape, the shape of my mate !
0 moon, do not keep her from me any longer.
Land ! land I 0 land !
Whichever way I turn, 0 I think you could give me my mate back
again if you only would.
For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look.
Sea-Drift 213
O rising stars I
Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some
of you.
0 throat ! 0 trembling throat !
Sound clearer through the atmosphere !
Pierce the woods, the earth,
Somewhere listening to catch you must he the one I want.
Shake out carols !
Solitary here, the nights carols !
Carols of lonesome love ! deatK s carols !
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon I
0 under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea !
0 reckless despairing carols.
But soft I sink low !
Soft ! let me just murmur,
And do you wait a moment you husky-nois^d sea.
For somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me.
So faint, I must be still, be still to listen.
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately
to me.
Hither my love !
Here I am ! here !
With this just-sustain^d note I announce myself to you,
This gentle call is for you my love, for you.
Do not be decofd elsewhere,
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice.
That is the fluttering, thefluttering of the spray,
Those are the shadows of leaves.
0 darkness I 0 in vain !
0 I am very sick and sorrowful.
0 brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea I
0 troubled reflection in the sea !
0 throat I 0 throbbing heart I
And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.
0 past I 0 happy life ! 0 songs of joy !
In the air, in the woods, over fields.
214 Leaves of Grass
Loved I loved ! loved ! loved ! loved I
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 sand of Paumanok's shore grey and rustling.
The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the face
of the sea almost touching.
The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair
the atmosphere dallying.
The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last
tumultuously bursting.
The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing.
The strange tears down the cheeks coursing.
The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering.
The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying.
To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing, some drown'd
secret hissing.
To the outsetting bard.
Demon or bird ! (said the boy's soul).
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have
heard you.
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake.
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer,
louder, and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never
to die.
O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating
you.
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations.
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me.
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what
there in the night.
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon.
The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within.
The unknown want, the destin)'- of me.
Sea-Drift 215
O give me the clew ! (it lurks in the night here somewhere)^
0 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 whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-
you
waves ?
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands?
Whereto answering, the sea.
Delaying not, hurrying not,
Whisper'd me through the night, and very plainly before day-
break,
Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death.
And again death, death, death, death.
Hissing melodious, neither like the bird not 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 grey beach.
With the thousand responsive songs at random.
My own songs awaked from that hour.
And with them the key, the word up from the waves.
The word of the sweetest song and all songs.
That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet,
(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in sweet
garments, bending aside).
The sea whisper'd me.
AS I EBB'D WITH THE OCEAN OF LIFE
I
As 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,
2i6 Leaves of Grass
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
land of the globe.
Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow
those slender 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 t3^es.
2
As 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.
0 baffied, 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 have not once had the least idea who or what I am.
But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'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.
1 perceive I have not really understood anything, not a single
object, and that no man ever can.
Sea-Drift 217
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart
upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.;
3
You oceans both, I close with you,
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 débris.
You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot.
What is yours is mine, my father.
I too Paumanok,
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been
wash'd on your shores,
I too am but a trail of drift and débris,
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 mur-
muring I envy.
4
Ebb, ocean of life (the flow will return).
Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother.
Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me.
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch
you or gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you 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.
2i8 Leaves of Grass
(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last,
See, the prismatic colours 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 ;
0 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;
0 storm, embodied, rising, careering with swift steps along the
beach !
0 wild and dismal night storm, with wind—0 belching and
desperate !
0 shade so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance
and regulated pace.
But away at night as you fly, none looking—0 then the un-
loosen'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.
Sea-Drift 219
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 look'st 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—0 a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.
0 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, 0 steersman, you mind the loud admonition,
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under
her grey sails.
The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds
away gaily and safe.
But 0 the ship, the immortal ship ! 0 ship aboard the ship !
Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging^
220 Leaves of Grass
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 Jupitei",
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
in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the
Pleiades shall emerge.
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall
shine 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
shall again 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).
Sea-Drift 221
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 thick
tangle, openings, and pink turf.
Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold,
the play of light through the water.
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass,
rushes, and the aliment of the swimmers.
Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling
close to the bottom.
The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or dis-
porting with his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-
leopard, and the sting-ray.
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths,
breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do.
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air
breathed by beings like us who walk this sphere.
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other
spheres.
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
clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all.
All 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 in
different worlds.
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the
brutes.
222 Leaves of Grass
All nations, colours, barbarisms, civilisations, 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 for ever span them and compactly hold and enclose
them.
SONG FOR ALL SEAS, ALL SHIPS
1
To-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
spreading far 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
nor death 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 for
seed preserv'd.)
2
Flaunt out, 0 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 man
one 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.
Sea-Drift 223
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.
PATROLLING 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-grey 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 yeamfully
flowing.
The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome
under the sun,
A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many
fragments.
Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.
BY THE ROADSIDE
A BOSTON BALLAD
(1854)
To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early.
Here's a good place at the comer, I must stand and see the
show.
Clear the way there Jonathan!
Way for the President's marshal—way for the government
cannonI
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons (and the apparitions
copiously tumbling).
I love to look on the Stars and Stripes, I hope the fifes will play
Yankee Doodle.
How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops !
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston
town.
A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and
bloodless.
Why this is indeed a show—it has called the dead out of the
earth !
The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see 1
Phantoms I phantoms countless by flank and rear I
Cock'd hats of mothy mould—cmtches made of mist !
Arms in slings—old men leaning on young men's shoulders.
What troubles you Yankee phantoms.? what is all this chatter-
ing of bare gums?
Does the ague convulse your limbs? do you mistake your
cmtches for firelocks and level them ?
224
By the Roadside 225
If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President's
marshal,
If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.
For shame old maniacs—bring down those toss'd arms, and let
your white hair be.
Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from
the windows.
See how well dress'd, see how orderly they conduct themselves.
Worse and worse—can't you stand it? are you
Is this retreating?
hour with the living too dead for you ?
Retreat then—^pell-mell!
To your graves—back—back to the hills old limpers !
I do not think you belong here anyhow.
But there is one thing that belongs here—shall I tell what
it you
is, gentlemen of Boston?
I will whisper it to the Mayor, he shall send a committee to
England,
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the
royal vault.
Dig out King George's cofSn, unwrap him quick from the
clothes, box grave-
up his bones for a journey,
Find a swift Yankee clipper—here is freight for you, black-
bellied clipper.
Up with your anchor—shake out your sails—steer
toward Boston straight
bay.
Now call for the President's marshal again, bring out the govern-
ment cannon,
Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another
guard it with foot and procession,
dragoons.
This centre-piece for them;
Look, all orderly citizens—look from the windows, women !
The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those
that will not stay.
Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the
skull.
p
2 20 Leaves of Grass
You have got your revenge, old buster—the crown is come to its |
own, and more than its own.
Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan—you are a made
man from this day, |
You are mighty cute—and here is one of your bargains. ¡
EUROPE
The 'j2nd and yyd Years of These States \
Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves.
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself.
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats |
of kings.
O hope and faith !
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives !
O many a sicken'd heart !
Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.
!
And you, paid to defile the People—you liars, mark !
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts.
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from !
his simplicity the poor man's wages.
For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh'd j
at in the breaking, |
Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, ■
or the heads of the nobles fall;
The People scom'd the ferocity of kings. .
But the sweetness of mercy brew'd bitter destruction, and the '
frighten'd monarchs come back, ;
Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, ■
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape, 1
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front, and form, i
in scarlet folds.
Whose face and eyes none may see, i
Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm, j
One finger crook'd pointed high over the top, like the head of a 4
snake appears. |
By the Roadside 227
Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of
young men,
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are
flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud.
And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.
Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc'd
by the grey lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with un-
slaughter'd vitality.
They live in other young men, O kings !
They live in brothers again ready to defy you.
They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.
Not a grave of the murder'd for freedom but grows seed for
freedom, in its turn to bear seed.
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the
snows nourish.
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counselling,
cautioning.
Liberty, let others despair of you—I never despair of you.
Is the house shut? is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching.
He will soon return, his messengers come anon.
A HAND-MIRROR
Hold it up sternly—see this it sends back (who is it? is it
you ?)
Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth.
No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy
step.
Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's
flesh.
228 Leaves of Grass
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination.
Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams.
Words babble, hearing and touch callous.
No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
Such a result so soon—and from such a beginning !
GODS
Lover divine and perfect Comrade,
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,
Be thou my God.
Thou, thou, the Ideal Man,
Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving.
Complete in body and dilate in spirit.
Be thou my God.
O Death (for Life has served its turn).
Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion.
Be thou my God.
Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,
(To break the stagnant tie—thee, thee to free, 0 soul),
Be thou my God.
All great ideas, the races' aspirations.
All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts.
Be ye my Gods.
Or Time and Space,
Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous.
Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,
Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night.
Be ye my Gods.
GERMS
Forms , qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,
The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars.
The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped.
By the Roadside 229
Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants,
whatever they may be.
Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations
and effects.
Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere,
stand provided for in a handful of space, which I extend
my arm and half enclose with my hand.
That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs
of all.
THOUGHTS
Of ownership—^as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure
enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself ;
Of vista—suppose some sight in arriere through the formative
chaos, presuming the growth, fullness, life, now attain'd on
the journey,
(But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued);
Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become
supplied—and of what will yet be supplied.
Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in
what will yet be supplied.
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER
When I heard the leam'd astronomer.
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me.
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them.
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room.
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick.
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself.
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time.
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
PERFECTIONS
Only themselves understand themselves and the like of them-
selves.
As souls only understand souls.
230 Leaves of Grass
o ME! 0 LIFE!
0 ME ! 0 life ! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish.
Of myself for ever reproaching myself (for who more foolish than
I, and who more faithless?).
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew'd.
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I
see around me.
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me inter-
twined.
The question, O me ! so sad, recurring—What good amid these,
0 me, 0 life?
Answer
That you are here—that life exists and identity.
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
TO A PRESIDENT
All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn'd of Nature—of the politics of Nature
you have not leam'd the great amplitude, rectitude, im-
partiality.
You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,
And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from
these States.
I SIT AND LOOK OUT
1 SIT and look upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous
seducer of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted
to be hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs
and prisoners.
By the Roadside 231
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons
upon labourers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—all the meanness and agony without end I sitting
look out upon.
See, hear, and am silent.
TO RICH GIVERS
What you give me I cheerfully accept,
A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I
rendezvous with my poems,
A traveller's lodging and breakfast as I journey through the
States—why should I be ashamed to own such gifts ? why
to advertise for them ?
For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and
woman.
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the
gifts of the universe.
THE DALLIANCE OF THE EAGLES
Skirting the river road (my forenoon walk, my rest).
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the
eagles.
The rushing amorous contact high in space together.
The clinching, interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel.
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling.
In tumbling, turning, clustering loops, straight downward falling.
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate
diverse flight.
She hers, he his, pursuing.
ROAMING IN THOUGHT
{After reading Hegel)
Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is
Good steadily hastening towards immortality.
And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge
itself and become lost and dead.
Leaves of Grass
A FARM PICTURE
Through the ample open door of the peaceful country bam,
A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,
And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.
A CHILD'S AMAZE
Silent and amazed even when a little boy,
I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his
statements.
As contending against some being or influence.
THE RUNNER
On a flat road rans the well-train'd runner.
He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,
He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he mns.
With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd.
BEAUTIFUL WOMEN
Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young.
The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than
the young.
MOTHER AND BABE
I SEE the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother.
The sleeping mother and babe—hush'd, I study them long and
long.
THOUGHT
Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those
who do not believe in men.
By the Roadside 233
VISOR'D
A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form.
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
Falling upon her even when she sleeps.
THOUGHT
Of Justice—as if Justice could be anything but the same ample
law, expounded by natural judges and saviours,
As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.
GLIDING O'ER AIX
Gliding o'er all, through all.
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing.
The voyage of the soul—not life alone.
Death, many deaths I'll sing.
HAST NEVER COME TO THEE AN HOUR
Hast never come to thee an hour,
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,
fashions, wealth?
These eager business aims—books, politics, art, amours.
To utter nothingness?
THOUGHT
Of Equality—as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances
and rights as myself—as if it were not indispensable to
my own rights that others possess the same.
TO OLD AGE
I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly
as it pours in the great sea.
234 Leaves of Grass
LOCATIONS AND TIMES
Locations and times—what is it in me that meets them all,
whenever and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colours, densities, odours—what is it in me that corre-
sponds with them?
OFFERINGS
A thousand perfect men and women appear.
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and
youths, with offerings.
TO THE STATES
To Identify the i6th, 17/A, or i?>th Presidentiad
Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight—scum ñoating atop of the waters.
Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (0 South, your torrid suns! 0
North, your arctic freezings !)
Are those really Congressmen; are those the great Judges? is
that the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for
reasons ;
(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent
shoots we all duly awake.
South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely
awake).
DRUM-TAPS
FIRST 0 SONGS FOR A PRELUDE
First 0 songs for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the stretch'd tympanum pride and joy in my
city,
How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue.
How at once with lithe limb unwaiting a moment she sprang,
(0 superb ! 0 Manhattan, my own, my peerless !
0 strongest in the hour of danger, in crisis ! 0 truer than
you
steel !)
How you sprang—how you threw off the costumes of peace with
indifferent hand.
How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were
heard in their stead.
How led to the war (that shall serve for our
you prelude, songs
of soldiers),
How Manhattan drum-taps led.
Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,
Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming
and turbulent city.
Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth.
With her million children around her, suddenly.
At dead of night, at news from the south,
Incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement.
A shock electric, the night sustain'd it.
Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its
myriads.
From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the
doorways,
Leapt they tumultuous, and lo ! Manhattan arming.
To the drum-taps prompt.
The young men falling in and arming.
The mechanics arming (the trowel, the jack-plane, the black-
smith's hammer, tost aside with precipitation),
235
236 Leaves of Grass
The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the
court,
The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down,
throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses' backs.
The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper,
all porter,
leaving;
Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm.
The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to
wear their accoutrements, they buckle the straps
Outdoors carefully.
arming, mdoors arming, the flash of the musket-
barrels.
The white tents cluster in camps, the arm'd sentries around, the
sunrise cannon and again at sunset,
Arm'd regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and
embark from the wharves,
(How good they look as they tramp down to the river,
with their sweaty,
guns on their shoulders !
How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown
faces and their clothes and knapsacks cover'd with
dust !)
The blood of the city up—arm'd I arm'd ! the cry
The everywhere.
flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the
public buildings and stores.
The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his
mother,
(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to
detain him).
The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clear-
ing the way.
The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their
favourites.
The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn
rumble along,
lightly over the stones,
(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence.
Soon unlimber'd to begin the red business);
All the mutter of preparation, all the determin'd arming.
The hospital service, the lint, bandages, and medicines.
The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in
earnest, no mere parade now;
War! an arm'd race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no
turning away;
War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm'd race is advancing
to welcome it.
Drum-Taps 237
Mannahatta a-march—and it's 0 to sing it well !
It's 0 for a manly life in the camp.
And the sturdy artillery,
The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the
guns,
Unlimber them ! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for
courtesies merely.
Put in something now besides powder and wadding).
And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,
Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city.
Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown'd
amid all your children.
But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.
EIGHTEEN SIXTY-ONE
Arm'd year—year of the struggle.
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year,
Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas
piano.
But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
carrying a rifle on your shoulder.
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a
knife in the belt at your side.
As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing
across the continent.
Your masculine voice, 0 year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen,
the dwellers in Manhattan,
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and
Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the
Alleghanies,
Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck
along the Ohio river.
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
Chattanooga on the mountain top.
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue,
bearing weapons, robust year,
Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again.
238 Leaves of Grass
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd
cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.
BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!
Beat ! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force.
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have
now with his bride.
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gather-
ing his grain.
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles
blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the
streets ;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no
sleepers must sleep in those beds.
No bargainers' bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—
would they continue ?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the
judge ?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.
Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation.
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer.
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man.
Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties.
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting
the hearses.
So strong you thump, 0 terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.
FROM PAUMANOK STARTING I FLY LIKE A BIRD
From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird.
Around and around to soar to sing the idea of all.
To the north betaking myself to sing there arctic songs.
Drum-Taps 239
To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, to Michigan then,
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs (they are
inimitable);
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to Missouri and Kansas
and Arkansas to sing theirs.
To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Carolinas and Georgia to
sing theirs.
To Texas and so along up toward California, to roam accepted
everywhere ;
To sing first (to the tap of the war-drum if need be).
The idea of all, of the Western world one and inseparable.
And then the song of each member of these States.
SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK
Poet
O A new song, a free song.
Flapping, fiapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices
clearer.
By the wind's voice and that of the drum.
By the banner's voice and child's voice and sea's voice and
father's voice.
Low on the ground and high in the air.
On the ground where father and child stand.
In the upward air where their eyes turn.
Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.
Words! book-words I what are you?
Words no more, for hearken and see.
My song is there in the open air, and I must sing.
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
I'll weave the chord and twine in,
Man's desire and babe's desire, I'll twine them in, I'll put in life,
I'll put the bayonet's flashing point, I'll let bullets and slugs
whizz,
(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future.
Crying with trumpet voice. Arouse and beware! Beware and
arouse I)
I'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full of
joy.
Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete.
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.
240 Leaves of Grass
Pennant
Come up here, bard, bard.
Come up here, soul, soul.
Come up here, dear little child.
To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the
measureless light.
Child
Father, what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long finger?
And what does it say to me all the while?
Father
Nothing, my babe, you see in the sky.
And nothing at all to you it says—but look you, my babe.
Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the
money-shops opening.
And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets
with goods ;
These, ah, these, how valued and toil'd for these !
How envied by all the earth.
Poet
Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high.
On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels.
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward
land.
The great steady wind from west or west-by-south.
Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.
But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter.
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which
lashes.
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death.
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings.
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land.
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings.
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner
and pennant.
Aloft there flapping and flapping*
Drum-Taps 241
Child
0 father it is alive—it is full of people—it has children,
0 now it seems to me it is talking to its children,
1 hear it—it talks to me—0 it is wonderful !
0 it stretches—it spreads and runs so fast—0 my father.
It is so broad it covers the whole sky.
Father
Cease, cease, my foolish babe.
What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me;
Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and
pennants aloft.
But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid
wall'd houses.
Banner and Pennant
Speak to the child 0 bard out of Manhattan,
To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,
Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we
know not why.
For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing.
Only flapping in the wind ?
Poet
1 hear and see not strips of cloth alone,
I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,
I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear
I Liberty!
hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,
I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,
I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-
bird, and look down as from a height,
I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities
with wealth incalculable,
I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields
or bams,
I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded,
going up, or flnish'd,
I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn
by the locomotives,
I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New
Orleans,
Q
î
242 Leaves of Grass j
I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile j
hovering, 1
I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the j
Southern plantation, and again to California; i
Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy gather- j
ings, earn'd '
wages,
See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty
States (and many more to come).
See forts on the shores of harbours, see ships sailing in and out; j
Then over all (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen'd pennant !
shaped like a sword.
Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance—and now the
halyards have rais'd it.
Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner, 1
Discarding peace over all the sea and land. |
j
Banner and Pennant \
Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave! j
No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone, ;
We may be terror and carnage, and are so now.
Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States |
(nor any five, nor ten), >
Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city, !
But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the |
mines below, are ours, '
And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and small.
And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits are ours.
Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours—while
we over all.
Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square
miles, the capitals.
The forty millions of people,—0 bard ! in life and death supreme, |
We, even we, henceforth fiaunt out masterful, high up above, j
Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through 1
'
.
This song to the soul of one poor little child.
i
Child
O my father, I like not the houses.
They will never to me be anything, nor do I like money.
But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner
I like.
That pennant I would be and must be.
Drum-Taps 243
Father
Child of mine, you fill me with anguish,
To be that pennant would be too fearful.
Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, for ever.
It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy everything.
Forward to stand in front of wars—and 0, such wars!—what
have you to do with them?
With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?
Banner
Demons and death then I sing.
Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war.
And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of
children.
Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash
of the sea.
And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop'd in smoke.
And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and
pines.
And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and
the hot sun shining south.
And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern
shore, and my Western shore the same.
And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi
with bends and chutes.
And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of
Missouri,
The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving
an atom.
Pour in ! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the
yield of all.
Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,
No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound.
But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no
more.
Croaking like crows here in the wind.
Poet
My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last.
Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty
and resolute.
244 Leaves of Grass
I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen'd and
blinded.
My hearing and tongue are come to me (a little child taught
me),
I hear from above, 0 pennant of war, your ironical call and
demand.
Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you) 0
banner !
Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their pros-
perity (if need be, you shall again have every one of those
houses to destroy them.
You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast,
full of comfort, built with money.
May they stand fast, then ? not an hour except you above them
and all stand fast);
0 banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you,
nor the material good nutriment.
Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the
ships.
Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching
and carrying cargoes.
Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues—but you as hence-
forth I see you.
Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars (ever-
enlarging stars).
Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch'd by the sun,
measuring the sky,
(Passionately seen and yearn'd for by one poor little child.
While others remain busy or smartly talking, for ever teaching
thrift, thrift);
0 you up there ! 0 pennant ! where you undulate like a snake
hissing so curious.
Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody
death, loved by me.
So loved—0 you banner leading the day with stars brought from
the night !
Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—(absolute
owner of all)—0 banner and pennant !
1 too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing—houses,
machines are nothing—I see them not,
I see but you, 0 warlike pennant! 0 banner so broad, with
stripes, I sing you only.
Flapping up there in the wind.
Drum-Taps 245
RISE, 0 DAYS, FROM YOUR FATHOMLESS DEEPS
1
Rise, 0 days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer
sweep,
Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour'd what the earth
gave me,
Long I roam'd the woods of the north, long I watch'd Niagara
pouring,
I travell'd the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross'd the
Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus,
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail'd out to
sea,
I sail'd through the storm, I was refresh'd by the storm,
I watch'd with joy the threatening maws of the waves,
I mark'd the white combs where they career'd so high, curlmg
over,
I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds.
Saw from below what arose and mounted (0 superb ! 0 wild as
my heart, and powerful !),
Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow'd after the lightning.
Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and
fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky;
These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet
pensive and masterful.
All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me.
Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.
2
'Twas well, 0 soul—'twas a good preparation you gave me.
Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill.
Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never
gave us.
Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier
cities.
Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring,
Torrents of men (sources and rills of the North-west, are you
indeed inexhaustible?),
What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those
storms of the mountains and sea?
What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen?
246 Leaves of Grass
Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds ?
Lo ! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and
savage,
Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front—Cincinnati,
Chicago, unchain'd;
What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes
here.
How it climbs with daring feet and hands—^how it dashes !
How the true thunder bellows after the lightning—how bright
the flashes of lightning !
How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown
through the dark by those flashes of lightning !
(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the
dark.
In a lull of the deafening confusion.)
3
Thunder on ! stride on. Democracy ! strike with vengeful stroke !
And do you rise higher than ever yet, 0 days, 0 cities !
Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms ! you have done me good,
My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong
nutriment.
Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads through farms,
only half satisfied.
One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl'd on the
ground before me.
Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically
hissing low ;
The cities I loved so well I abandon'd and left, I sped to the
certainties suitable to me.
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and
Nature's dauntlessness,
I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish it only,
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air
I waited long;
But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,
I have witness'd the true lightning, I have witness'd my cities
electric,
I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,
Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary
wilds.
No more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea.
Drum-Taps 247
VIRGINIA—THE WEST
The noble sire fallen on evil days,
I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,
(Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance).
The insane knife toward the Mother of All.
The noble son on sinewy feet advancing,
I out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio's waters and of
saw,
Indiana,
To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring,
Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.
Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking.
As to you Rebellious (I seemed to hear her say), why strive
against me, and why seek my life?
When you yourself for ever provide to defend me ?
For you provided me Washington—and now these also.
CITY OF SHIPS
City of ships !
(0 the black ships ! 0 the fierce ships !
0 the beautiful sharp-bow'd steamships and sail-ships !)
City of the world ! (for all races are here.
All the lands of the earth make contributions here);
City of the sea ! city of hurried and glittering tides !
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in
and out with eddies and foam !
City of wharves and stores—city of tall façades of marble and
iron !
Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city 1
Spring be indeed
up, O city—not for peace alone, but yourself,
warlike !
Fear not—submit to no models but your own, 0 city!
Behold me—incarnate me as I have incarnated you 1
1 have rejected nothing you offer'd me—^whom you adopted I
have adopted.
Good or bad I never question you—I love all—I do not condemn
anything,
I chant and celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no more.
In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine.
War, red war is my song through your streets, 0 city!
248 Leaves of Grass
THE CENTENARIAN'S STORY
Volunteer of 1861-2 (at Washington Park, Brooklyn, assisting the
Centenarian)
Give me your hand, old
The Revolutionary,
hill-top is nigh, but a few steps
the (make room,
Up path gentlemen).
you have follow'd me well, spite of your hundred
and extra years.
You can walk, old man, though your
Your eyes are almost
faculties done.
serve you, and presently I must have them serve
me.
Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us
On the means.
plain below recruits are drilling and
There is the exercising.
camp, one regiment departs
Do hear the to-morrow.
you officers giving their orders ?
Do you hear the clank of the muskets ?
Why, what comes over you now, old man
Why do you tremble and clutch my hand so
The troops but convulsively?
are drilling, they are yet surrounded with
Around them smiles,
at hand the well-drest friends and the
While splendid and women.
warm the afternoon sun shines
Green the midsummer down.
verdure and fresh blows the
breeze. dallying
O'er proud and peaceful cities and arm of the sea between.
But drill and parade are over, they march back to
Only hear that quarters.
approval of hands ! hear what a clapping !
As wending the crowds now part and
Not for disperse—but we, old
nothing have I man.
brought you hither—we must
You to speak in remain.
your turn, and I to listen and tell.
The Centenarian
When I clutch'd your hand it was not with
But terror.
suddenly pouring about me here on
And below every side.
there where the boys were drilling, and up the
they slopes
ran.
And where tents are pitch'd, and wherever you see south and
south-east and south-west.
Drum-Taps 249
Over hill, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods.
And along the shores, in mire (now fill'd over) came again and
suddenly raged.
As eighty-five years a-gone no mere parade receiv'd with
applause of friends.
But a battle which I took part in myself—aye, long ago as it is,
I took part in it.
Walking then this hill-top, this same ground.
Aye, this is the ground,
My blind eyes even as I speak behold it re-peopled from graves.
The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear.
Rude forts appear again, the old hoop'd guns are mounted,
I see the lines of rais'd earth stretching from river to bay,
I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes;
Here we lay encamp'd, it was this time in summer also.
As I talk I remember all, I remember the Declaration,
It was read here, the whole army paraded, it was read to us here.
By his staff surrounded the General stood in the middle, he held
up his unsheath'd sword.
It glitter'd in the sun in full sight of the army.
'Twas a bold act then—the English war-ships had just arrived.
We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor.
And the transports swarming with soldiers.
A few days more and they landed, and then the battle.
Twenty thousand were brought against us,
A veteran force fumish'd with good artillery.
I tell not now the whole of the battle.
But one brigade early in the forenoon order'd forward to engage
the red-coats.
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march'd.
And how long and well it stood confronting death.
Who do you think that was marching steadily sternly confronting
death ?
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais'd in Virginia and Maryland, and most of them known
personally to the General.
250 Leaves of Grass
Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus'
waters,
Till of a sudden unlook'd for by defiles through the woods, gain'd
at night,
The British advancing, rounding in from the east, fiercely playing
their guns.
That brigade of the youngest was cut off and at the enemy's
mercy.
The General watch'd them from this hill.
They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environ-
ment.
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the
middle.
But 0 from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning
them!
It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General,
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish.
Meanwhile the British manoeuvr'd to draw us out for a pitch'd
battle.
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch'd battle.
We fought the fight in detachments.
Sallying forth we fought at several points, but in each the luck
was against us.
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push'd us back
to the works on this hill.
Till we tum'd menacing here, and then he left us.
That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two
thousand strong.
Few retum'd, nearly all remain in Brooklyn.
That and here my General's first battle.
No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not conclude
with applause.
Nobody clapp'd hands here then.
But in darkness, in mist on the ground under a chill rain.
Wearied that night we lay foil'd and sullen.
Drum-Taps 251
While scornfully laugh'd many an arrogant lord off against us
encamp'd,
Quite within hearing, feasting, clinking wine-glasses together
over their victory.
So dull and damp and another day,
But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing.
Silent as a ghost while they thought they were sure of him, my
General retreated.
I saw him at the river-side,
Down by the ferry lit by torches, hastening the embarcation;
My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass'd
over,
And then (it was just ere sunrise), these eyes rested on him for
the last time.
Every one else seem'd fill'd with gloom,
Many no doubt thought of capitulation.
But when my General pass'd me.
As he stood in his boat and look'd toward the coming sun,
I saw something different from capitulation.
Terminus
Enough, the Centenarian's story ends.
The two, the past and present, have interchanged,
I myself as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now
speaking.
And is this the ground Washington trod?
And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he
cross'd,
As resolute in defeat as other generals in their proudest triumphs ?
I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward,
I must preserve that look as it beam'd on you rivers of Brooklyn.
See—as the annual round returns the phantoms return,
It is the 27th of August and the British have landed.
The battle begins and goes against us, behold through the smoke
Washington's face,
252 Leaves of Grass
The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march'd forth to
intercept the enemy,
They are cut off, murderous artillery from the hills plays upon
them,
Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag.
Baptized that day in many a young man's bloody wounds.
In death, defeat, and sisters', mothers' tears.
Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more
valuable than your owners supposed ;
In the midst of you stands an encampment very old.
Stands for ever the camp of that dead brigade.
CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD
A LINE in long array where they wind betwixt green islands.
They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark
to the musical clank.
Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop
to drink.
Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture,
the negligent rest on the saddles.
Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the
ford—while.
Scarlet and blue and snowy white.
The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind.
BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE
I SEE before me now a travelling army halting.
Below a fertile valley spread, with bams and the orchards of
summer,
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt, in places rising
high.
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes dingily
seen.
The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and far, some away up
on the mountain.
The shadowy forms of men and horses, looming, large-sized,
flickering.
And over all the sky—the sky ! far, far out of reach, studded,
breaking out, the eternal stars.
Drum-Taps 253
AN ARMY CORPS ON THE MARCH
With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip, and
now an irregular volley.
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press
on.
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun—the dust-cover'd men.
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground.
With artillery interspers'd—the wheels rumble, the horses sweat,
As the army corps advances.
BY THE BIVOUAC'S FITFUL FLAME
By the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow—
but first I note.
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' and woods' dim
outline.
The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence.
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving.
The shrubs and trees (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily
watching me).
While wind in procession thoughts, 0 tender and wondrous
thoughts.
Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those
that are far away;
A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground.
By the bivouac's fitful flame.
COME UP FROM THE FIELDS, FATHER
Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, mother, here's a letter from thy dear
son.
Lo, 'tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder.
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind.
254 Leaves of Grass
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis'd
vines,
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines ?
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)
Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and
with wondrous clouds.
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers
well,
Down in the fields all prospers well.
But now from the fields come, father, come at the daughter's call.
And come to the entry, mother, to the front door come right away.
Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps
trembling.
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.
Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd,
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, 0 stricken mother's
soul !
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the
main words only.
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish,
taken to hospital.
At present low, but will soon be better.
Ah, now the single figure to me,
Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms.
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint.
By the jamb of a door leans.
Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown daughter speaks
through her sobs.
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd).
See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.
Alas, poor boy, he will never be better (nor maybe needs to be
better, that brave and simple soul).
While they stand at home at the door he is dead already.
The only son is dead.
But the mother needs to be better.
She with thin form presently drest in black,
Drum-Taps 255
By day her meals untouch'd, then at night fitfully sleeping,
often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
0 that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape
and withdraw.
To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.
VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD ONE NIGHT
Vigil strange I kept on the field one night;
When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave which your dear eyes return'd with a look
I shall never forget.
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach'd up as you lay
on the ground.
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle.
Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again I made
my way.
Found you in death so cold, dear comrade, found your body, son
of responding kisses (never again on earth responding).
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew
the moderate night-wind,
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the
battle-field spreading.
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night,
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed,
Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning
my chin in my hands.
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you,
dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word.
Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you, my son and my
soldier.
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,
Vigil final for you, brave boy (I could not save you, swift was
your death,
1 faithfully loved you and cared for you living, I think we shall
surely meet again).
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn
appear'd.
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop'd well his form.
Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head and
carefully under feet.
256 Leaves of Grass
And there and then and bathed by the rising run, my son in his
grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited.
Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of night and battle-
field dim.
Vigil for boy of responding kisses (never again on earth re-
spending).
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day
brighten'd,
I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his
blanket,
And buried him where he fell.
A MARCH IN THE RANKS HARD-PREST, AND THE
ROAD UNKNOWN
A MARCH in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness.
Our army foil'd with loss severe, and the sullen remnant re-
treating,
Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted
building.
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-
lighted building,
'Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu
hospital.
Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures
and poems ever made.
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles
and lamps.
And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame
and clouds of smoke,
By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor,
some in the pews laid down.
At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of
bleeding to death (he is shot in the abdomen),
I stanch the blood temporarily (the youngster's face is white as
a lily).
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene fain to
absorb it all.
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity,
some of them dead.
Drum-Taps 257
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether,
the odour of blood.
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside
also fiird.
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some
in the death-spasm sweating.
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or
calls.
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of
the torches.
These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the
odour.
Then hear outside the orders given. Fall in, my men, fall in ;
But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile
gives he me.
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the
darkness.
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the
ranks.
The unknown road still marching.
A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAYBREAK GREY AND DIM
A SIGHT in camp in the daybreak grey and dim.
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless.
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital
tent.
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there un-
tended lying.
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket.
Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand.
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first
just lift the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-grey'd
hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes ?
Who are you, my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step—and who are you, my child and
darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
R
258 Leaves of Grass
Then to the third—a face nor child nor old^ very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I know you—I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself.
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
AS TOILSOME I WANDER'D VIRGINIA'S WOODS
As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods.
To the music of rustling leaves kick'd b}' my feet (for 'twas
autumn),
I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat (easily all could
I understand).
The halt of a mid-day hour, when up ! no time to lose—5^et this
sign left.
On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave.
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering.
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life.
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone,
or in the crowded street.
Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscrip-
tion rude in Virginia's woods.
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
NOT THE PILOT
Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port,
though beaten back and many times baffled;
Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long.
By deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, perseveres till he
reaches his destination.
More than I have charged myself, heeded or unheeded, to com-
pose a march for these States,
For a battle-call,rousing toarms if need be, years, centuries hence.
YEAR THAT TREMBLED AND REEL'D BENEATH ME
Year that trembled and reel'd beneath me !
Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed
froze me,
Drum-Taps 259
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me^,
Must I change my triumphant songs ? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?
THE WOUND-DRESSER
1
An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love
me,
(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and urge
relentless war.
But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I resign'd
myself.
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the
dead ;)
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these
chances.
Of unsurpass'd heroes (was one side so brave? the other was
equally brave;)
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth.
Of those armies so rapid, so wondrous, what saw you to tell us?
What stays with you latest and deepest ? of curious panics.
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest
remains ?
2
0 maidens and young men I love and that love me.
What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your
talking recalls.
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover'd with sweat and
dust.
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in
the rush of successful charge.
Enter the captur'd works—yet lo, like a swift-running river they
fade.
Pass and are gone they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or
soldiers' joys,
(Both I remember well—^many the hardships, few the joys, yet I
was content).
26o Leaves of Grass
But in silence, in dreams' projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on.
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off
the sand.
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors (whil for you up
there.
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart).
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Stráight and swift to my wounded I go.
Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in.
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground.
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital.
To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return.
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail.
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd
again.
I onward go, I stop.
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable.
One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew
you.
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that
. would save you.
3
On, on I go (open doors of time ! open hospital doors I)
The crush'd head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage
away).
The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through
I examine.
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life
struggles hard,
(Come sweet death! be persuaded 0 beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly).
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter
and blood.
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side-
falling head.
Drum-Taps 261
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the
bloody stump,
And has not yet look'd on it.
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep.
But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking.
And the yellow-blue countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound.
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sicken-
ing, so offensive.
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray
and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out.
The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen.
These and more I dress with impassive hand (yet deep in my
breast a fire, a burning flame).
4
Thus in silence in dreams' projections.
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals.
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young.
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and
rested.
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips).
LONG, TOO LONG, AMERICA
Long , too long, America,
Travelling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
grappling with direst fate and recoiling not.
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children
en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children
en-masse really are ?)
202 Leaves of Grass
GIVE ME THE SPLENDID SILENT SUN
1
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me an arbour, give me the trellis'd grape.
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals
teaching content.
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars.
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I
can walk undisturb'd.
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should
never tire.
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
world a rural domestic life.
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my
own ears only.
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again 0 Nature your
primal sanities !
These demanding to have them (tired with ceaseless excitement,
and rack'd by the war-strife).
These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart.
While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city.
Day upon day and year upon year, 0 city, walking your streets.
Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me
up.
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me
forever faces;
(0 I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for).
2
Keep your splendid silent sun.
Keep your woods, 0 Nature, and the quiet places by the woods.
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and
orchards.
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month
bees hum;
Drum-Taps 263
Give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant
and endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me comrades
and lovers by the thousand !
Let me see new ones every day—let me hold new ones by the
hand every day !
Give me such shows—give me the streets of Manhattan !
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—^give me the
sound of the trumpets and drums !
(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away,
flush'd and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet
very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black
ships !
0 such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and
varied !
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me !
The saloon of the steamer ! the crowded excursion for me ! the
torchlight procession !
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military
wagons following ;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions,
pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating
drums as now.
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets
(even the sight of the wounded),
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus !
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.
Lo, the moon ascending.
Up from the east the silvery round moon.
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
264 Leaves of Grass
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding.
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring.
And every blow of the great convulsive drums.
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell.
Two veterans son and father dropt together.
And the double grave awaits them).
Now nearer blow the bugles.
And the drums strike more convulsive.
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded.
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying.
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter glowing).
0 strong dead-march, you please me !
0 moon immense with your silvery face, you soothe me !
0 my soldiers twain ! O my veterans passing to burial !
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
Amd the bugles and the drums give you music.
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
OVER THE CARNAGE ROSE PROPHETIC A VOICE
Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice.
Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems of freedom
yet.
Those who love each other shall become invincible.
They shall yet make Columbia victorious.
Drum-Taps 265
Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious,
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of
the earth.
No danger shall balk Columbia's lovers.
If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.
One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade.
From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese,
shall be friends triune.
More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.
To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come.
Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond
death.
It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly
affection.
The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers.
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.
These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron,
I, ecstatic, O partners ! 0 lands ! with the love of lovers tie yoUi
(Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?
Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms ?
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)
I SAW OLD GENERAL AT BAY
I SAW old General at bay,
(Old as he was, his grey eyes yet shone out in battle like stars),.
His small force was now completely hemmed in, in his works,
He call'd for volunteers to run the enemy's lines, a desperate
emergency,
I saw a hundred and more step forth from the ranks, but two or
three were selected,
I saw them receive their orders aside, they listen'd with care, the
adjutant was very grave,
I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely risking their lives.
206 Leaves of Grass
THE ARTILLERYMAN'S VISION
While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over
long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant mid-
night passes.
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear,
the breath of my infant.
There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon
me;
The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal.
The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the
irregular snap ! snap !
I hear the sound of the different missiles, the short t-h-t ! t-h-t !
of the rifle-balls,
I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the
great shells shrieking as they pass.
The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees
(tumultuous now the contest rages).
All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again.
The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces.
The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of
the right time.
After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the
effect;
Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging (the young
colonel leads himself this time with brandish'd sword),
I see the gaps cut by the enemy's volleys (quickly fill'd up, no
delay),
I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low
concealing all;
Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either
side.
Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and
orders of officers.
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my
ears a shout of applause (some special success).
And ever the sound of the cannon far or near (rousing even in
dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the
depths of my soul).
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,
cavalry, moving hither and thither.
Drum-Taps 267
(The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red I
heed not, some to the rear are hobbling).
Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a full nin.
With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles
(these in my vision I hear or see).
And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-colour'd
rockets.
ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE COLOURS
Who are you, dusky woman, so ancient hardly human.
With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet?
Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colours greet?
('Tis while our army lines Carolina's sands and pines.
Forth from thy hovel door thou, Ethiopia, com'st fo me.
As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)
Me master years a hundred since jrom my parents sunder''d,
A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,
Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.
No further does she say, but lingering all the day,
Herhigh-bome turban'd head she wags,and rolls her darkling eye.
And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.
What is it, fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?
Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red, and green?
Are the things so strange and marvellous you see or have seen ?
NOT YOUTH PERTAINS TO ME
Not youth pertains to me.
Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk.
Awkward in the parlour, neither a dancer nor elegant.
In the leam'd coterie sitting constrain'd and still, for learning
inures not to me.
Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three
things inure to me,
I have nourish'd the wounded and sooth'd many a dying soldier
And'at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp.
Composed these songs.
208 Leaves of Grass
RACE OF VETERANS
Race of veterans—^race of victors !
Race of the soil, ready for conflict—race of the conquering march !
(No more credulity's race, abiding-temper'd race).
Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself.
Race of passion and the storm.
WORLD, TAKE GOOD NOTICE
World take
, good notice, silver stars fading.
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching.
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning.
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning.
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.
0 TAN-FACED PRAIRIE-BOY
0 tan-faced prairie-boy.
Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,
Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among
the recruits.
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but look'd on each
other.
When lo ! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.
LOOK DOWN, FAIR MOON
Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene.
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple.
On the dead on their backs with arms toss'd wide.
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
RECONCILIATION
Word over all, beautiful as the sky.
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be
utterly lost.
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;
Drum-Taps 269
For my enemy is dead^ a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the cofhn—I draw near.
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the
coffin.
HOW SOLEMN AS ONE BY ONE
{Washington City, 1865)
How solemn as one by one.
As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by
where I stand.
As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying
the masks
(As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,
whoever you are).
How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the
ranks, and to you,
I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,
0 the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend.
Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;
The soul ! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best.
Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill.
Nor the bayonet stab, 0 friend.
AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD IN YOUR LAP, CAMERADO
As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado.
The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open
air I resume,
1 know I am restless and make others so,
I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death.
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to un-
settle them,
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever
have been had all accepted me,
I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,
majorities, nor ridicule.
And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me.
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
Dear camerado ! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and
still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination.
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and
defeated.
270 Leaves of Grass
DELICATE CLUSTER
Delicate cluster ! flag of teeming life !
Covering all my lands—all my seashores lining !
Flag of death ! (how I watch'd you through the smoke of battle
pressing !
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant !)
Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled !
Ah, my silvery beauty—ah, my woolly white and crimson !
Ah, to sing the song of you, my matron mighty !
My sacred one, my mother.
TO A CERTAIN CIVILIAN
Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me.''
Did you seek the civilian's peaceful and languishing rhymes.?
Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow,?
Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand
—nor am I now;
(I have been bom of the same as the war was born.
The drum-corps' rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the
martial dirge.
With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer's
funeral ;)
What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I ? therefore leave
my works.
And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with
piano-tunes.
For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.
LO, VICTRESS ON THE PEAKS
Lo, Victress on the peaks.
Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,
(The world, O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee).
Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all.
Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,
Flauntest now unharm'd in immortal soundness and bloom—
lo, in these hours supreme,
Drum-Taps 271
No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery's rap-
turous verse.
But a cluster containing night's darkness and blood-dripping
wounds,
And psalms of the dead.
SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE
{Washington City, 1865)
Spirit whose work is done—spirit of dreadful hours !
Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts (yet onward ever unfalter-
ing pressing).
Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene—electric
spirit.
That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like
a tireless phantom flitted.
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat
the drum.
Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,
reverberates round me,
As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the
battles,
As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders.
As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,
As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing in
the distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,
Movingwithsteady motion,swaying to and fro to the right and left.
Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;
Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as death
next day.
Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close.
Leave me your pulses of rage—bequeath them to me—fill me
with currents convulsive.
Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are
Let gone.
them identify you to the future in these songs.
ADIEU TO A SOLDIER
Adieu , 0 soldier,
You of the rude campaigning (which we shared).
The rapid march, the life of the camp.
272 Leaves of Grass
The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,
Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific
game.
Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through
you and like of you all fill'd.
With war and war's expression.
,A.dieu, dear comrade.
Your mission is fulfill'd—but I, more warlike.
Myself and this contentious soul of mine.
Still on our own campaigning bound.
Through untried roads with ambushes, opponents lined.
Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,
Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here.
To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.
TURN, 0 LIBERTAD
Turn 0 Libertad, for the war is over.
,
From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more,
resolute, sweeping the world.
Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past.
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past.
From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings,
slavery, caste.
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv'd and to come—give up
that backward world.
Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past.
But what remains remains for singers for you—wars to come are
for you, the
( (Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and
wars of the present also inure;)
Then turn, and be not alarm'd, 0 Libertad—turn your undying
face.
To where the future, greater than all the past,
,Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.
TO THE LEAVEN'D SOIL THEY TROD
To the leaven'd soil they trod calling I sing for the last
((Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the
tent-ropes).
Drum-Taps 273
In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits
and vistas again to peace restored,
To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to
the South and the North,
To the leaven'd soil of the general Western world to attest my
songs,
To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi,
To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,
To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading
. wide.
To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane impalpable
air;
And responding they answer all (but not in words).
The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges
mutely.
The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son,
The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end.
But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs^
s
MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT
LINCOLN
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM'D
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I moum'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west.
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—0 moody, tearful night !
0 great star disappear'd—O the black murk that hides the star !
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—0 helpless soul of me !
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-
wash'd palings.
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of
rich green.
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, witn the perfume
strong I love.
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard.
With delicate-colour'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich
green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.:
274
Memories of President Lincoln 275
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat.
Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I know.
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would'st surely die).
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities.
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets
peep'd from the ground, spotting the grey débris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the
endless grass.
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud
in the dark-brown fields uprisen.
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards.
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave.
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets.
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land.
With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in
black.
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women
standing.
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the
night.
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and
the unbared heads.
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces.
With dirges through the night, with the shout and voices rising
strong and solemn.
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the
coffin.
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—^where amid
these you journey.
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang.
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
276 Leaves of Grass
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring.
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you, O
sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies.
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first.
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes.
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you.
For you and the coffins all of you, 0 death.)
8
O western orb, sailing the heaven.
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I
waUc'd,
As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night.
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after
night.
As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side (while
the other stars all look'd on).
As we wander'd together the solemn night (for something I know
not what kept me from sleep).
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how
full you were of woe.
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool trans-
parent night.
As I watch'd where you pass'd and v/as lost in the netherward
black of the night.
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you, sad
orb.
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
0 singer, bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
1 hear, I come presently, I understand you.
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me.
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
Memories of President Lincoln 277
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has
gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
there on the prairies meeting.
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
0 what shall I hang on the chamber walls ?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls.
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes.
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey smoke
lucid and bright,
^^^ith floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking
sun, burning, expanding the air.
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green
leaves of the trees prolific.
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there.
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
and shadows.
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of
chimneys.
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul—this land.
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying
tides, and the ships.
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and com.
278 Leaves of Grass
Lo^ the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple mom with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-bom measureless light.
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon.
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars.
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on, you grey-brown bird.
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the
bushes.
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender !
O wild and loose to my soul—0 wondrous singer !
You only I hear—yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with mastering odour holds me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth.
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
the farmers preparing their crops.
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and
forests.
In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturb'd winds and the
storms).
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and
the voices of children and women.
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they
sail'd,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all
busy with labour.
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with
its meals and minutia of daily usages.
And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities
pent—lo, then and there.
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with
the rest.
Memories of President Lincoln 279
Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,
And I knewdeath, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me.
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me.
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the
hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the
dimness.
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,
The grey-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three.
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses.
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still.
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me.
As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the riight.
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undidate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving.
In the day, in the night, to all, to each.
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prats'd he the fathomless universe.
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious.
And for love, sweet love—but praise ! praise ! praise !
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet.
Have none chantedfor thee a chant offullest welcome 1
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come imfal-
teringly.
Approach strong deliveress.
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee.
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, 0 death.
28o Leaves of Grass
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and /eastings
for thee.
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are
fitting.
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star.
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice
I know.
And the soul turning to thee, 0 vast and well-veiVd death.
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the
prairies wide.
Over the dense-pacFd cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, 0 death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the grey-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars '
dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed.
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-fiags.
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with missiles
I saw them.
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and
bloody.
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them.
Memories of President Lincoln 281
I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war.
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suifer'd not.
The living remain'd and suifer'd, the mother suifer'd.
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd.
And the armies that remain'd suifer'd.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night.
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands.
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my
soul.
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering
song.
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling,
flooding the night.
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet
again bursting with joy.
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven.
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses.
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with
spring.
I cease from my song for thee.
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing
with thee,
0 comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night.
The song, the wondrous chant of the grey-brown bird.
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul.
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full
of woe.
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the-
bird.
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to
keep, for the dead I loved so well.
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and thisi
for his dear sake.
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul.
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
282 Leaves of Grass
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won.
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But 0 heart ! heart ! heart !
0 the bleeding drops of red.
Where on the deck my Captain lies.
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills.
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores
a-crowding.
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain ! dear father !
This arm beneath your head !
It is some dream that on the deck.
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still.
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done.
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult, 0 shores, and ring, O bells!
But I with mournful tread.
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
{May 4, 1865)
Hush'd be the camps to-day.
And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons.
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate.
Our dear commander's death.
No more for him life's stormy conflicts.
Nor victory, nor defeat—no m.ore time's dark events.
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.
Memories of President Lincoln 283
But sing, poet, in our name.
Sing of the love we bore him—because you, dweller in camps,
know it truly.
As they invault the coffin there,
Sing—as they close the doors of earth upon him—one verse,
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
THIS DUST WAS ONCE THE MAN
This dust was once the man.
Gentle, plain, just, and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age.
Was saved the Union of these States.
BY BLUE ONTARIO'S SHORE
1
By blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return'd, and the
dead that return no more,
A Phantom gigantic, superb, with stern visage accosted me.
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,
chant me the carol of victory,
And strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more poiverful yet,
And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.
(Democracy, the destin'd conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles
everywhere.
And death and infidelity at every step.)
2
A Nation announcing itself,
I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in m}^ own forms.
A breed whose proof is in time and deeds.
What we are we ai-e, nativity is answer enough to objections,
^Ve wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded.
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves.
We are executive in ourselves, we are sufficient in the variety of
ourselves.
We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in ourselves.
We stand self-pois'd in the middle, branching thence over the
world.
From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves.
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful
or sinful in ourselves only.
(0 Mother—0 Sisters dear!
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy'd us.
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)
284
By Blue Ontario's Shore 285
3
Have you thought there could be but a single supreme ?
There can be any number of supremes—one does not counter-
vail another any more than one eyesight countervails
another^ or one life countervails another.
All is eligible to all^
All is for individuals, all is for you,
No condition is prohibited, not God's or any.
All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the
universe.
Produce great Persons, the rest follows.
4
Piety and conformity to them that like.
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations.
Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives !
I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning
every one I meet.
Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew
before ?
Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your
nonsense ?
(With pangs and cries as thine own, 0 bearer of many children.
These clamours wild to a race of pride I give.)
O land, would you be freer than all that has ever been before ?
If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen
to me.
Fear grace, elegance, civilisation, delicatesse.
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice.
Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature,
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and
men.
286 Leaves of Grass
5
Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected
materials,
America brings builders, and brings its own styles.
The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work
and pass'd to other spheres,
A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.
America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at
all hazards.
Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true
use of precedents.
Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced
under their forms,
Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly
borne from the house.
Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was
fittest for its days.
That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir
who approaches.
And that he shall be fittest for his days.
Any period one nation must lead.
One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.
These States are the amplest poem.
Here is not merely a nation but a teeming Nation of nations.
Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings
of the day and night.
Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars.
Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, combativeness, the
soul loves.
Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the
soul loves.
6
Land of lands and bards to corroborate 1
Of them standing among them, one lifts to the light a west-bred
face.
To him the hereditary countenance bequeath'd both mother's
and father's.
By Blue Ontario's Shore 287
His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees.
Built of the common stock, having room for far and near.
Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land.
Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with
incomparable love.
Plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits.
Making its cities,beginnings, events, diversities, wars,vocal in him.
Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Columbia,
Niagara, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him.
If the Atlantic coast stretch or the Pacific coast stretch, he
stretching with them North or South,
Spanning between them East and West, and touching whatever
is between them.
Growths growing from him to offset the growths of pine, cedar,
hemlock, live-oak, locust, chestnut, hickory, cottonwood,
orange, magnolia.
Tangles as tangled in him as any canebrake or swamp.
He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with
northern transparent ice.
Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie.
Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-
hawk, mocking-bird, night-heron, and eagle.
His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and
evil.
Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present
times.
Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines.
Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature
and muscle.
The haughty defiance of the Year One, war, peace, the formation
of the Constitution,
The separate States, the simple elastic scheme, the immigrants.
The Union always swarming with blatherers and always sure
and impregnable.
The unsurvey'd interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals,
hunters, trappers.
Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the
gestation of new States,
Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly
coming up from the uttermost parts.
Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers,
especially the young men.
288 Leaves of Grass
Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships, the gait
they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand
in the presence of superiors.
The freshness and candour of their physiognomy, the copious-
ness and decision of their phrenology.
The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their fierceness when
wrong'd.
The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity,
good temper, and open-handedness, the whole composite
make.
The prevailing ardour and enterprise, the large amativeness.
The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid
movement of the population.
The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-
digging,
Wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines intersectmg
all points.
Factories, mercantile life, labour-saving machinery, the North-
east, North-west, South-west,
Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life.
Slavery—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon
the ruins of all the rest.
On and on to the grapple with it—^Assassin! then your life or
ours be the stake, and respite no more.
7
{Lo, high toward heaven, this day,
Libertad, from the conqueress' field retum'd,
I mark the new aureola around your head.
No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
With war's flames and the lambent lightnings playing.
And your port immovable where you stand.
With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd and lifted
fist.
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scomer
utterly crush'd beneath you,
The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced with his
senseless scorn, bearing the murderous knife.
The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yesterday do so
much.
To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of all the earth.
An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spum'd.)
By Blue Ontario's Shore 289
8
Others take finish^ but the Republic is ever constructive and
ever keeps vista.
Others adorn the past, but you,0 days of the present, I adom you
0 days of the future I believe in you—I isolate myself for your
sake,
O America, because you build for mankind I build for you,
0 well-beloved stone-cutters, I lead them who plan with decision
and science.
Lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.
(Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!
But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain,
pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)
9
1 listened to the Phantom by Ontario's shore,
I heard the voice arising demanding bards.
By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be
fused into the compact organism of a Nation.
To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no
account.
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living
principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres
of plants.
Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff
most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use
them the greatest.
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as
their poets shall.
(Soul of love and tongue of fire !
Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world 1
Ah, Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren,
barren?)
10
Of these States the poet is the equable man.
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail
of their full returns.
290 Leaves of Grass
Nothing out of its place is good^ nothing in its place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither
more nor less.
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key.
He is the equaliser of his age and land.
He supplies whatwants supplying, he checks what wants checking.
In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,
commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,
immortality, government.
In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as
good as the engineer's, he can make every word he speaks
draw blood.
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady
faith.
He is no arguer, he is judgment (Nature accepts him absolutely).
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling round a
helpless thing.
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith.
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things.
In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent.
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and dénouement.
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and
women as dreams or dots.
For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals.
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders.
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.
Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been
always ready to fall for Liberty).
II
For the great Idea,
That, 0 my brethren, that is the mission of poets.
Songs of stem defiance ever ready.
Songs of the rapid arming and the march.
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,
Warlike flag of the great Idea.
By Blue Ontario's Shore 291
(Angry cloth I saw there leaping !
I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,
I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight—0 the
hard-contested fight!
The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles—the hurtled balls
scream,
The battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour
incessant from the line.
Hark, the ringing word Charge I—now the tussle and the furious
maddening yells.
Now the corpses tumble curl'd upon the ground.
Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you.
Angry cloth I saw there leaping.)
12
Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here
in the States?
The place is august, the terms obdurate.
Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body
and mind.
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe
himself.
He shall surely be question'd beforehand by me with many and
stern questions.
Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America ?
Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men ?
Have you learn'd the physiology, phrenology, politics, geo-
graphy, pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its sub-
stratums and objects?
Have you consider'd the organic compact of the first day of the
first year of Independence, sign'd by the Commissioners,
ratified by the States, and read by Washington at the head
of the army?
Have you possess'd yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind
them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?
Are you faithful to things ? do you teach what the land and sea,
the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers,
teach ?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities ?
292 Leaves of Grass
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls,
fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of
the whole People?
Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life ? animating now
to life itself?
Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States ?
Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for
the last-bom? little and big? and for the errant?
What is this you bring my America ?
Is it uniform with my country?
Is it not something that has been better told or done before ?
Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some
ship?
Is it not a mere tale ? a rhyme ? a prettiness ?—is the good old
cause in it?
Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
literats, of enemies' lands?
Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still
here?
Does it answer universal needs ? will it improve manners ?
Does it sound with tmmpet-voice the proud victory of the
Union in that secession war?
Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside ?
Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in
my strength, gait, face?
Have real employments contributed to it ? original makers, not
mere amanuenses?
Does it meet modem discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face ?
What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities?
Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas ?
Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians
standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese,
Western men, Southemers, significant alike in their apathy,
and in the promptness of their love?
Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen,
each temporiser, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist,
infidel, who has ever ask'd anything of America?
What mocking and scomful negligence?
The track strew'd with the dust of skeletons.
By the roadside others disdainfully toss'd.
By Blue Ontario's Shore 293
13
Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill'd from poems
pass away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes.
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of
literature,
America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it or
conceal from it, it is impassive enough.
Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them.
If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them,
there is no fear of mistake,
(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr'd till his countr}'
absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb'd it).
He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results
sweetest in the long run.
The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;
In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-
opera, shipcraft, any craft.
He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original
practical example.
Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the
streets.
People's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive Icnowers,
There will shortly be no more priests, I say their work is done,
Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emer-
gencies here.
Are your body, days, manners, superb ? after death you shall be
superb.
Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power ;
How dare you place anything before a man ?
14
Fall behind me States !
A man before all—m3^self, typical, before all.
Give me the pay I have served for.
Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
I have given alms to every one that ask'd, stood up for the
stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labour to others.
294 Leaves of Grass
Hated tyrants, argued not conceming God, had patience and
indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing
known or unknown.
Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the
young, and with the mothers of families.
Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,
stars, rivers,
Dismiss'd whatever insulted my owm soul or defiled my
body,
Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd for
others on the same terms.
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every
State,
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe his
last.
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored.
To life recalling many a prostrate form);
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste
of myself.
Rejecting none, permitting all.
(Say, 0 Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful ?
Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)
15
I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things.
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great.
It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any
one.
It is to walk rapidly through civilisations, governments, theories.
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.
Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals.
The American compact is altogether with individuals.
The only government is that which makes minute of individuals.
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one
single individual—^namely to You.
(Mother ! with subtle sense severe, with the naked sword in your
hand,
I saw you at last refuse to treat but directly with individuals.)
By Blue Ontario's Shore 295
16
Underneath all, Nativity,
I swear I v/ill stand by my own nativity, pious or impious so be it ;
I swear I am cbarm'd with nothing except nativity.
Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity.
Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and women,
(I swear I have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of
expressing love for men and women.
After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men
and women).
I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself,
(Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners
favour the audacity and sublime turbulence of the States).
Underneath the lessons of things, spirits. Nature, governments,
ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons.
Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself (the same
monotonous old song).
17
0 I see flashing that tliis America is only you and me.
Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me.
Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me.
Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships,
are you and me.
Its endless gestations of new States are you and me.
The war (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth
forget), was you and me,
Natural and artificial are you and me.
Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me.
Past, present, future, are you and me.
1 dare not shirk any part of myself.
Not any part of America good or bad.
Not to build for that which builds for mankind.
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes.
Not to justify science nor the march of equality.
Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time.
I am for those that have never been master'd,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd.
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
296 Leaves of Grass
I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,
Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.
I will not be outfaced by irrational things,
I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,
I will make cities and civilisations defer to me.
This is what I have leamt from America—it is the amount, and
it I teach again.
(Democracy, while weapons were everyw^here aim'd at your
breast,
I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams
your dilating form.
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)
18
I will confront these shows of the day and night,
I will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am not as majestic as they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I will see if I am to be less generous than they,
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have
meaning,
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves,
and I am not to be enough for myself.
I match my spirit against yours you orbs, growths, mountains,
brutes.
Copious as you are I absorb you all in myself, and become the
master myself,
America isolated yet embodying all, what is it finally except
myself ?
These States, what are they except myself.?
I know now why the earth is gross, tantalising,, wicked, it is for
my sake,
I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.
(Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face,
I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for,
I know not fruition's success, but I know that through war and
crime your work goes on, and must yet go on.)
By Blue Ontario's Shore 297
19
Thus by blue Ontario's shore,
While the winds fann'd me and the waves came trooping toward
me,
I thrili'd with the powér's pulsations, and the charm of my theme
was upon me.
Till the tissues that held me parted their ties upon me.
And I saw the free souls of poets.
The loftiest bards of past ages strode before me.
Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed
to me.
20
0 my rapt verse, my call, mock me not !
Not for the bards of the past, not to invoke them have I launch'd
you forth.
Not to call even those lofty bards here by Ontario's shores.
Have I sung so capricious and loud my savage song.
Bards for my own land only I invoke
(For the war, the war is over, the field is'clear'd).
Till they strike up marches henceforth triumphant and onward.
To cheer, 0 Mother, your boundless expectant soul.
Bards of the great Idea ! bards of the peaceful inventions ! (for
the war, the war is over !)
Yet bards of latent armies, a million soldiers waiting ever-ready.
Bards with songs as from burning coals or the lightning's fork'd
stripes !
Ample Ohio's, Kanada's bards—bards of California! inland
bards—bards of the war !
You by my charm I invoke.
REVERSALS
Let that which stood in front go behind.
Let that which was behind advance to the front.
Let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions.
Let the old propositions be postponed.
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself.
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself.
 
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
 
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS
As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are
perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the same present
the greatest lessons also in New World politics and progress.
If a man were asked, for instance, the distinctive points contrast-
ing modem European and American political and other life with
the old Asiatic cultus, as lingering-bequeathed yet in China and
Turkey, he might find the amount of them in John Stuart Mill's
profound essay on Liberty in the future, where he demands two
main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly grand nationality
—ist, a large variety of character—and 2nd, full play for human
nature to expand itself in numberless and even conflicting
directions—(seems to be for general humanity much like the
influences that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial
health-action of the air we call the weather—an infinite number
of currents and forces, and contributions, and temperatures, and
cross purposes, whose ceaseless play of counterpart upon counter-
part brings constant restoration and vitality). With this
thought—and not for itself alone, but all it necessitates, and
draws after it—let me begin my speculations.
America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems,
cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism (as, indeed,
the present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including
feudalism), counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success
(for who, as yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the
future. Nor is that hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though
dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring.
For our New World I consider far less important for what it
has done, or what it is, than for results to come. Sole among
nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in
forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude
rivalling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political
speculations of ages, long, long deferred, the democratic re-
publican principle, and the theory of development and per-
fection by voluntary standards, and self-reliance. Who else,
indeed, except the United States, in history, so far, have accepted
in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go
security for, these things?
301
302 Democratic Vistas
But preluding no longer, let me strike the key-note of the
following strain. First premising that, though the passages of
it have been written at widely different times (it is, in fact, a
collection of memoranda, perhaps for future designers, com-
prehenders), and though it may be open to the charge of one
part contradicting another—for there are opposite sides to the
great question of democracy, as to every great question—I feel
the parts harmoniously blended in my own realisation and
convictions, and present them to be read only in such oneness,
each page and each claim and assertion modified and tempered
by the others. Bear in mind, too, that they are not the result
of studying up in political economy, but of the ordinary sense,
observing, wandering among men, these States, these stirring
years of war and peace. I will not gloss over the appalling
dangers of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it
is to admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her
within whose thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating,
between democracy's convictions, aspirations, and the people's
crudeness, vice, caprices, I mainly write this essay. I shall use
the words America and democracy as convertible terms. Not
an ordinary one is the issue. The United States are destined
either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or else
prove the most tremendous failure of time. Not the least
doubtful am I on any prospects of their material success. The
triurnphant future of their business, geographic and productive
departments, on larger scales and in more varieties than ever,
is certain. In those respects the republic must soon (if she does
not already) outstrip all examples hitherto afforded, and
dominate the world.^
^ " From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousand square
miles, the Union has expanded into over four millions and a half—fifteen
times larger than that of Great Britain and France combined—with a
shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire circumference of the earth,
and with a domain within these Unes far wider than that of the Romans
in their proudest days of conquest and renown. With a river, lake, and
coastwise commerce estimated at over two thousand millions of dollars
per year; with a railway traffic of four to six thousand millions per year,
and the annual domestic exchanges of the country running up to nearly
ten thousand millions per year ; with over two thousand millions of dollars
invested in manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry; with over
five hundred millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with
their appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and pro-
ducing annually crops valued at over three thousand millions of dollars;
with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's population were possible,
would be vast enough to include all the present inhabitants of the world;
and with equal rights guaranteed to even the poorest and humblest of our
forty millions of people—we can, with a manly pride akin to that which
Democratic Vistas 303
Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political
institutions, general suffrage (and fully acknowledging the latest,
widest opening of the doors), I say that, far deeper than these,
what finally and only is to make of our western world a nation-
ality superior to any hither known, and outtopping the past,
must be vigorous, yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect person-
alities and sociologies, original, transcendental, and expressing
(what, in highest sense, are not yet expressed at all) democracy
and the modern. With these, and out of these, I promulgate
new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women, indispensable to
endow the birth-stock of a New World. For feudalism, caste,
the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from
political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even
in this country, entire possession of the more important fields,
indeed the very subsoil, of education, and of social standards
and literature.
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil,
until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems,
schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been
produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. It
is curious to me that while so many voices, pens, minds, in the
press, lecture-rooms, in our Congress, etc., are discussing intel-
lectual topics, pecuniary dangers, legislative problems, the
suffrage, tariff and labour questions, and the various business
and benevolent needs of America, with propositions, remedies,
often worth deep attention, there is one need, a hiatus the pro-
foundest, that no eye seems to perceive, no voice to state. Our
distinguished the palmiest days of Rome, claim," etc., etc., etc.—Vice-
President Colfax's Speech, July 4, 1870.
Later—London Times (Weekly), June 23, '82.
" The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies
and sets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous
and has already protective tariff,
obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the of
modem civil greatest
wars. What is especially remarkable in the
ment of American present develop-
energy and success is its wide and
North equable distribution.
and south, east and west, on the shores of the Atlantic and the
Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes, in the valley of the
and on the coasts of the Gulf Mississippi,
of Mexico, the creation of wealth and the
increase of population are signally exhibited. It is quite true, as has been
shown by the recent apportionment of population in the House of
sentatives, that Repre-
some sections of the Union have advanced, relatively to
the rest, in an extraordinary and unexpected degree. But this does not
imply that the States which have gained no additional or
have actually lost representatives
some have been or have receded. The
is stationary fact
that the present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it has overflowed
all barriers, and has filled up the backwaters, and established
like something
an approach to uniform success."
304 Democratic Vistas
fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest,
amplest reference to present conditions, and to the future, is
of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, litera-
tures, far different, far higher in grade, than any yet known,
sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, per-
meating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief,
breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision, affecting
politics far more than the popular superficial suffrage, with results
inside and underneath the elections of Presidents or Congresses
—radiating, begetting appropriate teachers, schools, manners,
and, as its grandest result, accomplishing (what neither the
schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto accom-
plished, and without which this nation will no more stand,
permanently, soundly, than a house will stand without a sub-
stratum), a religious and moral character beneath the political
and productive and intellectual bases of the States. For know
you not, dear, earnest reader, that the people of our land may
all read and write, and may all possess the right to vote—and
this to
yet the main things may be entirely lacking.?—(and
suggest them).
Viewed, to-day, from a point of view sufficiently over-arching,
the problem of humanity all over the civilised world is social
and religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature.
The priest departs, the divine literatus comes. Never was any-
thin here in the the
g more wanted than, to-day, and States,
poet of the modem is wanted, or the great literatus of the
modem. At all times, perhaps, the central point in any nation,
and that whence it is itself really swayed the most, and whence
it sways others, is its national literature, especially its arche-
typal poems. Above all previous lands, a great original litera-
ture is surely to become the justification and reliance (in some
respects the sole reliance) of American democracy.
Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives
hue to all, shapes aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle
with irresistible power, constracts, sustains, demolishes
ways,
at will. Why tower, in reminiscence, above all the nations of
the earth, two special lands, petty in themselves, yet inex-
pressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar? Immortal Judah lives,
and Greece immortal lives, in a couple of poems.
Nearer than this. It is not generally realised, but it is true,
as the genius of Greece, and all the sociology, personality,
politics, and religion of those wonderful states, resided in their
literature or esthetics, that what was afterwards the main sup-
Democratic Vistas 305
port of European chivalry, the feudal, ecclesiastical, dynastic
world over there—forming its osseous structure, holding it
together for hundreds, thousands of years, preserving its flesh
and bloom, giving it form, decision, rounding it out, and so
saturating it in the conscious and unconscious blood, breed,
belief, and intuitions of men, that it still prevails powerful
to this day, in defiance of the mighty changes of time—was
its literature, permeating to the very marrow, especially that
major part, its enchanting songs, ballads, and poems.^
To the ostent of the senses and eyes, I know, the influences
which stamp the world's history are wars, uprisings or down-
falls of dynasties, changeful movement of trade, important
inventions, navigation, military or civil governments, advent
of powerful personalities, conquerors, etc. These of course
play their part; yet, it may be, a single new thought, imagina-
tion, abstract principle, even literary style, fit for the time, put
in shape by some great literatus, and projected among mankind,
may duly cause changes, growths, removals, greater than the
longest and bloodiest war, or the most stupendous merely
political, dynastic, or commercial overturn.
In short, as, though it may not be realised, it is strictly true,
that a few first-class poets, philosophs, and authors have sub-
stantially settled and given status to the entire religion, educa-
tion, law, sociology, etc., of the hitherto civilised world, by
tingeing and often creating the atmospheres out of which they
have arisen, such also must stamp, and more than ever
stamp, the interior and real democratic construction of this
American continent, to-day, and days to come. Remember
also this fact of difference, that, while through the antique and
through the mediaeval ages, highest thoughts and ideals realised
themselves, and their expression made its way by other arts,
as much as, or even more than by, technical literature (not open
to the mass of persons, or even to the majority of eminent
persons), such literature in our day and for current purposes is
^ See, for hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's Border Minstrelsy,
Percy's collection, Ellis's early English Metrical Romances, the European
continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, and the Nibelungen, of pagan
stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; the history of the Troubadours, by
Fauriel; even the far-back cumbrous old Hindu epics, as indicating the
Asian eggs out of which European chivalry was hatched ; Ticknor's chapters
on the Cid, and on the Spanish poems and poets of Calderon's time.
Then always, and, of comse, as the superbest poetic culmination-expres-
sion of feudalism, the Shakespearean dramas, in the attitudes, dialogue,
characters, etc., of the princes, lords, and gentlemen, the pervading atmo-
sphere, the implied and expressed standard of manners, the high port and
proud stomach, the regal embroidery of style, etc.-
U
3O6 Democratic Vistas
not only more eligible than all the other arts put together, but
has become the only general means of morally influencing the
world. Painting, sculpture, and the dramatic theatre, it would
seem, no longer play an indispensable or even important part
in the workings and mediumship of intellect, utility, or even high
esthetics. Architecture remains, doubtless with capacities, and
a real future. Then music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual,
nothing more sensuous, a god, yet completely human, advances,
prevails, holds highest place; supplying in certain wants and
quarters what nothing else could supply. Yet in the civilisa-
tion of to-day it is undeniable that, over all the arts, literature
dominates, serves beyond all—shapes the character of church
and school—or, at any rate, is capable of doing so. Including
the literature of science, its scope is indeed unparalleled.
Before proceeding further, it were perhaps well to discriminate
on certain points. Literature tills its crops in man)?^ fields, and
some may flourish, while others lag. What I say in these
Vistas has its main bearing on imaginative literature, especially
poetry, the stock of all. In the department of science, and the
specialty of journalism, there appear, in these States, promises,
perhaps fulfilments, of highest earnestness, reality and life.
These, of course, are modern. But in the region of imaginative,
spinal and essential attributes, something equivalent to creation
is, for our age and lands, imperatively demanded. For not only
is it not enough that the new blood, new frame of democracy
shall be vivified and held together merely by political means,
superficial suffrage, legislation, etc., but it is clear to me that,
unless it goes deeper, gets at least as firm and as warm a hold
in men's hearts, emotions and belief, as, in their days, feudalism
or ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own perennial sources,
welliñg from the centre for ever, its strength will be defective,
its growth doubtful, and its main charm wanting. I suggest,
therefore, the possibility, should some two or three really original
American poets (perhaps artists or lecturers) arise, mounting
the horizon like planets, stars of the first magnitude, that, from
their eminence, fusing contributions, races, far localities, etc.,
together, they would give more compaction and more moral
identity (the quality to-day most needed) to these States, than
all its Constitutions, legislative and judicial ties, and all its
hitherto political, warlike, or materialistic experiences. As, for
instance, there could hardly happen anything that would more
serve the States, with all their variety of origins, their diverse
climes, cities, standards, etc., than possessing an aggregate of
Democratic Vistas 307
heroes^ characters, exploits, sufferings, prosperity or misfortune,
glory or disgrace, common to all, typical of it all—no less, but
even greater would it be to possess the aggregation of a cluster
of mighty poets, artists, teachers, fit for us, national expressers,
comprehending and effusing for the men and women of the
States, what is universal, native, common to all, inland and
seaboard, northern and southern. The historians say of ancient
Greece, with her ever-jealous autonomies, cities and states, that
the only positive unity she ever owned or received, was the sad
unity of a common subjection, at the last, to foreign conquerors.
Subjection, aggregation of that sort, is impossible to America;
but the fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the
lack of a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually
haunts me. Or, if it does not, nothing is plainer than the need,
a long period to come, of a fusion of the States into the only
reliable identity, the moral and artistic one. For, I say, the
true nationality of the States, the genuine union, when we
come to a mortal crisis, is, and is to be, after all, neither the
written law, nor (as is generally supposed) either self-interest,
or common pecuniary or material objects—but the fervid and
tremendous Idea , melting everything else with resistless heat,
and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite,
spiritual, emotional power.
It may be claimed (and I admit the weight of the claim) that
common and general worldly prosperity, and a populace well-
to-do, and with all life's material comforts, is the main thing,
and is enough. It may be argued that our republic is, in per-
formance, really enacting to-day the grandest arts, poems, etc.,
by beating up the wilderness into fertile farms, and in her rail-
roads, ships, machinery, etc. And it may be asked. Are these
not better, indeed, for America, than any utterances evên of
greatest rhapsode, artist, or literatos ?
I too hail those achievements with pride and joy; then
answer that the soul of man will not with such only—^nay, not
with such at all—be finally satisfied; but needs what (standing
on these and on all things, as the feet stand on the ground) is
addressed to the loftiest, to itself alone.
Out of such considerations, such truths, arises for treatment
in these Vistas the important question of character, of an
American stock-personality, with literatures and arts for out-
lets and return-expressions, and, of course, to correspond,
within outlines common to all. To these, the main affair, the
thinkers of the United States, in general so acute, have either
308 Democratic Vistas
given feeblest attention, or have remained, and remain, in a
state of somnolence.
For my part, I would alarm and caution even the political
and business reader, and to the utmost extent, against the
prevailing delusion that the establishment of free political
institutions, and plentiful intellectual smartness, with general
good order, physical plenty, industry, etc. (desirable and precious
advantages as they all are), do, of themselves, determine and
yield to our experiment of democracy the fruitage of success.
With such advantages at present fully, or almost fully, possessed
—the Union just issued, victorious, from the struggle with the
only foes it need ever fear (namely, those within itself, the
interior ones), and with unprecedented materialistic advance-
ment—society, in these States, is cankered, crude, superstitious
and rotten. Political, or law-made society is, and private, or
voluntary society, is also. In any vigour, the element of the
moral conscience, the most important, the verteber to State or
man, seems to me either entirely lacking, or seriously enfeebled
or ungrown.
I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the
face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never
was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present,
and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have
left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly
believed in (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic
screamings), nor is humanity itself believed in. What pene-
trating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The
spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy
throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor the
wom^n in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in litera-
ture. The aim of all the littérateurs is to find something to make
fun of. A lot of churches, sects, etc., the most dismal phantasms
I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation is a mass of
badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false
deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and
candid person, in the revenue department in Washington, who
is led by the course of his employment to regularly visit the
cities, north, south, and west, to investigate frauds, has talked
much with me about his discoveries. The depravity of the
business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed,
but infinitely greater. The official services of America, national,
state, and municipal, in all their branches and departments,
except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, false-
Democratic Vistas 309
hood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The
great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable
robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid
amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to
kill time. In business (this all-devouring modern word, busi-
ness), the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain.
The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents ;
and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining to-day
sole master of the field. The best class we show, is but a
mob of fashionably dressed speculators and vulgarians. True,
indeed, behind this fantastic farce, enacted on the visible stage
of society, solid things and stupendous labours are to be dis-
covered, existing crudely and going on in the background, to
advance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are none
the less terrible. I say that our New World democracy, how-
ever great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs,
in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-
deceptive superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost
complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religi-
ous, moral, literary, and esthetic results. In vain do we march
with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying the
antique, beyond Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of
Rome. In vain have we annexed Texas, California, Alaska,
and reach north for Canada and south for Cuba. It is as if
we were somehow being endowed with a vast and more and
more thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or
no soul.
Let me illustrate further, as I write, with current observations,
localities, etc. The subject is important, and will bear repeti-
tion. After an absence, I am now again (September, 1870) in
New '
York city and Brooklyn, on a few weeks' vacation. The
splendour, picturesqueness, and oceanic amplitude and rush of
these great cities, the unsurpassed situation, rivers and bay,
sparkling sea-tides, costly and lofty new buildings, façades of
marble and iron, of original grandeur and elegance of design,
with the masses of gay colour, the preponderance of white and
blue, the flags flying, the endless ships, the tumultuous streets,
Broadway, the heavy, low, musical roar, hardly ever inter-
mitted, even at night; the jobbers' houses, the rich shops, the
wharves, the great Central Park, and the Brooklyn Park of
hills (as I wander among them this beautiful fall weather,
musing, watching, absorbing)—the assemblages of the citizens
in their groups, conversations, trades, evening amusements, or
Democratic Vistas
along the by-quarters—these, I say, and the like of these, com-
pletely satisfy my senses of power, fulness, motion, etc., and
give me, through such senses and appetites, and through my
esthetic conscience, a continued exaltation and absolute fulfil-
ment. Always and more and more, as I cross the East and
North rivers, the ferries, or with the pilots in their pilot-houses,
or pass an hour in Wall Street, or the Gold Exchange, I realise
(if we must admit such partialisms) that not Nature alone is
great in her fields of freedom and the open air, in her storms,
the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests, seas—but
in the artificial, the work of man too is equally great—in this
profusion of teeming humanity—in these ingenuities, streets,
goods, houses, ships—these hurrying, feverish, electric crowds
of men, their complicated business genius (not least among the
geniuses), and all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and
industry concentrated here.
But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and
grandeur of the general superficial effect, coming down to what
is of the only real importance. Personalities, and examining
minutely, we question, we ask. Are there, indeed, men here
worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are there perfect
women, to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there
a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners ? Are there crops
of fine youths, and majestic old persons ? Are there arts worthy
freedom and a rich people? Is there a great moral and religious
civilisation—the only justification of a great material one?
Confess that to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon
humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sahara appears, these cities,
crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms,
playing meaningless antics. Confess that ever5rwhere, in shop,
street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading
flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—ever3rwhere
the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—every-
where an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male,
female, painted, padded, dyed, chignoned, muddy complexions,
bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood decreasing or
deceased, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners,
or rather lack of manners (considering the advantages enjoyed),
probably the meanest to be seen in the world.^
1 Of these rapidly-sketched hiatuses, the two which seem to be most
serious are, for one, the condition, absence, or perhaps the singular abey-
ance, of moral conscientious fibre all through American society; and, for
another, the appalling depletion of women in their powers of sane athletic
Democratic Vistas
Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into
them the breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a
new-founded literature, not merely to copy and reflect existing
surfaces, or pander to what is called taste—not only to amuse,
pass away time, celebrate the beautiful, the refined, the past,
or exhibit technical, rhythmic, or grammatical dexterity—but
a literature underlying life, religious, consistent with science,
handling the elements and forces with competent power, teach-
ing and training men—and, as perhaps the most precious of its
results, achieving the entire redemption of woman, out of these
incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind
of dyspeptic depletion—and thus insuring to the States a strong
and sweet Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers—is what is
needed.
And now, in the full conception of these facts and points,
and all that they infer, pro and con—with yet unshaken faith
in the elements of the American masses, the composites, of both
sexes, and even considered as individuals—and ever recognising
in them the broadest bases of the best literary and esthetic
appreciation—I proceed with my speculations. Vistas.
First, let us see what we can make out of a brief, general,
sentimental consideration of political democracy, and whence
it has arisen, with regard to some of its current features, as an
aggregate, and as the basic structure of our future literature
and authorship. We shall, it is true, quickly and continually
find the origin-idea of the singleness of man, individualism,
asserting itself, and cropping forth, even from the opposite
ideas. But the mass, or lump character, for imperative reasons,
is to be ever carefully weighed, borne in mind, and provided for.
Only from it, and from its proper regulation and potency, comes
the other, comes the chance of individualism. The two are
contradictory, but our task is to reconcile them.^
maternity, their crowning attribute, and ever maliing the woman, in
loftiest spheres, superior to the man.
I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means of .
a reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation,
expansion, invigoration of woman, affording, for races to come (as the
conditions that antedate birth are indispensable), a perfect motherhood.
Great, great, indeed, far greater than they know, is the sphere of women.
But doubtless the question of such new sociology all goes together, includes
many varied and complex influences and premises, and the man as well as
the woman, and the woman as well as the man.
^ The question hinted here is one which time only can answer. Must
not the virtue of modem Individualism, continually enlarging, usurping
all, seriously affect, perhaps keep down entirely, in America, the like of
the ancient virtue of Patriotism, the fervid and absorbing love of general
312 Democratic Vistas
The political history of the past may be summed up as having
grown out of what underlies the words, order, safety, caste, and
especially out of the need of some prompt deciding authority,
and of cohesion at all cost. Leaping time, we come to the
period within the memory of people now living, when, as from
some lair where they had slumbered long, accumulating wrath,
sprang up and are yet active (1790, and on even to the present,
1870), those noisy eructations, destructive iconoclasms, a fierce
sense of wrongs, amid which moves the form, well known in
modem history, in the old world, stained with much blood, and
marked by savage reactionary clamours and demands. These
bear, mostly, as on one inclosing point of need.
For after the rest is said—after the many time-honoured and
really true things for subordination, experience, rights of
property, etc., have been listened to and acquiesced in—after
the valuable and well-settled statement of our duties and rela-
tions in society is thoroughly conned over and exhausted—it
remains to bring forward and modify everything else with the
idea of that Something a man is (last precious consolation of the
drudging poor), standing apart from all else, divine in his own
right, and a woman in hers, sole and untouchable by any canons
of authority, or any rule derived from precedent, state-safety,
the acts of legislatures, or even from what is called religion,
modesty, or art. The radiation of this tmth is the key of the
most significant doings of our immediately preceding three
centuries, and has been the political genesis and life of America.
Advancing visibly, it still more advances invisibly. Under-
neath the fluctuations of the expressions of society, as well as
the movements of the politics of the leading nations of the
world, we see steadily pressing ahead and strengthening itself,
even in the midst of immense tendencies toward aggregation,
this image of completeness in separation, of individual personal
dignity, of a single person, either male or female, characterised
in the rfiain, not from extrinsic acquirements or position, but
in the pride of himself or herself alone; and, as an eventual
conclusion and summing up (or else the entire scheme of things
is aimless, a cheat, a crash), the simple idea that the last, best
dependence is to be upon humanity itself, and its own inherent,
normal, full-grown qualities without any superstitious support
whatever. This idea of perfect individualism it is indeed that
country? I have no doubt myself that the two will merge, and will
mutually profit and brace each other, and that from them a greater pro-
duct, a third, will arise. But I feel that at present they and their opposi-
tions form a serious problem and paradox in the United States.
Democratic Vistas 313
deepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the aggregate.
For it is mainly or altogether to serve independent separatism
that we favour a strong generalisation, consolidation. As it is
to give the best vitality and freedom to the rights of the States
(every bit as important as the right of nationality, the union),
that we insist on the identity of the Union at all hazards.
The purpose of democracy—supplanting old belief in the
necessary absoluteness of established d3mastic rulership, tem-
poral, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only
security against chaos, crime, and ignorance—is, through many
transmigrations and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and
ostensible failures, to illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or
theory that man, properly trained in sanest, highest freedom,
may and must become a law, and series of laws, unto himself,
surrounding and providing for, not only his own personal control,
but all his relations to other individuals, and to the State; and
that, while other theories, as in the past histories of nations,
have proved wise enough, and indispensable perhaps for their
conditions, this, as matters now stand in our civilised world, is
the only scheme worth working from, as warranting results like
those of Nature's laws, reliable, when once established, to carry
on themselves.
The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we admit, by
no means all on one side. What we shall offer will be far, far
from sufficient. But while leaving unsaid much that should
properly even prepare the way for the treatment of this many-
sided question of political liberty, equality, or republicanism—
leaving the whole history and consideration of the feudal plan
and its products, embodying humanity, its politics and civilisa-
tion, through the retrospect of past time (which plan and pro-
ducts, indeed, make up all of the past, and a large part of the
present)—leaving unanswered, at least by any specific and local
answer, many a well-wrought argument and instance, and
many a conscientious declamatory cry and warning—as, very
lately, from an eminent and venerable person abroad ^—things,
^ Shooting Niagara.—I was at first roused to much anger and abuse by
this essay from Mr. Carlyle, so insulting to the theory of America—but
happening to think afterwards how I had more than once been in the like
mood, during which his essay was evidently cast, and seen persons and
things in the same light (indeed, some might saj' there are signs of the same
feeling in these Vistas)—I have since read it again, not only as a study,
expressing as it does certain judgments from the highest feudal point of
view, but have read it with respect as coming from an earnest soul, and
as contributing certain sharp-cutting metallic grains, which, if not gold or
silver, may be good, hard, honest iron.
1
3 H Democratic Vistas
problems, full of doubt, dread, suspense (not new to me, but
old occupiers of many an anxious hour in city's din, or night's
silence), we still may give a page or so, whose drift is opportune.
Time alone can finally answer these things. But as a substitute
in passing, let us, even if fragmentarily, throw forth a short
direct or indirect suggestion of the premises of that other plan,
in the new spirit, under the new forms, started here in our
America.
As to the political section of Democracy, which introduces
and breaks ground for further and vaster sections, few probably
are the minds, even in these republican States, that fully com-
"
prehend the aptness of that phrase, the government of the
People, by the People, for the People," which we inherit
from the lips of Abraham Lincoln; a formula whose verbal
shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both the totality
and all minutiae of the lesson.
The People! Like our huge earth itself, which, to ordinary
scansion, is full of vulgar contradictions and offence, man, viewed
in the lump, displeases, and is a constant puzzle and affront to
the merely educated classes. The rare, cosmical, artist-mind,
I' lit with the Infinite, alone confronts his manifold and oceanic
I qualities—but taste, intelligence and culture (so-called), have
been against the masses, and remain so. There is plenty of
glamour about the most damnable crimes and hoggish mean-
! nesses, special and general, of the feudal and dynastic world
I over there, with its personnel of lords and queens and courts, so
|p well-dressed and so handsome. But the People are ungram-
' matical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.
Literature, strictly considered, has never recognised the I
People, and, whatever may be said, does not to-day. Speaking ^
generally, the tendencies of literature, as hitherto pursued, have ^
been to make mostly critical and querulous men. It seems as if,
, so far, there were some natural repugnance between a literary
and professional life, and the rude rank spirit of the democracies,
'i There is, in later literature, a treatment of benevolence, a charity
business, rife enough it is true; but I know nothing more rare,
even in this country, than a fit scientific estimate and reverent j
appreciation of the People—of their measureless wealth of latent i
I power and capacity, their vast, artistic contrasts of lights and
shades—with, in America, their entire reliability in emergencies,
I'l and a certain breadth of historic grandeur, of peace or war, far
surpassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes, or any haut
ton coteries, in all the records of the world.
É
Democratic Vistas
The movements of the late secession war, and their results,
to any sense that studies well and comprehends them, show that
popular democracy, whatever its faults and dangers, practically
justifies itself beyond the proudest claims and wildest hopes of
its enthusiasts. Probably no future age can know, but I well
know, how the gist of this fiercest and most resolute of the
world's war-like contentions resided exclusively in the unnamed,
unknown rank and file; and how the brunt of its labour of death
was, to all essential purposes, volunteered. The People, of their
own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently attacked
by the secession-slave-power, and its very existence imperilled.
Descending to detail, entering any of the armies, and mixing
with the private soldiers, we see and have seen august spectacles.
We have seen the alacrity with which the American-bom
populace, the peaceablest and most good-natured race in the
world, and the most personally independent and intelligent, and
the least fitted to submit to the irksomeness and exasperation of
regimental discipline, sprang, at the first tap of the drum, to
arms—not for gain, nor even glory, nor to repel invasion—but
for an emblem, a mere abstraction—for the life, the safety of the
-flag. We have seen the unequalled docility and obedience of
these soldiers. We have seen them tried long and long by
hopelessness, mismanagement, and by defeat; have seen the
incredible slaughter toward or through which the armies (as at
first Fredericksburg, and afterward at the Wilderness), still un-
hesitatingly obey'd orders to advance. We have seen them in
trench, or crouching behind breastwork, or tramping in deep
mud, or amid pouring rain or thick-falling snow, or under forced
marches in hottest summer (as on the road to get to Gettys-
burg)—vast suffocating swarms, divisions, corps, with every
single man so grimed and black with sweat and dust, his own
mother would not have known him—^his clothes all dirty, stained
and torn, with sour, accumulated sweat for perfume—many a
comrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck, staggering out, dying,
by the roadside, of exhaustion—yet the great bulk bearing
steadily on, cheery enough, hollow bellied from hunger, but
sinewy with unconquerable resolution.
We have seen this race proved by wholesale, by drearier,
yet more fearful tests—the wound, the amputation, the shattered
face or limb, the slow hot fever, long impatient anchorage in
bed, and all the forms of maiming, operation, and disease. Alas !
America have we seen, though only in her early youth, already
to hospital brought. There have we watched these soldiers.
316 Democratic Vistas
many of them only boys in years—marked their decorum, their
religious nature and fortitude, and their sweet affection. Whole-
sale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps, in count-
less tents, stood the regimental, brigade, and division hospitals ;
while everj^here amid the land, in or near cities, rose clusters
of huge, white-washed, crowded, one-story wooden barracks;
and there ruled agony with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought
a cry; and there stalked death by day and night along the
narrow aisles between the rows of cots, or by the blankets on the
ground, and touched lightly many a poor sufferer, often with
blessed, welcome touch.
I know not whether I shall be understood, but I realise that
it is finally from what I learned personally mixing in such scenes
that I am now penning these pages. One night in the gloomiest
period of the war, in the Patent office hospital in Washington
city, as I stood by the bedside of a Pennsylvania soldier, who
lay, conscious of quick approaching death, yet perfectly calm,
and with noble, spiritual manner, the veteran surgeon, turning
aside, said to me, that though he had witnessed many, many
deaths of soldiers, and had been a worker at Bull Run, Antietam,
Fredericksburg, etc., he had not seen yet the first case of man
or boy that met the approach of dissolution with cowardly
qualms or terror. My own observation fully bears out the
remark.
What have we here, if not, towering above all talk and argu-
ment, the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of democracy,
in its personalities.? Curiously enough, too, the proof on this
point comes, I should say, every bit as much from the south, as
from the north. Although I have spoken only of the latter,
yet I deliberately include all. Grand, common stock! to me
the accomplished and convincing growth, prophetic of the
future; proof undeniable to sharpest sense, of perfect beauty,
tenderness and pluck, that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor
Roman breed, yet rivalled. Let no tongue ever speak in dis-
paragement of the American races, north or south, to one who
has been through the war in the great army hospitals.
Meantime, general humanity (for to that we return, as, for j
our purposes, what it really is, to bear in mind), has always, in :
every department, been full of perverse maleficence, and is so
yet. In downcast hours the soul thinks it always will be—but
soon recovers from such sickly moods. I myself see clearh' ;
enough the crude, defective streaks in all the strata of the |
common people; the specimens and vast collections of the j
É
Democratic Vistas 317
ignorant, the credulous, the unfit and uncouth, the incapable,,
and the very low and poor. The eminent person just mentioned
sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a
nation's politics by absorbing such morbid collections and
qualities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there will
doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who
will never get over it. Our answer is general, and is involved
in the scope and letter of this essay. We believe the ulterior
object of political and all other government (having, of course,
provided for the police, the safety of life, property, and for the
basic statute and common law, and their administration, always
first in order), to be among the rest, not merely to rule, to repress
disorder, etc., but to develop, to open up to cultivation, to en-
courage the possibilities of all beneficent and manly outcrop-
page, and of that aspiration for independence, and the pride
and self-respect latent in all characters. (Or, if there be excep-
tions, we cannot, fixing our eyes on them alone, make theirs
the rule for all.)
I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civilised lands,
is not repression alone, and not authority alone, not even of
law, nor by that favourite standard of the eminent writer, the
rule of the best men, the born heroes and captains of the race
(as if such ever, or one time out of a hundred, get into the big
places, elective or dynastic)—but higher than the highest arbi-
trary rule, to train communities through all their grades,
beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule
themselves. What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual
field for human-kind, namely, that in respect to the absolute
soul, there is in the possession of such by each single individual,
something so transcendent, so incapable of gradations (like life),
that, to that extent, it places all beings on a common level,
utterly regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue, station,
or any height or lowliness whatever—is tallied in like manner,
in this other field, by democracy's rule that men, the nation, as
a common aggregate of living identities, affording in each a
separate and complete subject for freedom, worldly thrift and
happiness, and for a fair chance for growth, and for protection
in citizenship, etc., must, to the political extent of the suffrage
or vote, if no further, be placed, in each and in the whole, on
one broad, primary, universal, common platform.
The purpose is not altogether direct; perhaps it is more
indirect. For it is not that democracy is of exhaustive account
in itself. Perhaps, indeed, it is (like Nature), of no account in
318 Democratic Vistas
itself. It is that, as we see, it is the best, perhaps only, fit and
full means, formulater, general caller-forth, trainer, for the
million, not for grand material personalities only, but for
immortal souls. To be a voter with the rest is not so much;
and this, like every institute, will have its imperfections. But
to become an enfranchised man, and now, impediments removed,
to stand and start without humiliation, and equal with the rest;
to commence, or have the road cleared to commence, the grand
experiment of development, whose end (perhaps requiring
several generations), may be the forming of a full-grown man
or woman—that is something. To ballast the State is also
secured, and in our times is to be secured, in no other way.
We do not (at any rate I do not), put it either on the ground
that the People, the masses, even the best of them, are, in their
latent or exhibited qualities, essentially sensible and good—nor
on the ground of their rights; but that good or bad, rights or
no rights, the democratic formula is the only safe and preserva-
tive one for coming times. We endow the masses with the
suffrage for their own sake, no doubt; then, perhaps still more,
from another point of view, for community's sake. Leaving the
rest to the sentimentalists, we present freedom as sufficient in
its scientific aspect, cold as ice, reasoning, deductive, clear and
passionless as crystal.
Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind.
Many suppose (and often in its own ranks the «rror), that it
means a throwing aside of law, and running riot. But, briefly,
it is the superior law, not alone that of physical force, the body,
which, adding to, it supersedes with that of the spirit. Law is
the unshakable order of the universe for ever; and the law
over all, and law of laws, is the law of successions; that of the
superior law, in time, gradually supplanting and overwhelming
the inferior one. (While, for myself, I would cheerfully agree—
first covenanting that the formative tendencies shall be adminis-
tered in favour, or at least not against it, and that this re-
servation be closely construed—that until the individual or
community show due signs, or be so minor and fractional as not
to endanger the State, the condition of authoritative tutelage
may continue, and self-government must abide its time.) Nor
is the esthetic point, always an important one, without fascina-
tion for highest aiming souls. The common ambition strains
for elevations, to become some privileged exclusive. The
master sees greatness and health in being part of the mass;
nothing will do as well as common ground. Would you have in
Democratic Vistas 319
i yourself the divine, vast, general, law? Then merge yourself
Î in it.
r And, topping democracy, this most alluring record, that it
; alone can bind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of
t however various and distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family.
, It is the old, yet ever-modern dream of earth, out of her eldest
; and her youngest, her fond philosophers and poets. Not that
1 half only, individualism, which isolates. There is another half,
I which is adhesiveness or love, that fuses, ties, and aggregates,
1 making the races comrades, and fraternising all. Both are to
3 be vitalised by religion (sole worthiest elevator of man or
State), breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath
1 of life. For I say at the core of democracy, finally, is the
r religious element. All the religions, old and new, are there,
r Nor may the scheme step forth, clothed in resplendent beauty
r and command, till these, bearing the best, the latest fruit, the
spiritual, shall fully appear,
e A portion of our pages we might indite with reference
;, towards Europe, especially the British part of it, more than
e our own land, perhaps not absolutely needed for the home
n reader. But the whole question hangs together, and fastens
d and links all peoples. The liberalist of to-day has this advan-
tage over antique or medieval times, that his doctrine seeks
1. , not only to individualise but to universalise. The great word
it Solidarity hgis arisen. Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist
r, in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain
'
r, portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn—
is i they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made
w of no account. Much quackery teems, of course, even on
le democracy's side, yet does not really affect the orbic quality of
g i the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and justify God,
'
— His divine aggregate, the People (or, the veritable homed and
3- sharp-tailed Devil, His aggregate, if there be who convulsively
5- insist upon it)—this, I say, is what democracy is for; and this is
)r what our America means, and is doing—may I not say, has done ?
)t If not, she means nothing more, and does nothing more, than
je j any other land. And as, by virtue of its cosmical, antiseptic
jr : power. Nature's stomach is fully strong enough not only to
a,- 1 digest the morbific matter always presented, not to be tumed
IS aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating thither—but
le even to change such contributions into nutriment for highest
s; I use and life—so American democracy's. That is the lesson we,
in 1 these days, send over to European lands by every westem breeze.
à
320 Democratic Vistas
And truly, whatever may be said, in the way of abstract
argument, for or against the theory of a wider democratising of
institutions in any civilised country, much trouble might well be
saved to all European lands by recognising this palpable fact
(for a palpable fact it is), that some form of such democratising
is about the only resource now left. That, or chronic dissatis-
faction continued, mutterings which grow annually louder and
louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly in most cases, the
inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything worthy to be
called statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among the
advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not
debate to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and
monarchise, or to look forward and democratise—but how, and
in what degree and part, most prudently to democratise.
The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and
revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inert-
ness and fossilism making so large a part of human institutions.
The latter will always take care of themselves—the danger
being that they rapidly tend to ossify us. The former is to be
treated with indulgence, and even with respect. As circulation
to air, so is agitation and a plentiful degree of speculative licence
to political and moral sanity. Indirectly, but surely, goodness,
virtue, law (of the very best), follow freedom. These, to democ-
racy, are what the keel is to the ship, or saltness to the ocean.
The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States
will be a more universal ownership of property, general home-
steads, general comfort—a vast, inter-twining reticulation of
wealth. As the human frame, or, indeed, any object in this
manifold universe, is best kept together by the simple miracle of
its own cohesion, and the necessity, exercise, and profit thereof,
so a great and varied nationality, occupying millions of square
miles, were firmest held and knit by the principle of the safety
and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property owners.
So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it may sound,
and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks
with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant,
and on those out of business. She asks for men and women with
occupations, well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash
in the bank—^and with some cravings for literature, too; and
must have them, and hastens to make them. Luckily, the seed
is already well-sown, and has taken ineradicable root.^
1 For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly specify, as cheerfully
included in the model and standard of these Vistas, a practical, stirring.
Democratic Vistas 321
Huge and mighty are our days, our republican lands—and
most in their rapid shiftings, their changes, all in the interest
of the cause. As I write this particular passage (November,
1868), the din of disputation rages around me. Acrid the
temper of the parties, vital the pending questions. Congress
convenes; the president sends his message; reconstruction is
still in abeyance ; the nomination and the contest for the twenty-
first Presidentiad draw close, with loudest threat and bustle.
Of these, and all the like of these, the eventuations I know not;
but well I know that behind them, and whatever their eventua-
tions, the vital things remain safe and certain, and all the
needed work goes on. Time, with soon or later superciliousness,
disposes of Presidents, Congressmen, party platforms, and such.
Anon, it clears the stage of each and any mortal shred that
thinks itself so potent to its day; and at and after which (with
precious, golden exceptions once or twice in a century), all that
relates to sir potency is flung to moulder in a burial-vault, and
no one bothers himself the least bit about it afterwards. But
the People ever remain, tendencies continue, and all the idiocratic
transfers in unbroken chain go on.
In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far
inland, toward the West. Our future national capital may not
be where the present one is. It is possible, nay likely, that in
less than fifty years, it will migrate a thousand or two miles, will
be re-founded, and everything belonging to it made on a different
plan, original, far more superb. The main social, political,
spine-character of the States will probably run along the Ohio,
Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and west and north of them,
including Canada. Those regions, with the group of powerful
brothers toward the Pacific (destined to the mastership of that
sea and its countless paradises of islands), will compact and
settle the traits of America, with all the old retained, but more
expanded, grafted on newer, hardier, purely native stock. A
giant growth, composite from the rest, getting their contribution,
worldly, money-making, even materialistic character. It is undeniable
that our farms, stores, of&ces, dry-goods, coal and groceries, enginery,
cash-accounts, trades, earnings, markets, etc., should be attended to in
earnest, and actively pursued, just as if they had a real and permanent
existence. I perceive clearly that the extreme business energy, and this
almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States, are
parts of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the
very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the getting of
riches, and the amplest products, power, activity, inventions, movements,
etc. Upon them, as upon substrata, I raise the edifice designed in these
Vistas.
X
322 Democratic Vistas
absorbing it, to make it more illustrious. From the north,
intellect, the sun of things, also the idea of unswayable justice,
anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests. From the south
the living soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily admitting
no demonstration but its own. While from the west itself
comes solid personality, with blood and brawn, and the deep
quality of all-accepting fusion.
Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in
America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school
for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good
only, but of all. "We try often, though we fall back often. A
brave delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and
fully satisfies, out of the action in them, irrespective of success.
Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences
of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb
with currents of attempt at least. Time is ample. Let the
victors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play its part
among us. Judging from the main portions of the history of the
world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid
hourly pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of
tyrants and the credulity of the populace, in some of their
protean forms, no voice can at any time say. They are not.
The clouds break a little, and the sun shines out—but soon and
certain the lowering darkness falls again, as if to last for ever.
Yet is there an immortal courage and prophecy in every sane
soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances, capitulate.
Vive, the attack—the perennial assault! Vive, the unpopular
cause—the spirit that audaciously aims—the never-abandoned
efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and precedents.
Once, before the war (alas ! I dare not say how many times
the mood has come!) I, too, was filled with doubt and gloom.
A foreigner, an acute and good man, had impressively said to
me, that day—putting in form, indeed, my own observations;
" I have travelled much in the United States, and watched
their politicians, and listened to the speeches of the candidates,
and read the journals, and gone into the public-houses, and
heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found your
vaunted America honeycombed from top to toe with infidelism,
even to itself and its own programme. I have marked the
brazen hell-faces of secession and slavery gazing defiantly from
all the windows and doorways. I have everywhere found,
primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to
offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves, I have
Democratic Vistas 323
h, found the north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the
holders of public office in the Nation or the States or their
th municipalities, I have found that not one in a hundred has been
ig chosen by any spontaneous selection of the outsiders, the people.
If but all have been nominated and put through by little or large
îp caucuses of the politicians, and have got in by corrupt rings and
electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have noticed how the
in millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helpless
ol supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have
)d noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurp-
A ing the government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for
id party purposes."
s. Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper,
es amply confronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians
)b and great and little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles,
le and over the powerfullest parties, looms a power, too sluggish
rt maybe, but ever holding decisions and decrees in hand, ready,
le with stem process, to execute them as soon as plainly needed—
id and at times, indeed, summarily crushing to atoms the mightiest
of parties, even in the hour of their pride.
ir In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things
t. from what, at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt
id important who is elected governor, mayor, or legislator (and
r. full of dismay when incompetent or vile ones get elected, as
le i they sometimes do), there are other, quieter contingencies,
e. infinitely more important. Shams, etc., will always be the show,
ar like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deep and clear make up
îd the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroidered shoddy
;s. gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp
es and weft are genuine, and will wear for ever. Enough, in short,
n. i that the race, the land which could raise such as the late rebel-
to '■ lion, could also put it down.
s: The average man of a land at last only is important. He, in
3d these States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good
is, uses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in office, even the
id basest (certain universal requisites, and their settled regularity
ar I and protection, being first secured); a nation like ours, in a
n, sort of geological formation state, trying continually new
ae experiments, choosing new delegations, is not served by the
m best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it—
d, by the combats the}'- arouse. Thus national rage, fury, discus-
to sion, etc., better than content. Thus, also, the warning signals,
i^e ; invaluable for after times.
3^4 Democratic Vistas
What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen
repeated, and doubtless long shall see—the popular judgment
taking the successful candidates on trial in the offices—standing
off, as it were, and observing them and their doings for a while,
and always giving, finally, the fit, exactly due reward ? I think,
after all, the sublimest part of political history, and its culmina-
tion, is currently issuing from the American people. I know
nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive
proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind,
than a well-contested American national election.
Then still the thought returns (like the thread-passage in
overtures), giving the key and echo to these pages. When I
pass to and fro, different latitudes, different seasons, beholding
the crowds of the great cities. New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans,
Baltimore—when I mix with these interminable swarms of
alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent citizens, mechanics,
clerks, young persons—at the idea of this mass of men, so fresh
and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls upon me.
I feel, with dejection and amazement, that among our geniuses
and talented writers or speakers, few or none have yet really
spoken to this people, created a single image-making work for
them, or absorbed the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which
are theirs—and which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain
entirely uncelebrated, unexpressed.
Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the
mind's. What has filled, and fills to-day our intellect, our
fancy, furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The
great poems, Shakespeare included, are poisonous to the idea of
the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of
democracy. The models of our literature, as we get it from
other lands, ultramarine, have had their birth in courts, and
basked and grown in castle sunshine; all smells of princes'
favours. Of workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty,
contributing after their kind; many elegant, many learned, all
complacent. But touched by the national test, or tried by the
standards of democratic personality, they wither to ashes. I
say I have not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not,
that has confronted the voiceless but ever erect and active,
pervading, underlying will and typic aspiration of the land, in
a spirit kindred to itself. Do you call those genteel little
creatures American poets? Do you term that perpetual,
pistareen, paste-pot work, American art, American drama.
Democratic Vistas 325
taste, verse? I think I hear, echoed as from some mountain-
top afar in the west, the scornful laugh of the Genius of these
States.
Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals,
not of literature and art only—not of men only, but of women.
The idea of the women of America (extricated from this daze,
this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about the word lady)
developed, raised to become the robust equals, workers, and, it
may be, even practical and political deciders with the men—
greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity,
always their towering, emblematical attribute—but great, at
any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of being
so, soon as they realise it, and can bring themselves to give up
toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, in-
dependent, stormy life.
Then, as towards our thought's finale (and, in that, over-
arching the true scholar's lesson), we have to say there can be
no complete or epical presentation of democracy in the aggre-
gate, or anything like it, at this day, because its doctrines will
only be effectually incarnated in any one branch, when, in all,
their spirit is at the root and centre. Far, far, indeed, stretch,
in distance, our Vistas ! How much is still to be disentangled,
freed ! How long it takes to make this American world see that
it is, in itself, the final authority and reliance.
Did you, too, 0 friend, suppose democracy was only for
elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy
is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower
and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between
men, and their beliefs—in religion, literature, colleges, and
schools—democracy in all public and private life, and in the army
and navy.^ I have intimated that, as a paramount scheme, it
has yet few or no full realisers and believers. I do not see,
either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted propagandists or
champions, or has been essentially helped, though often harmed,
by them. It has been and is carried on by all the moral forces,
and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in
fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more be
stopped than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also,
^ The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the army
and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-aristo-
cratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and revolt,
and belong here just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope's council
of cardinals. I say if the present theory of our army and navy is sensible
and true, then the rest of America is an immitigated fraud.
326 Democratic Vistas
it resides^ crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair
average of the American-bom people, mainly in the agricultural
regions. But it is not yet, there or anywhere, the fully-received,
the fervid, the absolute faith.
I submit, therefore, that the fmition of democracy, on aught
like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under
any profound and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-com-
posite feudal world, we see in it, through the long ages and
cycles of ages, the results of a deep, integral, human and divine
principle, or fountain, from which issued laws, ecclesia, manners,
institutes, costumes, personalities, poems (hitherto unequalled),
faithfully partaking of their source, and indeed only arising
either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that varied-flowing
display, whose centre was one and absolute—so, long ages hence,
shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect,
an equal history for the democratic principle. It too must be
adorned, credited with its results—then, when it, with imperial
power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind—has
been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political,
and religious expressions and institutes of the civilised world—
has begotten them in spirit and in form, and has carried them
to its own unprecedented heights—has had (it is possible)
monastics and ascetics, more numerous, more devout than the
monks and priests of all previous creeds—has swayed the ages
with a breadth and rectitude tallying Nature's own—has
fashioned, systematised, and triumphantly finished and carried
out, in its own interest, and with unparalleled success, a new
earth and a new man.
Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist
not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the ;
throes of birth are upon us; and we have something of this
advantage in seasons of strong formations, doubts, suspense—for f
then the afflatus of such themes haply may fall upon us, more
or less; and then, hot from surrounding war and revolution,
our speech, though without polished coherence, and a failure
by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least as
the lightnings. I
And maybe we, these days, have, too, our own reward—
(for there are yet some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged).
Though not for us the joy of entering at the last the conquered
city—not ours the chance ever to see with our own eyes the peer-
less power and splendid éclat of the democratic principle, arrived
at meridian, filling the world with effulgence and majesty far i
Democratic Vistas 327
beyond those of past history's kings, or all dynastic sway—
there is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the prophetic vision,
the joy of being tossed in the brave turmoil of these times—
the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the
voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not,
hear not—with the proud consciousness that amid whatever
clouds, seductions, or heart-wearying postponements, we have
never deserted, never despaired, never abandoned the faith.
So much contributed, to be conned well, to help prepare and
brace our edifice, our planned Idea—we still proceed to give it
in another of its aspects—perhaps the main, the high façade
of all. For to democracy, the leveller, the unyielding principle of
the average, surely joined another principle, equally unyielding,
closely tracking the first, indispensable to it, opposite (as the
sexes are opposite), and whose existence, confronting and ever
modifying the other, often clashing, paradoxical, yet neither of
highest avail without the other, plainly supplies to these grand
cosmic politics of ours, and to the launched forth mortal dangers
of republicanism, to-day, or any day, the counterpart and offset
whereby Nature restrains the deadly original relentlessness of
all her first-class laws. This second principle is individuality,
the pride and centripetal isolation of a human being in himself
—identity—personalism. Whatever the name, its acceptance
and thorough infusions through the organisations of political
commonalty now shooting Aurora-like about the world, are of
utmost importance, as the principle itself is needed for very life's
sake. It forms, in a sort, or is to form, the compensating
balance-wheel of the successful working machinery of aggregate
America.
And, if we think of it, what does civilisation itself rest upon—
and what object has it, what its religions, arts, schools, etc., but
rich, luxuriant, varied personalism? To that, all bends; and
it is because toward such result democracy alone, on anything
like Nature's scale, breaks up the limitless fallows of human-
kind, and plants the seed, and gives fair play, that its claims now
precede the rest. The literature, songs, esthetics, etc., of a
country are of importance principally because they furnish the
materials and suggestions of personality for the women and men
of that country, and enforce them in a thousand effective ways.^
^ After the rest is satiated, all interest culminates in the held of persons,
and never flags there. Accordingly in this held have the great poets and
literatuses signally toiled. They too, in all ages, all lands, have been
creators, fashioning, making t3T)es of men and women, as Adam and Eve
are made in the divine fable. Behold, shaped, bred by orientalism.
328 Democratic Vistas
As the topmost claim of a strong consolidating of the nationality
of these States is, that only by such powerful compaction can
the separate States secure that full and free swing within their
spheres, which is becoming to them, each after its kind, so will
individuality, and unimpeded branchings, flourish best under
imperial republican forms.
Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo condition,
and that the only large and satisfactory justification of it resides
in the future, mainly through the copious production of perfect
characters among the people, and through the advent of a sane
and pervading religiousness, it is with regard to the atmosphere
and spaciousness fit for such characters, and of certain nutri- I
ment and cartoon-draftings proper for them, and indicating them
for New World purposes, that I continue the present statement
—an exploration, as of new ground, wherein, like other primitive
surveyors, I must do the best I can, leaving it to those who come
after me to do much better. (The service, in fact, if any, must
be to break a sort of first path or track, no matter how rude and ;
ungeometrical.)
We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I
cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which
still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance
and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have
come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, \
I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to
be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another
great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits
,
feudalism, through their long growth and culmination, and breeding back
in return—(when shall we have an equal series, t3q)ical of democracy?)—
behold, commencing in primal Asia (apparently formulated, in what begin-
ning we know, in the gods of the mythologies, and coming down thence), i;
a few samples out of the countless product, bequeathed to the modems, ^
bequeathed to America as studies. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama,
Arjuna, Solomon, most of the Old and New Testament characters; Achilles,
Ulysses, Theseus, Prometheus, Hercules, ¿Eneas, Plutarch's heroes; the
Merlin of Celtic bards; the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and
Hagen in the Nibelungen; Roland and Oliver; Roustam in the Shah-
Nemah; and so on to Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shake-
speare's Hamlet, Richard II., Lear, Marc Antony, etc., and the modem
Faust. These, I say, are models, combined, adjusted to other standards
than j
America's, but of priceless value to her and hers. 1
Among women, the goddesses of the Eg3q>tian, Indian, and Greek mytho- i
lògies, certain Bible characters, especially the Holy Mother; Cleopatra,
Penelope; the portraits of Bmnhelde and Chriemhilde in the Nibelungen '
;
Oriana, Una, etc.; the modem Consuelo, Walter Scott's Jeanie and Effie
Deans, etc., etc. (Yet women portrayed or outlined at her best, or as
perfect human mother, does not hitherto, it seems to me, fully appear in
literature.) j
Democratic Vistas 329
unwritten. As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the
States (and I entirely respect them), are toward those vast and
sweeping movements, influences, moraland physical, of humanity,
now and always current over the planet, on the scale of the
impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to reduce the
whole matter to the consideration of a single self, a man, a
woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the treatment of the
universal, in politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later
we come down to one single, solitary soul.
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that
rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars,
shining eternal. This is the thought of identity—^yours for you,
whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond
statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet
hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such
devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven
and earth (significant only because of the Me in the centre),
creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before
this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it
alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf
in the fable, once liberated and looked upon, it expands over
the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven.
The quality of Being, in the object's self, according to its own
central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto
—not criticism by other standards, and adjustments thereto—
is the lesson of Nature, True, the full man wisely gathers, culls,
absorbs; but if, engaged disproportionately in that, he slights
or overlays the precious idiocrasy and special nativity and
intention that he is, the man's self, the main thing, is a failure,
however wide his general cultivation. Thus, in our times,
refinement and delicatesse are not only attended to sufficiently,
but threaten to eat us up, like a cancer. Already, the demo-
cratic genius watches, ill-pleased, these tendencies. Provision
for a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what
one has in one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. Negative
qualities, even deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and
normal simplicity and separation, amid this more and more
complex, more and more artificialised state of society—^how
pensively we yearn for them! how we would welcome their
return !
In some such direction, then—at any rate
, enough to preserve
the balance—^we feel called upon to throw what weight we can,
not for absolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather.
Democratic Vistas
trim, conform, and ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and
proper, is the pressure of our days. While aware that much can
be said even in behalf of all this, we perceive that we have not
now to consider the question of what is demanded to serve a
half-starved and barbarous nation, or set of nations, but what
is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous congeries of
conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming stifled
and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite con-
formity and art. In addition to established sciences, we suggest
a science as it were of healthy average personalism, on original-
universal grounds, the object of which should be to raise up
and supply through the States a copious race of superb
American men and women, cheerful, religious, ahead of any yet
known.
America has yet morally and artistically originated nothing.
She seems singularly unaware that the models of persons, books,
manners,etc.,appropriate for former conditions and for European
lands, are but exiles and exotics here. No current of her life,
as shown on the surfaces of what is authoritatively called her
society, accepts or runs into social or esthetic democracy; but
all the currents set squarely against it. Never, in the Old
World, was thoroughly upholstered exterior appearance and
show, mental and other, built entirely on the idea of caste, and
on the sufficiency of mere outside acquisition—never were glib-
ness, verbal intellect more the test, the emulation—more loftily
elevated as head and sample—than they are on the surface of
our republican States this day. The writers of a time hint the
mottoes of its gods. The word of the modern, say these voices,
is the word Culture.
We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy.
This word Culture, or what it has come to represent, involves,
by contrast, our whole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur,
urging us to engagement. Certain questions arise. As now
taught, accepted and carried out, are not the processes of culture
rapidly creating a class of supercilious infidels, who believe in
nothing? Shall a man lose himself in countless masses of
adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that, and
the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave parts of
him are reduced and clipped away, like the bordering of box in
a garden? You can cultivate corn and roses and orchards—
but who shall cultivate the mountain peaks, the ocean, and the
tumbling gorgeousness of the clouds? Lastly—is the readily-
given reply that culture only seeks to help, systematise, and put
Democratic Vistas 331
in attitude^ the elements of fertility and power, a conclusive
reply ?
I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should
certainly insist, for the purposes of these States, on a radical
change of category, in the distribution of precedence. I should
demand a programme of culture, drawn out, not for a single
class alone, or for the parlours or lecture-rooms, but with an eye
to practical life, the west, the working-men, the facts of farms
and jack-planes and engineers, and of the broad range of the
women also of the middle and working strata, and with reference
to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and powerful
motherhood. I should demand of this programme or theory
a scope generous enough to include the widest human area. It
must have for its spinal meaning the formation of a typical per-
sonality of character, eligible to the uses of the high average of
men—and not restricted by conditions ineligible to the masses.
The best culture will always be that of the manly and courageous
instincts, and loving perceptions, and of self-respect—aiming to
form, over this continent, an idiocrasy of universalism, which,
true child of America, will bring joy to its mother, returning to
her in her own spirit, recruiting m}T:iads of offspring, able,
natural, perceptive, tolerant, devout believers in her, America,
and with some definite instinct why and for what she has arisen,
most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now and
here, with wonderful step, journeying through Time.
The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World,
is, under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion
(ensemble-Individuality), at all hazards, to vitalise man's free
play of special Personalism, recognising in it something that calls
ever more to be considered, fed, and adopted as the substratum
for the best that belongs to us (government indeed is for it),
including the new esthetics of our future.
To formulate beyond this present vagueness—to help line and
put before us the species, or a specimen of the species, of the
democratic ethnolog}^ of the future, is a work toward which the
genius of our land, with peculiar encouragement, invites her
well-wishers. Already certain limnings, more or less grotesque,
more or less fading and watery, have appeared. We too
(repressing doubts and qualms) will try our hand.
Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait
of personality for general use for the manliness of the States (and
doubtless that is most useful which is most simple and compre-
hensive for all, and toned low enough), we should prepare the
332 Democratic Vistas
canvas well beforehand. Parentage must consider itself in
advance. (Will the time hasten when fatherhood and mother-
hood shall become a science—and the noblest science?) To our
model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibred physique is indispensable;
the questions of food, drink, air, exercise, assimilation, digestion,
can never be intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-
begotten selfhood—in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring,
full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control,
neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor
sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the com-
plexion showing the best blood, somewhat flushed, breast ex-
panded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music,
eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing—and
a general presence that holds its own in the company of the
highest. (For it is native personality, and that alone, that
endows a man to stand before presidents or generals, or in any
distinguished collection, with aplomb—and not culture, or any
knowledge or intellect whatever.)
With regard to the mental-educational part of our model,
enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, etc., the
concentration thitherward of all the customs of our age, especially
in America, is so overweening, and provides so fully for that part,
that, important and necessary as it is, it really needs nothing
from us here—except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint.
Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell
upon here. Like beauty, grace of motion, etc., they are results.
Causes, original things, being attended to, the right manners
unerringly follow. Much is said, "
among artists, of the grand
style," as if it were a thing by itself. When a man, artist or
whoever, has health, pride, acuteness, noble aspirations, he has
the motive-elements of the grandest stjde. The rest is but
manipulation (yet that is no small matter).
Leaving still unspecified several sterling parts of any model fit
for the future personality of America, I must not fail, again and
ever, to pronounce myself on one, probably the least attended
to in modem times—a hiatus, indeed, threatening its gloomiest
consequences after us. I mean the simple, unsophisticated
Conscience, the primary moral element. If I were asked to
specify in what quarter lie the grounds of darkest dread,
respecting the America of our hopes, I should have to point to
this particular. I should demand the invariable application to
individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-tme plumb-
rale of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modem civilisée.
Democratic Vistas 333
with his all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still
show himself but an amputation while this deficiency remains.
Beyond (assuming a more hopeful tone), the vertebration of the
manly and womanly personalism of our western world, can only
be, and is, indeed, to be (1 hope), its all penetrating Religiousness.
The ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be looked for in this
field of individuality, and is a result that no organisation or
church can ever achieve. As history is poorly retained by what
the technists call history, and is not given out from their pages,
except the learner has in himself the sense of the well-wrapt,
never yet written, perhaps impossible to be written, history—
so Religion, although casually arrested, and, after a fashion,
preserved in the churches and creeds, does not depend at all
upon them, but is a part of the identified soul, which, when
greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but in new ways—
the identified soul, which can really confront Religion when it
extricates itself entirely from the churches, and not before.
Personalism fuses this, and favours it. I should say, indeed,
that only in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of
individuality may the spirituality of religion positively come
forth at all. Only here, and on such terms, the meditation, the
devout ecstasy, the soaring flight. Only here, communion with
the mysteries, the eternal problems, whence ? whither? Alone,
and identity, and the mood—and the soul emerges, and all
statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapours. Alone,
and silent thought and awe, and aspiration—and then the
interior consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in
magic ink, beams out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles
may convey, and priests expound, but it is exclusively for the
noiseless operation of one's isolated Self, to enter the pure ether
of veneration, reach the divine levels, and commune with the
unutterable.
To practically enter into politics is an important part of
American personalism. To every young man, north and south,
earnestly studying these things, I should here, as an offset to
what I have said in former pages, now also say, that maybe
to views of very large scope, after all, perhaps the political
(perhaps the literary and sociological) America goes best about
its development its own way—sometimes, to temporary sight,
appalling enough. It is the fashion among dilettanti and fops
(perhaps I myself am not guiltless), to decry the whole formu-
lation of the active politics of America, as beyond redemption,
and to be carefully kept away from. See you that you do not
334 Democratic Vistas
fall into this error. America, it may be, is doing very well upon
the whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their
leaders, these half-brained nominees, and many ignorant ballots,
and many elected failures and blatherers. It is the dilettanti,
and all who shirk their duty, who are not doing well. As for
you, I advise you to enter more strongly yet into politics. I
advise every young man to do so. Always inform yourself;
always do the best you can; always vote. Disengage yourself
from parties. They have been useful, and to some extent
remain so; but the floating, uncommitted electors, farmers,
clerks, mechanics, the masters of parties—watching aloof,
inclining victory this side or that side—such are the ones most
needed, present and future. For America, if eligible at all to
downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without; for
I see clearly that the combined foreign world could not beat
her down. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Own-
ing no law but their own will, more and more combative, less
and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brother-
hood, the perfect equality of the States, the ever-overarching
American ideas, it behooves you to convey yourself implicitly
to no party, nor submit blindly to their dictators, but steadily
hold yourself judge and master over all of them.
So much (hastily tossed together, and leaving far more
unsaid), for an ideal, or intimations of an ideal, toward American
manhood. But the other sex, in our land, requires at least a
basis of suggestion.
I have seen a young American woman, one of a large family
of daughters, who, some years since, migrated from her meagre
country home to one of the northern cities, to gain her own
support. She soon became an expert seamstress, but find ing
the employment too confining for health and comfort, she went
boldly to work for others, to housekeep, cook, clean, etc. After
trying several places, she fell upon one where she was suited.
She has told me that she finds nothing degrading in her position;
it is not inconsistent with personal dignity, self-respect, and the
respect of others. She confers benefits and receives them. She
has good health; her presence itself is healthy and bracing;
her character is unstained; she has made herself understood,
and preserves her independence, and has been able to help her
parents, and educate and get places for her sisters; and her
course of life is not without opportunities for mental improve-
ment, and of much quiet, uncosting happiness and love.
I have seen another woman who, from taste and necessity
Democratic Vistas 335
conjoined, has gone into practical affairs, carries on a mechanical
business, partly works at it herself, dashes out more and more
into real hardy life, is not abashed by the coarseness of the
contact, knows how to be firm and silent at the same time,
holds her own with unvarying coolness and decorum, and will
compare, any day, with superior carpenters, farmers, and even
boatmen and drivers. For all that, she has not lost the charm
of the womanly nature, but preserves and bears it fully, though
through such rugged presentation.
Then there is the wife of a mechanic, mother of two children,
a woman of merely passable English education, but of fine wit,
with all her sex's grace and intuitions, who exhibits, indeed, such
a noble female personality, that I am fain to record it here.
Never abnegating her own proper independence, but always
genially preserving it, and what belongs to it—cooking, washing,
child-nursing, house-tending—she beams sunshine out of all
these duties, and makes them illustrious. Physiologically
sweet and sound, loving work, practical, she yet knows that
there are intervals, however few, devoted to recreation, music,
leisure, hospitality—^and affords such intervals. Whatever she
does, and wherever she is, that charm, that indescribable per-
fume of genuine womanhood attends her, goes with her, exhales
from her, which belongs of right to all the sex, and is, or ought
to be, the invariable atmosphere and common aureola of old
as well as young.
My dear mother once described to me a resplendent person,
down on Long Island, whom she knew in early days. She was
known by the name of the Peacemaker. She was well toward
eighty years old, of happy and sunny temperament, had always
lived on a farm, and was very neighbourly, sensible and dis-
creet, an invariable and welcomed favourite, especially with
young married women. She had numerous children and grand-
children. She was uneducated, but possessed a native dignity.
She had come to be a tacitly agreed upon domestic regulator,
judge, settler of difficulties, shepherdess, the reconciler in the
land. She was a sight to draw near and look upon, with her
large figure, her profuse snow-white hair (uncoifed by any
head-dress or cap), dark eyes, clear complexion, sweet breath,
and peculiar personal magnetism.
The foregoing portraits, I admit, are frightfully out of line
from these imported models of womanly personality—the stock
feminine characters of the current novelists, or of the foreign
court poems (Ophelias, Enids, princesses, or ladies of one thing
336 Democratic Vistas |
r
or another), which fill the envying dreams of so many poor girls,
and are accepted by our men, too, as supreme ideals of feminine
excellence to be sought after. But I present mine just for a
change.
Then there are mutterings (we will not now stop to heed ;
them here, but they must be heeded), of something more :
revolutionary. The day is coming when the deep questions of
woman's entrance amid the arenas of practical life, politics, the
suffrage, etc., will not only be argued all around us, but may
be put to decision, and real experiment.
Of course, in these States, for both man and woman, we must
entirely recast the types of highest personality from what the !
oriental, feudal, ecclesiastical worlds bequeath us, and which
yet possess the imaginative and esthetic fields of the United
States, pictorial and melodramatic, not without use as studies,
but making sad work, and forming a strange anachronism upon
the scenes and exigencies around us. Of course, the old un-
dying elements remain. The task is, to successfully adjust
them to new combinations, our own days. Nor is this so
incredible. I can conceive a community, to-day and here, in
which, on a sufficient scale, the perfect personalities, without
noise meet; say in some pleasant western settlement or town,
where a couple of hundred best men and women, of ordinary
worldly status, have by luck been drawn together, with nothing |
extra of genius or wealth, but virtuous, chaste, industrious, j
cheerful, resolute, friendly and devout. I can conceive such a |
community organised in running order, powers judiciously i
delegated—farming, building, trade, courts, mails, schools,
«lections, all attended to; and then the rest of life, the main
thing, freely branching and blossoming in each individual, and |
bearing golden fruit. I can see there, in every young and old
man, after his kind, and in every woman after hers, a true !
personality, developed, exercised proportionately in body, mind, !
and spirit. I can imagine this case as one not necessarily rare j
or difficult, but in buoyant accordance with the municipal and !
general requirements of our times. And I can realise in it the i
culmination of something better than any stereotyped éclat of 1
history or poems. Perhaps unsung, undramatised, unput in j
essays or biographies—perhaps even some such community
already exists, in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, or somewhere, practi-
cally fiilfilling itself, and thus outvying, in cheapest vulgar life,
all that has been hitherto shown in best ideal pictures.
In short, and to sum up, America, betaking herself to forma-
É
Democratic Vistas 337
Is, tive action (as it is about time for more solid achievement, and
ne less windy promise), must, for her purposes, cease to recognise
a a theory of character grown of feudal aristocracies, or formed
by merely literary standards, or from any ultramarine full-dress
ed formulas of culture, polish, caste, etc., and must sternly pro-
>re mulgate her own new standard, yet old enough, and accepting
of the old, the perennial elements, and combining them into groups,
he unities, appropriate to the modern, the democratic, the west,
ay and to the practical occasions and needs of our own cities, and
of the agricultural regions. Ever the most precious in the
ist common. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill or lake, is more
he than any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and redolent with
ch perfume; and the air is more than the costliest perfumes,
ed And now, for fear of mistake, we may not intermit to beg our
ÎS, absolution from all that genuinely is, or goes along with, even
an Culture. Pardon us, venerable shade! if we have seemed to
n- speak lightly of your office. The whole civilisation of the earth,
st we know, is yours, with all the glory and the light thereof. It
so is, indeed, in your own spirit, and seeking to tally the loftiest
in teachings of it, that we aim these poor utterances. For you,
ut too, mighty minister! know that there is something greater
n, than you, namely, the fresh, eternal qualities of Being. From
ry them, and by them, as you, at your best, we too evoke the last,
ig i the needed help, to vitalise our country and our days. Thus
IS, we pronounce not so much against the principle of culture; we
a only supervise it, and promulgate along with it, as deep, perhaps
ly a deeper, principle. As we have shown the New World includ-
Is, ing in itself the all-levelling aggregate of democracy, we show
in it also including the all-varied, all-permitting, all-free theorem
id of individuality, and erecting therefor a lofty and hitherto
Id unoccupied framework or platform, broad enough for all, eligible
lie to every farmer and mechanic—-to the female equally with the
d, male—a towering selfhood, not physically perfect only—^not
re I satisfied with the mere mind's and learning's stores, but religious,
id ' possessing the idea of the infinite (rudder and compass sure
ie amid this troublous voyage, o'er darkest, wildest wave, through
of stormiest wind, of man's or nation's progress)—realising, above
in the rest, that known humanity, in deepest sense, is fair adhesion
ty to itself, for purposes beyond—and that, finally, the personality
ti- I of mortal life is most important with reference to the immortal,
e, j the unknown, the spiritual, the only permanently real, which
as the ocean waits for and receives the rivers, waits for us each
1- I and all.
338 Democratic Vistas
Much is there, yet, demanding line and outline in our Vistas,
not only on these topics, but others quite unwritten. Indeed,
we could talk the matter, and expand it, through lifetime. But
it is necessary to return to our original premises. In view of
them, we have again pointedly to confess that all the objective
grandeurs of the world, for highest purposes, yield themselves
up, and depend on mentality alone. Here, and here only, all
balances, all rests. For the mind, which alone builds the
permanent edifice, haughtily builds it to itself. By it, with
what follows it, are conveyed to mortal sense the culminations
of the materialistic, the known, and a prophecy of the unknown.
To take expression, to incarnate, to endow a literature with
grand and archet3ipal models—to fill with pride and love the
utmost capacity, and to achieve spiritual meanings, and suggest
the future—these, and these only, satisfy the soul. We must
not say one word against real materials; but the wise know
that they do not become real till touched by emotions, the mind.
Did we call the latter imponderable ? Ah, let us rather proclaim
that the slightest song-tune, the countless ephemera of passions
aroused by orators and tale-tellers, are more dense, more
weighty than the engines there in the great factories, or the
granite blocks in their foundations.
Approaching thus the momentous spaces, and considering with
reference to a new and greater personalism, the needs and possi-
bilities of American imaginative literature, through the medium-
light of what we have already broached, it will at once be
appreciated that a vast gulf of difference separates the present
accepted condition of these spaces, inclusive of what is floating
in them, from any condition adjusted to, or fit for, the world,
the America, there sought to Ido indicated, and the copious
races of complete men and women, along these Vistas crudely
outlined. It is, in some sort, no less a difference than lies
between that long-continued nebular state and vagueness of
the astronomical worlds, compared with the subsequent state,
the definitely-formed worlds themselves, duly compacted,
clustering in systems, hung up there, chandeliers of the universe,
beholding and mutually lit by each other's lights, serving for
ground of all substantial foothold, all vulgar uses—yet serving
still more as an undying chain and echelon of spiritual proofs
and shows. A boundless field to fill! A new creation, with
needed orbic works launched forth, to revolve in free and lawful
circuits—to move, self-poised, through the ether, and shine like
heaven's own suns! With such, and nothing less, we suggest
Democratic Vistas 339
•S, that New World literature^ fit to rise upon, cohere, and signalise
d^ in time, these States.
at What, however, do we more definitely mean by New World
of literature? Are we not doing well enough here already? Are
not the United States this day busily using, working, more
es printer's type, more presses, than any other country? uttering
dl and absorbing more publications than any other? Do not our
ae publishers fatten quicker and deeper? (helping themselves,
th under shelter of a delusive and sneaking law, or rather absence
as of law, to most of their forage, poetical, pictorial, historical,
n. romantic, even comic, without money and without price—^and
th fiercely resisting the timidest proposal to pay for it). Many
ae will come under this delusion—but my purpose is to dispel it.
St I say that a nation may hold and circulate rivers and oceans
St of very readable print, journals, magazines, novels, library-books,-
"
w poetry," etc.—such as the States to-day possess and circulate
d. —of unquestionable aid and value—^hundreds of new volumes
m annually composed and brought out here, respectable enough,
IS indeed unsurpassed in smartness and erudition—with further
re hundreds, or rather millions (as by free forage or theft afore-
le mentioned), also thrown into the market—and yet, all the while,
the said nation, land, strictly speaking, may possess no literature
th at all.
>i- Repeating our inquiry, what, then, do we mean by real
a- literature? especially the democratic literature of the future?
)e Hard questions to meet. The clues are inferential, and turn
at us to the past. At best, we can only offer suggestions, com-
ig parisons, circuits.
d, It must still be reiterated, as, for the purpose of these memo-
as randa, the deep lesson of history and time, that all else in the
ly contributions of a nation or age, through its politics, materials,
es heroic personalities, military éclat, etc., remains crude, and
of defers, in any close and thorough-going estimate, until vitalised
e, by national, original archet3q)es in literature. They only put
d, the nation in form, finally tell anything—prove, complete any-
e, thing—perpetuate anything. Without doubt, some of the
or richest and most powerful and populous communities of the
ig antique world, and some of the grandest personalities and events,
fs have, to after and present times, left themselves entirely unbe-
'h queathed. Doubtless, greater than any that have come down
Lil to us, were among those lands, heroisms, persons, that have not
m come down to us at all, even by name, date, or location. Others
3t have arrived safely, as from voyages over wide, century-stretch-
340 Democratic Vistas
ing seas. The little ships, the miracles that have buoyed them,
and by incredible chances safely conveyed them (or the best
of them, their meaning and essence) over long wastes, darkness,
lethargy, ignorance, etc., have been a few inscriptions—a few
immortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing what
measureless values of reminiscence, contemporary portraitures,
manners, idioms and beliefs, with deepest inference, hint and
thought, to tie and touch for ever the old, new body, and the
old, new soul ! These ! and still these ! bearing the freight so
dear — dearer than pride — dearer than love. All the best
experience of humanity, folded, saved, freighted to us here.
Some of these tiny ships we call Old and New Testament, Homer,
Eschylus, Plato, Juvenal, etc. Precious minims! I think, if
we were forced to choose, rather than have you, and the likes
of you, and what belongs to, and has grown of you, blotted out
and gone, we could better afíord, appalling as that would be, to
lose all actual ships, this day fastened by wharf, or floating on
wave, and see them, with all their cargoes, scuttled and sent to
the bottom.
Gathered by geniuses of city, race or age, and put by them
in highest of art's forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar
combinations and the outshows of that city, age, or race, its
particular modes of the universal attributes and passions, its
faiths, heroes, lovers and gods, wars, traditions, struggles,
crimes, emotions, joys (for the subtle spirit of these), having
been passed on to us to illumine our own selfhood, and its
experiences—what they supply, indispensable and highest, if
taken away, nothing else in all the world's boundless store-
houses could make up to us, or ever again return.
For us, along the great highways of time, those monuments
stand—^those forms of majesty and beauty. For us those
beacons bum through all the nights. Unknown Eg3^tians,
graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with h3min and apothegm and
endless epic; Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flashes of
lightning, conscience like red-hot iron, plaintive songs and
screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslavement; Christ,
with bent head, brooding love and peace, like a dove; Greek,
creating eternal shapes of physical and esthetic proportion!
Roman, lord of satire, the sword, and the codex;—of the figures,
some far ofl and veiled, others nearer and visible; Dante, stalk-
ing with lean form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of superfluous
flesh; Angelo, and the great painters, architects, musicians;
rich Shakespeare, luxuriant as the sun, artist and singer of
Democratic Vistas 341
feudalism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colours, owner
thereof, and using them at will; and so to such as German
Kant and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the
ages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian
gods. Of these, and the like of these, is it too much, indeed,
to return to our favourite figure, and view them as orbs and
systems of orbs, moving in free paths in the spaces of that other
heaven, the cosmic intellect, the soul?
Ye powerful and resplendent ones! ye were, in your atmos-
pheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes, the feudal
and the old—while our genius is democratic and modem. Yet
could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of life into our New
World's nostrils—not to enslave us, as now, but, for our needs,
to breed a spirit like your own—perhaps (dare we to say it?) to
dominate, even destroy, what you yourselves have left! On
your plane, and no less, but even higher and wider, must we mete
and measure for to-day and here. I demand races of orbic
bards, with unconditional, uncompromising sway. Come forth,
sweet democratic despots of the west!
By points like these we, in reflection, token what we mean
by any land's or people's genuine literature. And thus com-
pared and tested, judging amid the influence of loftiest products
only, what do our current copious fields of print, covering in
manifold forms, the United States, better, for an analogy,
present, than, as in certain regions of the sea, those spreading,
undulating masses of squid, through which the whale swimming,
with head half out, feeds?
Not but that doubtless our current so-called literature (like
an endless supply of small coin) performs a certain service, and
maybe too, the service needed for the time, the preparation-
service, as children leam to spell. Everybody reads, and truly
nearly everybody writes, either books, or for the magazines or
joumals. The matter has magnitude, too, after a sort. But
is it really advancing? or, has it advanced for a long while?
There is something impressive about the huge editions of the
dailies and weeklies, the mountain-stacks of white paper piled
in the press-vaults, and the proud, crashing, ten-cylinder
presses, which I can stand and watch any time by the half hour.
Then (though the States in the field of imagination present not
a single first-class work, not a single great literatus), the main
objects, to amuse, to titillate, to pass away time, to circulate
the news, and rumours of news, to rhyme, and read rhyme, are
yet attained, and on a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in
342 Democratic Vistas
the rivalry of writers^ especially novelists, success (so-called)
is for him or her who strikes the mean flat average, the sensa-
tional appetite for stimulus, incident, persiflage, etc., and depicts,
to the common calibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the
luckiest of them, as we see, the audiences are limitless and
profitable; but they cease presently. While this day, or any
day, to workmen portraying interior or spiritual life, the
audiences were limited, and often laggard—but they last for
ever.
Compared with the past, our modem science soars, and our
journals serve—but ideal and even ordinary romantic literature,
does not, I think, substantially advance. Behold the prolific
brood of the contemporary novel, magazine-tale, theatre-play,
etc. The same endless thread of tangled and superlative love-
story, inherited, apparently from the Amadises and Palmerins
ef the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries over there in Europe.
The costumes and associations brought down to date, the season-
ing hotter and more varied, the dragons and ogres left out—but
the thing, I should say, has not advanced—is just as sensational,
just as strained—remains about the same, nor more, nor less.
What is the reason our time, our lands, that we see no fresh
local courage, sanity, of our own—the Mississippi, stalwart
Western men, real mental and physical facts. Southerners, etc.,
in the body of our literature.? especially the poetic part of it.
But always, instead, a parcel of dandies and ennuyees, dapper
little gentlemen from abroad, who flood us with their thin
sentiment of parlours, parasols, piano-songs, tinkling rhymes,
the five-hundredth importation — or whimpering and crying
about something, chasing one aborted conceit after another,
and for ever occupied in dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic
women. While, current and novel, the grandest events and
revolutions, and stormiest passions of history are crossing to-
day with unparalleled rapidity and magnificence over the stages
of our own and all the continents, offering new materials, open-
ing new vistas, with largest needs, inviting the daring launching
forth of conceptions in literature, inspired by them, soaring in
highest regions, serving art in its highest (which is only the
other name for serving God, and serving humanity), where is
the man of letters, where is the book, with any nobler aim than
to follow in the old track, repeat what has been said before—
and, as its utmost triumph, sell well, and be erudite or elegant ?
Mark the roads, the processes, through which these States
have arrived, standing easy, henceforth ever-equal, ever-com-
Democratic Vistas 343
d) pact, in their range to-day. European adventures? the most
'8-- antique ? Asiatic or African ? old history—miracles—romances ?
ts, Rather, our own unquestioned facts. They hasten, incredible,
he blazing bright as fire. From the deeds and days of Columbus
^d down to the present, and including the present—and especially
the late Secession war—^when I con them, I feel, every leaf, like
he stopping to see if I have not made a mistake, and fallen on the
or splendid figments of some dream. But it is no dream. We
stand, live, move, in the huge flow of our age's materialism—in
or its spirituality. We have had founded for us the most positive
'0, of lands. The founders have passed to other spheres—but
5c what are these terrible duties they have left us ?
Their politics the United States have, in my opinion, with all
e- their faults, already substantially established, for good, on their
OS own native, sound, long-vistaed principles, never to be over-
•c* turned, offering a sure basis for all the rest. With that, their
o- future religious forms, sociology, literature, teachers, schools,
ot costumes, etc., are of course to make a compact whole, uniform,
d, on tallying principles. For how can we remain, divided, con-
tradicting ourselves, this way? ^ I say we can only attain
5h harmony and stability by consulting ensemble and the ethic
rt purports, and faithfully building upon them. For the New
'V World, indeed, after two grand stages of preparation-strata, I
t- perceive that now a third stage, being ready for (and without
pr which the other two were useless), with unmistakable signs
ill appears. The First stage was the planning and putting on
s, record the political foundation rights of immense masses of
ig people—indeed all people—in the organisation of republican
National, State, and municipal governments, all constructed
ic with reference to each, and each to all. This is the American
»d programme, not for classes, but for universal man, and is em-
0- bodied in the compacts of the Declaration of Independence, and,
ss as it began and has now grown, with its amendments, the
1- Federal Constitution—and in the State governments, with
fg all their interiors, and with general suffrage; those having the
ill sense not only of what is in themselves, but that their certain
le several things started, planted, hundreds of others in the same
IS 1 Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science
Ln (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all
thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, moimt-
ing, most illuminating, most glorious—smrely never again to set. But
against it, deeply entrenched, holding possession, yet remains (not only
through the chinches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unre-
generate poetry), the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, super-
stitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.
344 Democratic Vistas
direction duly arise and follow. The Second stage relates to
material prosperity, wealth, produce, labour-saving machines,
iron, cotton, local. State, and continental railways, intercom-
munication and trade with all lands, steamships, mining,
general employment, organisation of great cities, cheap appli-
anees for comfort, numberless technical schools, books, news-
papers, a currency for money circulation, etc. The Third stage,
rising out of the previous ones, to make them and all illustrious,
I, now, for one, promulge, announcing a native expression-spirit, :
getting into form, adult, and through mentality, for these States, ;
self-contained, different from others, more expansive, more rich ^
and free, to be evidenced by original authors and poets to come,
by American personalities, plenty of them, male and female,
traversing the States, none excepted—and by native superber
tableaux and growths of language, songs, operas, orations,
lectures, architecture—and by a sublime and serious Religious
Democracy sternly taking command, dissolving the old, slough-
ing off surfaces, and from its own interior and vital principles,
reconstructing, democratising society.
For America, type of progress, and of essential faith in man,
above all his errors and wickedness—few suspect how deep, how
deep it really strikes. The world evidently supposes, and we
have evidently supposed so too, that the States are merely to
achieve the equal franchise, an elective government—to inaugu- \
rate the respectability of labour, and become a nation of practical Í
operatives, law-abiding, orderly, and well-off. Yes, those are :
indeed parts of the task of America; but they not only do not !
exhaust the progressive conception, but rather arise, teeming ;
with it, as the mediums of deeper, higher progress. Daughter
of a physical revolution—smother of the true revolutions, which
are of the interior life, and of the arts. For so long as the spirit [
is not changed, any change of appearance is of no avail.
The old men, I remember as a boy, were always talking of
American independence. What is independence.? Freedom
from all laws or bonds except those of one's own being, con-
trolled by the universal ones. To lands, to man, to woman, ,
what is there at last to each, but the inherent soul, nativity
idiocrasy, free, highest-poised, soaring its own flight, following
out itself.? I
At present, these States, in their theology and social standards
(of greater importance than their political institutions) are en-
tirely held possession of by foreign lands. We see the sons and
daughters of the New World, ignorant of its genius, not yet
Democratic Vistas 345
inaugurating the native^ the universal^ and the near still import-
ing the distant, the partial, and the dead. We see London,
Paris, Italy—not original, superb, as where they belong—but
second-hand here, where they do not belong. We see the shreds
of Hebrews, Romans, Greeks; but where, on her own soil, do we
see, in any faithful, highest, proud expression, America herself?
I sometimes question whether she has a corner in her own
house.
Not but that in one sense, and a very grand one, good theology,
good art, or good literature, has certain features shared in
common. The combination fraternises, ties the races—is, in
many particulars, under laws applicable indifferently to all,
irrespective of climate or date, and, from whatever source,
appeals to emotions, pride, love, spirituality, common to human-
kind. Nevertheless, they touch a man closest (perhaps only
actually touch him), even in these, in their expression through
autochthonic lights and shades, flavours, fondnesses, aversions,
specific incidents, illustrations, out of his own nationality,
geography, surroundings, antecedents, etc. The spirit and the
form are one, and depend far more on association, identity, and
place, than is supposed. Subtly interwoven with the materi-
ality and personality of a land, a race—^Teuton, Turk, Califomian,
or what not—there is always something—I can hardly tell what
it is—history but describes the results of it—it is the same as
the untenable look of some human faces. Nature, too, in her
stolid forms, is full of it—^but to most it is there a secret. This
something is rooted in the invisible roots, the profoundest mean-
ings of that place, race, or nationality; and to absorb and again
effuse it, uttering words and products as from its midst, and
carrying it into highest regions, is the work, or a main part of
the work, of any country's true author, poet, historian, lecturer,
and perhaps even priest and philosoph. Here, and here only,
are the foundations for our really valuable and permanent
verse, drama, etc.
But at present (judged by any higher scale than that which
finds the chief ends of existence to be to feverishly make money
"
during one-half of it, and by some amusement," or perhaps
foreign travel, flippantly kill time, the other half), and con-
sidered with reference to purposes of patriotism, health, a noble
personality, religion, and the democratic adjustments, all these
swarms of poems, literary magazines, dramatic plays, resultant
so far from American intellect, and the formation of our best ideas,
are useless and a mockery. They strengthen and nourish no
34^ Democratic Vistas
onCj express nothing characteristic, give decision and purpose
to no one, and suffice only the lowest level of vacant minds.
Of what is called the drama, or di'amatic presentation in the
United States, as now put forth at the theatres, I should say it
deserves to be treated with the same gravity, and on a par with
the questions of ornamental confectionery at public dinners, or
the arrangement of curtains and hangings in '
a ball-room—
nor more, nor less. Of the other, I will not insult the reader's
intelligence (once really entering into the atmosphere of these
Vistas), by supposing it necessary to show, in detail, why the
copious dribble, either of our little or well-known rhymesters,
does not fulfil, in any respect, the needs and august occasions of |
this land. America demands a poetry that is bold, modern, ;
and all-surrounding and cosmical, as she is herself. It must in
no respect ignore science or the modem, but inspire itself with
science and the modem. It must bend its vision toward the
future, more than the past. Like America, it must extricate
itself from even the greatest models of the past, and, while |
courteous to them, must have entire faith in itself, and the
products of its ovm democratic spirit only. Like her, it must
place in the van, and hold up at all hazards, the banner of the
divine pride of man in himself (the radical foundation of the
new religion). Long enough have the People been listening to
poems in which common humanity, deferential, bends low,
humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to
no such poems. Erect, inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the
chant; and then America will listen with pleased ears.
Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to light
at last, be probably usher'd forth from any of the quarters
currently counted on. To-day, doubtless, the infant genius of
American poetic expression (eluding those highly-refined im-
ported and gilt-edged themes, and sentimental and butterfly
flights, pleasant to orthodox publishers—causing tender spasms
in the coteries, and warranted not to chafe the sensitive cuticle
of the most exquisitely artificial gossamer delicacy), lies sleeping
far away, happily unrecognised and uninjured by the coteries, ,
the art-writers, the talkers and critics of the saloons, or the
lecturers in the colleges—lies sleeping, aside, unrecking itself, in
some western idiom, or native Michigan or Tennessee repartee,
or stump-speech—or in Kentucky or Georgia, or the Carolinas—
or in some slang or local song or allusion of the Manhattan,
Boston, Philadelphia, or Baltimore mechanic—or up in the
Maine woods—or off in the hut of the California miner, or
Democratic Vistas 347
crossing the Rocky Mountains, or along the Pacific railroad—
or on the breasts of the young farmers of the north-west, or
Canada, or boatmen of the lakes. Rude and coarse nursing-
beds, these ; but only from such beginnings and stocks, indigenous
here, may haply arrive, be grafted, and sprout in time, flowers
of genuine American aroma, and fruits truly and fully our own.
I say it were a standing disgrace to these States—I say it
were a disgrace to any nation, distinguished above others by
the variety and vastness of its territories, its materials, its
inventive activity, and the splendid practicality of its people,
not to rise and soar above others, also in its original styles
in literature and art, and its own supply of intellectual and
esthetic masterpieces, archetypal, and consistent with itself.
I know not a land except ours that has not, to some extent,
however small, made its title clear. The Scotch have their
bom ballads, subtly expressing their past and present, and
expressing character. The Irish have theirs. England, Italy,
France, Spain, theirs. What has America? With exhaustless
mines of the richest ore of epic, lyric, tale, tune, picture, etc.,
in the Four Years' War; with, indeed, I sometimes think, the
richest masses of material ever afforded a nation, more varie-
gated, and on a larger scale—^the first sign of proportionate,
native, imaginative Soul, and first-class works to match, is
(I cannot too often repeat), so far wanting.
Long ere the second centennial arrives, there will be some
forty to fifty great States, among them Canada and Cuba.
When the present century closes, our population will be sixty
or seventy millions. The Pacific will be ours, and the Atlantic
mainly ours. There will be daily electric communication with
every part of the globe. What an age ! What a land ! Where,
elsewhere, one so great? The individuality of one nation must
then, as always, lead the world. Can there be any doubt who
the leader ought to be ? Bear in mind, though, that nothing less
than the mightiest original non-subordinated Soul has ever
really, gloriously led, or ever can lead. (This Soul—its other
name, in these Vistas, is Literature).
In fond fancy leaping those hundred years ahead let us survey
America's works, poems, philosophies, fulfilling prophecies, and
giving form and decision to best ideals. Much that is now un-
dreamed of, we might then perhaps see established, luxuriantly
cropping forth, richness, vigour of letters and of artistic ex-
pression, in whose products character will be a main requirement,
and not merely erudition or elegance.
34^ Democratic Vistas |
Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate '
attachment of man to man—which, hard to define, underlies the
lessons and ideals of the profound saviours of every land and age,
and which seems to promise, when thoroughly developed,
cultivated, and recognised in manners and literature, the most ;
substantial hope and safety of the future of these States, will ¡
then be fully expressed.^
A strong-fibred joyousness and faith, and the sense of health
al fresco, may well enter into the preparation of future noble
American authorship. Part of the test of a great literatos shall
be the absence in him of the idea of the covert, the lurid, the
maleficent, the devil, the grim estimates inherited from the !
Puritans, hell, natural depravity, and the like. The great
literatos will be known, among the rest, by his cheerful simplicity,
his adherence to natural standards, his limitless faith in God,
his reverence, and by the absence in him of doubt, ennui,
burlesque, persiflage, or any strained and temporary fashion. :
Nor must I fail, again and yet again, to clinch, reiterate more !
plainly still (0 that indeed such survey as we fancy may show
in time this part completed also!) the lofty aim, surely the
proudest and the purest, in whose service the future literatos
of whatever field, may gladly labour. As we have intimated,
offsetting the material civilisation of our race, our nationality,
its wealth, territories, factories, population, products, trade, and
military and naval strength, and breathing breath of life into all
these, and more, must be its moral civilisation—the formulation,
expression, aidancy whereof, is the very highest height of
literature. The climax of this loftiest range of civilisation, rising
above all the gorgeous shows and results of wealth, intellect,
power, and art, as such—above even theology and religious .
fervour—is to be its development, from the eternal bases, and the
fit expression, of absolute Conscience, moral soundness. Justice.
^ It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that
fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivalling the amative love
hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it), that I
look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar
American democracy, and for the spiritualisation thereof. Many will
say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences: but I confidently
expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp
through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America,
threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pmre and sweet, strong and
life-long, carried to degrees hitherto unknown—not only giving tone to
individual character, and making it unprecedently emotional, muscular,
heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics.
I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable
twin or cotmterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and
incapable of perpetuating itself.
É
Democratic Vistas 349
Even in religious fervour there is a touch of animal heat. But
moral conscientiousness, crystalline, without flaw, not Godlike
only, entirely human, awes and enchants for ever. Great is
emotional love, even in the order of the rational universe. But,
if we must make gradations, I am clear there is something
greater. Power, love, veneration, products, genius, esthetics,
tried by subtlest comparisons, analyses, and in serenest moods,
somewhere fail, somehow become vain. Then noiseless, with
flowing steps, the lord, the sun, the last ideal comes. By the
names right, justice, truth, we suggest, but do not describe it.
To the world of men it remains a dream, an idea as they call it.
But no dream is it to the wise—but the proudest, almost only
solid lasting thing of all. Its analogy in the material universe is
what holds together this world, and every object upon it, and
carries its dynamics on for ever sure and safe. Its lack, and the
persistent shirking of it, as in life, sociology, literature, politics,
business, and even sermonising, these times, or any times, still
leaves the abysm, the mortal flaw and smutch, mocking civilisa-
tion to-day, with all its unquestioned triumphs, and all the
civilisation so far known.^
Present literature, while magnificently fulfilling certain
popular demands, with plenteous knowledge and verbal smart-
ness, is profoundly sophisticated, insane, and its very joy is
morbid. It needs tally and express Nature, and the spirit of
Nature, and to know and obey the standards. I say the
question of Nature, largely considered, involves the questions of
the esthetic, the emotional, and the religious—and involves
happiness. A fitly bom and bred race, growing up in right
conditions of out-door as much as in-door harmony, activity
* I am reminded as I write that out of this very conscience, or idea of
conscience, of intense moral right, and in its name and strained construe-
tion, the worst fanaticisms, wars, persecutions, murders, etc., have yet,_in
all lands, in the past, been broached, and have come to their devilish
fruition. Much is to be said, but I may say here, and in response, that
side by side with the unflagging stimulation of the elements of religion and
conscience must henceforth move with equal sway, science, absolute
reason, and the general proportionate development of the whole man.
These scientific facts, deductions, are divine too—^precious counted parts
of moral civilisation, and, with physical health, indispensable to it, to
prevent fanaticism. For abstract religion, I perceive, is easily led astray,
ever credulous, and is capable of devouring, remorseless, like fire and
flame. Conscience, too, isolated from all else, and from the emotional
nature, may but attain the beauty and pmity. of glacial, snowy ice. We
want, for these States, for the general character, a cheerful, reli^ous
fervour, endued with the ever-present modifications of the human emotions,
friendship, benevolence, with a fair field for scientific inquiry, the right of
individual judgment, and always the cooling influences of material Nature.
35° Democratic Vistas
and development, would probably, from and in those conditions,
find it enough merely to live—and would, in their relations to the
sky, air, water, trees, etc., and to the countless common shows,
and in the fact of life itself, discover and achieve happiness—
with Being suffused night and day by wholesome ecstasy,
surpassing all the pleasures that wealth, amusement, and even
gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art, can give.
In the prophetic literature of these States (the reader of my
speculations will miss their principal stress unless he allows well
for the point that a new Literature, perhaps a new Metaphysics,
certainly a new Poetry, are to be, in my opinion, the only sure
and worthy supports and expressions of the American Demo-
cracy). Nature, true Nature, and the true idea of Nature, long
absent, must, above all, become fully restored, enlarged, and
must furnish the pervading atmosphere to poems, and the test
of all high literary and esthetic compositions. I do not mean
the smooth walks, trimmed hedges, posys and nightingales of
the English poets, but the whole orb, with its geologic history,
the cosmos, carrying fire and snow, that rolls through the
illimitable areas, light as a feather, though weighing billions of
tons. Furthermore, as by what we now partially call Nature
is intended, at most, only what is entertainable by the physical
conscience, the sense of matter, and of good animal health—
on these it must be distinctly accumulated, incorporated, that
man, comprehending these, has, in towering superaddition, the
moral and spiritual consciences, indicating his destination beyond
the ostensible, the mortal.
To the heights of such estimate of Nature indeed ascending,
we proceed to make observations for our Vistas, breathing
rarest air. What is I believe called Idealism seems to me to
suggest (guarding against extravagance, and ever modified even
by its opposite) the course of inquiry and desert of favour for
our New World metaphysics, their foundation of and in litera-
ture, giving hue to all.^
^ The culmination and fruit of literary artistic expression, and its final
fields of pleasure for the human soul, are in metaphysics, including the
mysteries of the spiritual world, the soul itself, and the question of the
immortal continuation of our identity. In all ages, the mind of man has
brought up here—and always will. Here, at least, of whatever race or
era, we stand on common ground. Applause, too, is unanimous, antique
or modem. Those authors who work well in this field—though their
reward, instead of a handsome percentage, or royalty, may be but simply
the laurel-crown of the victors in the great Olympic games—will be dearest
to humanity, and their works, however esthetically defective, will be
treasured for ever. The altitude of Uteratiure and poetry has always been
religion—and always will be. The Indian Vedas, the Naçkas of Zoroaster.
Democratic Vistas 351
The elevating and etherealising ideas of the unknown and of
unreality must be brought forward with authority, as they are
the legitimate heirs of the known, and of reality, and at least
as great as their parents. Fearless of scoffing, and of the ostent,
let us take our stand, our ground, and never desert it, to confront
the growing excess and arrogance of realism. To the cry, now
victorious—the cry of sense, science, flesh, incomes, farmSy
merchandise, logic, intellect, demonstrations, solid perpetuities,
buildings of brick and iron, or even the facts of the shows of
trees, earth, rocks, etc., fear not, my brethren, my sisters, to
sound out with equally determined voice, that conviction
brooding within the recesses of every envisioned soul—illusions f
apparitions! figments all! True, we must not condemn the
show, neither absolutely deny it, for the indispensability of its
meanings; but how clearly we see that, migrate in soul to what
we can already conceive of superior and spiritual points of view,
and palpable as it seems under present relations, it all and
several might, nay certainly would, fall apart and vanish.
the Talmud of the Jews, the Old Testament, the Gospel of Christ and His
disciples, Plato's works, the Koran of Mohammed, the Edda of Snorro,
and so on toward our own day, to Swedenborg, and to the invaluable
contributions of Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel—these, with such poems only
in which (while singing well of persons and events, of the passions of man,
and the shows of the material imiverse), the religious tone, the conscious-
ness of mystery, the recognition of the future, of the unknown, of Deity
over and under all, and of the divine pmrpose, are never absent, but
indirectly give tone to all—exhibit literature's real heights and elevations,
towering up like the great mountains of the earth.
Standing on this ^ound—the last, the highest, only permanent ground
—and sternly criticising, from it, all works, either of the literary, or any
art, we have peremptorily to dismiss every pretensive production, however
fine its esthetic or intellectual points, which violates or ignores, or even
does not celebrate, the central divine idea of All, suffusing universe, of
eternal trains of purpose, in the development, by however slow degrees,
of the physical, moral, and spiritual cosmos. I say he has studied, medi-
tated to no profit, whatever may be his mere erudition, who has not
absorbed this simple consciousness and faith. It is not entirely new—but
it is for Democracy to elaborate it, and look to build upon and expand
from it, with \mcompromising reliance. Above the doors of teaching the
inscription is to appear. Though little or nothing can be absolutely known,
perceived, except from a point of view which is evanescent, yet we know
at least one permanency, that Time and Space, in the will of God, furnish
successive chains, completions of material births and beginnings, solve all
discrepancies, fears and doubts, and eventually fulfil happiness—and that
the prophecy of those births, namely spiritual results, throws the true arch
over all teaching, all science. The local considerations of sin, disease,
deformity, ignorance, death, etc., and their measurement by the super-
ficial mind, and ordinary legislation and theology, are to be met by science,
boldly accepting, promulging this faith, and planting the seeds of superber
laws—of the explication of the physical universe through the spiritual—
and clearing the way for a religion, sweet and unimpugnable alike to little
child or great savan.
352 Democratic Vistas
I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated, intense practical
of
energy, the demand for facts, even the business materialism
the current age, our States. But woe to the age and land in
which these things, movements, stopping at themselves, do not
tend to ideas. As fuel to flame, and flame to the heavens, so
must wealth, science, materialism—even this democracy of
which we make so much—unerringly feed the highest mind,
the soul. Inflnitude the flight: fathomless the mystery. Man,
so diminutive, dilates beyond the sensible universe, competes
with, outcopes space and time, meditating even one great
idea. Thus, and thus only, does a human being, his spirit,
ascend above, and justify, objective Nature, which, probably
nothing in itself, is incredibly and divinely serviceable, in-
dispensable, real, here. And as the purport of objective !
Nature is doubtless folded, hidden, somewhere here—as some- j
where here is what this globe and its manifold forms, and the
light of day, and night's darkness, and life itself, with all its
experiences, are for—it is here the great literature, especially
verse, must get its inspiration and throbbing blood. Then may í
we attain to a poetry worthy the immortal soul of man, and
which, while absorbing materials, and, in their own sense, the
shows of Nature, will, above all, have, both directly and in-
directly, a freeing, fluidising, expanding, religious character,
exulting with science, fructifying the moral elements, and
stimulating aspirations, and meditations on the unknown.
The process, so far, is indirect and peculiar, and though it
may be suggested, cannot be defined. Observing, rapport, and
with intuition, the shows and forms presented by Nature, the
sensuous luxuriance, the beautiful in living men and women,
the actual play of passions, in history and life—and, above all,
from those developments either in Nature or human personality j
in which power (dearest of all to the sense of the artist) trans- '
acts itself—out of these, and seizing what is in them, the poet,
the esthetic worker in any field, by the divine magic of his genius, |
'
projects them, their analogies, by curious removes, indirections,
in literature and art. (No useless attempt to repeat the material j
creation, by daguerreotyping the exact likeness by mortal |
mental means.) This is the image-making faculty, coping with
material creation, and rivalling, almost triumphing over it.
This alone, when all the other parts of a specimen of literature
or art are ready and waiting, can breathe into it the breath of j
life, and endow it with identity.
" The true question to ask," says the librarian of Congress
Democratic Vistas 353
in a paper read before the Social Science Convention at New
York, October 1869, " The true question to ask respecting a
book, is, has it helped any human soul ? " This is the hint,
statement, not only of the great literatos, his book, but of
every great artist. It may be that all works of art are to be
first tried by their art qualities, their image-forming talent, and
their dramatic, pictorial, plot-constructing, euphonious and
other talents. Then, whenever claiming to be first-class works,
they are to be strictly and sternly tried by their foundation in,
and radiation, in the highest sense and always indirectly, of,
the ethic principles, and eligibility to free, arouse, dilate.
As, within the purposes of the Cosmos, and vivifying all
meteorology, and all the congeries of the mineral, vegetable and
animal worlds—all the physical growth and development of
man, and all the history of the race of politics, religions, wars,
etc., there is a moral purpose, a visible or invisible intention,
certainly underlying all—its results and proof needing to be
patiently waited for—needing intuition, faith, idiosyncrasy, to
its realisation, which many, and especially the intellectual, do
not have—so in the product, or congeries of the product, of the
greatest literatos. This is the last, profoundest measure and
test of a first-class literary or esthetic achievement, and when
understood and put in force must fain, I say, lead to works,
books, nobler than any hitherto known. Lo ! Nature (the only
complete, actual poem), existing calmly in the divine scheme,
containing all, content, careless of the criticisms of a day, or
these endless and wordy chatterers. And lo ! to the conscious-
ness of the soul, the permanent identity, the thought, the some-
thing, before which the magnitude even of democracy, art,
literature, etc., dwindles, becomes partial, measurable—some-
thing that fully satisfies (which those do not). That something
is the All, and the idea of All, with the accompanying idea of
eternity, and of itself, the soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing
space for ever, visiting every region, as a ship the sea. And
again lo ! the pulsations in all matter, all spirit, throbbing for
ever—the eternal beats, eternal systole and diastole of life in
things—wherefrom I feel and know that death is not the ending,
as was thought, but rather the real beginning—and that nothing
ever is or can be lost, nor ever die, nor soul, nor matter.
In the future of these States must arise poets immenser far,
and make great poems of death. The poems of life are great,
but there must be the poems of the purports of life, not
only in itself, but beyond itself. I have eulogised Homer, the
354 Democratic Vistas
sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus, Juvenal, Shakespeare, etc., and
acknowledged their inestimable value. But (with perhaps the
exception in some, not all respects, of the second-mentioned) I
say there must, for future and democratic purposes, appear
poets (dare I to say so?) of higher class even than any of those
—^poets not only possessed of the religious fire and abandon of
Isaiah, luxuriant in the epic talent of Homer, or for proud
characters as in Shakespeare, but consistent with the Hegelian
formulas, and consistent with modem science. America needs,
and the world needs, a class of bards who will, now and ever,
so link and tally the rational physical being of man, with the
ensembles of time and space, and with this vast and multiform
show. Nature, surrounding him, ever tantalising him, equally a
part, and yet not a part of him, as to essentially harmonise,
satisfy, and put at rest. Faith, very old, now scared away by
science, must be restored, brought back by the same power that
caused her departure—restored with new sway, deeper, wider,
higher than ever. Surely, this universal ennui, this cowai'd
fear, this shuddering at death, these low, degrading views, are
not always to rale the spirit pervading future society, as it has
the past, and does the present. What the Roman Lucretius
sought most nobly, yet all too blindly, negatively to do for his
age and its successors, must be done positively by some great
coming literatus, especially poet, who, while remaining fully
poet, will absorb whatever science indicates, with spiritualism,
and out of them, and out of his own genius, will compose the
great poem of death. Then will man indeed confront Nature,
and confront time and space, both with science, and con amare,
and take his right place, prepared for life, master of fortune
and misfortune. And then that which was long wanted will
be supplied, and the ship that had it not before in all her
voyages, will have an anchor.
There are still other standards, suggestions, for products of
high literatures. That which really balances and conserves the
social and political world is not so much legislation, police,
treaties, and dread of punishment, as the latent eternal intui-
tional sense, in humanity, of fairness, manliness, decorum, etc.
Indeed, this perennial regulation, control, and oversight, by
self-suppliance, is sine qua non to democracy; and a highest,
widest aim of democratic literature may well be to bring forth,
cultivate, brace, and strengthen this sense, in individuals and
society. A strong mastership of the general inferior self by the
superior self, is to be aided, secured, indirectly, but surely, by
Democratic Vistas 355
the literatus, in his works, shaping, for individual or aggregate
democracy, a great passionate body, in and along with which
goes a great masterful spirit.
And still, providing for contingencies, I fain confront the
fact, the need of powerful native philosophs and orators and
bards, these States, as rallying points to come, in times of
danger, and to fend off ruin and defection. For history is long,
long, long. Shift and turn the combinations of the statement
as we may, the problem of the future of America is in certain
respects as dark as it is vast. Pride, competition, segregation,
vicious wilfulness, and licence beyond example, brood already
upon us. Unwieldy and immense, who shall hold in behemoth?
who bridle leviathan ? Flaunt it as we choose, athwart and over
the roads of our progress loom huge uncertainty, and dreadful,
threatening gloom. It is useless to deny it: Democracy ^ows
rankly up the thickest, noxious, deadliest plants and fruits of
all — brings worse and worse invaders — needs newer, larger,
stronger, keener compensations and compellers.
Our lands, embracing so much (embracing indeed the whole,
rejecting none), hold in their breast that flame also, capable of
consuming themselves, consuming us all. Short as the span of
our national life has been, already have death and downfall
crowded close upon us—and will again crowd close, no doubt,
even if warded ofl. Ages to come may never know, but I know,
how narrowly during the late secession war—and more than once,
and more than twice or thrice—our Nationality (wherein bound
up, as in a ship m a storm, depended, and yet depend, all our
best life, all hope, all value), just grazed, just by a hair escaped
destruction. Alas! to think of them! the agony and bloody
sweat of certain of those hours I those cruel, sharp, suspended
crises !
Even to-day, amid these whirls, incredible flippancy, and blind
fury of parties, infidelity, entire lack of first-class captains and
leaders, added to the plentiful meanness and vulgarity of the
ostensible masses—that problem, the labour question, beginning
to open like a yawning gulf, rapidly widening every year—what
prospect have we ? We sail a dangerous sea of seething currents,
cross and under-currents, vortices—all so dark, untried—and
whither shall we turn? It seems as if the Almighty had spread
before this nation charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the
sun, yet with many a deep intestine difficulty, and human
aggregate of cankerous imperfection—saying, lo ! the roads, the
only plans of development, long and varied with all terrible balks
356 Democratic Vistas ^
and ebullitions. You said in your soul, I will be empire of
empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting the
history of old-world dynasties, conquests behind me, as of no
account—making a new history, a history of democracy, making
old history a dwarf—I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating ¡
time. If these, 0 lands of America, are indeed the prizes, the í
determinations of your soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and
already specimens of the cost. Thought you greatness was to
ripen for you like a pear? If you would have greatness, know
that you must conquer it through ages, centuries—must pay for
it with a proportionate price. For you too, as for all lands, the
struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, i
the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of
passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like
lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder- 1
storms, deaths, births, new projections and invigorations of
ideas and men.
Yet I have dreamed, merged in that hidden-tangled problem |
of our fate, whose long unravelling stretches mysteriously
through time—dreamed out, portrayed, hinted already—a little
or a larger band—a band of brave and true, unprecedented yet
—armed and equipped at every point—the members separated,
it may be, by different dates and States, or south, or north, or
east, or west—Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Canadian—a year, ;
a century here, and other centuries there—but always one, j
compact in soul, conscience-conserving, God-inculcating, inspired !
achievers, not only in literature, the greatest art, but achievers
in all art—a new, undying order, dynasty, from age to age trans- ^
mitted—a band, a class, at least as fit to cope with current years, j
our dangers, needs, as those who, for their times, so long, so well, |
in armour or in cowl, upheld and made illustrious, that far-back
feudal, priestly world. Tooffsetchivalry, indeed, those vanished
countless knights, old altars, abbeys, priests, ages and strings of
ages, a knightlier and more sacred cause to-day demands, and
shall supply, in a New World, to larger, grander work, more |
than the counterpart and tally of them.
Arrived now, definitely, at an apex for these Vistas, I confess 1
that the promulgation and belief in such a class or institution— |
a new and greater literatos order—its possibility (nay certainty), I
underlies these entire speculations—and that the rest, the other
parts, as superstructures, are all founded upon it. It really
seems to me the condition, not only of our future national and
democratic development, but of our perpetuation. In the
Democratic Vistas 357
highly artificial and materialistic bases of modern civilisation,
with the corresponding arrangements and methods of living, the
force-infusion of intellect alone, the depraving influences of
riches just as much as poverty, the absence of all high ideals in
character—with the long series of tendencies, shapings, which
few are strong enough to resist, and which now seem, with
steam-engine speed, to be everywhere turning out the genera-
tions of humanity like uniform iron castings—all of which, as
compared with the feudal ages, we can yet do nothing better
than accept, make the best of, and even welcome, upon the
whole, for their oceanic practical grandeur, and their restless
wholesale kneading of the masses—I say of all this tremendous
and dominant play of solely materialistic bearings upon current
life in the United States, with the results as already seen,
accumulating, and reaching far into the future, that they must
either be confronted and met by at least an equally subtle and
tremendous force-infusion for purposes of spiritualisation, for
the pure conscience, for genuine esthetics, and for absolute and
primal manliness and womanliness—or else our modem civilisa-
tion, with all its improvements, is in vain, and we are on the
road to a destiny, a status, equivalent, in its real world, to that
of the fabled damned.
Prospecting thus the coming unsped days, and that new order
in them—marking the endless train of exercise, development,
unwind, in nation as in man, which life is for—we see, fore-
indicated, amid these prospects and hopes, new law-forces of
spoken and written language—not merely the pedagogue-forms,
correct, regular, familiar with precedents, made for matters of
outside propriety, fine words, thoughts definitely told out—but
a language fanned by the breath of Nature, which leaps overhead,
cares mostly for impetus and effects, and for what it plants and
invigorates to grow—tallies life and character, and seldomer tells
a thing than suggests or necessitates it. In fact, a new theory
of literary composition for imaginative works of the very first
class, and especially for highest poems, is the sole course open
to these States. Books are to be called for, and supplied, on the
1 assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep, but,
in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the
I; reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert,
must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument,
history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the
clue, the start or framework. Not the book needs so much to
I be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That
35^ Democratic Vistas
were to make a nation of supple and athletic minds^ 'well-trained,
intuitive, used to depend on themselves, and not on a few
coteries of writers.
Investigating here, we see, not that it is a little thing we have,
in having the bequeathed libraries, coimtless shelves of volumes,
records, etc.; yet how serious the danger, depending entirely
on them, of the bloodless vein, the nerveless arm, the false
application, at second or third hand. We see that the real
interest of this people of ours in the theology, history, poetry,
politics, and personal models of the past (the British islands, for
instance, and indeed all the past), is not necessarily to mould
ourselves or our literature upon them, but to attain fuller, more
definite comparisons, warnings, and the insight to ourselves, our
own present, and our own far grander, different, future history,
religion, social customs, etc. We see that alrnost everything
that has been written, sung, or stated, of old, with reference to
humanity under the feudal and oriental institutes, religions, and
for other lands, needs to be re-written, re-sung, re-stated, in
terms consistent with the institution of these States, and to
come in range and obedient uniformity with them.
We see, as in the universes of the material cosmos, after
meteorological, vegetable, and animal cycles, man at last arises,
bom through them, to prove them, concentrate them, to turn
upon them with wonder and love—to command them, adorn
them, and carry them upward into superior realms—so, out of
the series of the preceding social and political universes, now
arise these States. We see that while many were supposing
things established and completed, really the grandest things
always remain; and discover that the work of the New World
is not ended, but only fairly begun.
We see our land, America, her literature, esthetics, etc., as,
substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement,
of deepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history
and man—and the portrayal (under the eternal laws and con-
ditions of beauty) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie
and expression of the objective, as from our own combination,
continuation, and points of view—and the deposit and record
of the national mentality, character, appeals, heroism, wars, and
even liberties—where these, and all, culminate in native literary
and artistic formulation, to be perpetuated; and not having
which native, first-class formulation, she will flounder about,
and her other, however imposing, eminent greatness, prove
merely a passing gleam; but truly having which, she will under
Democratic Vistas 359
stand herself, live nobly, nobly contribute, emanate, and,
swinging, poised safely on herself, illumined and illuming,
become a full-formed world, and divine Mother not only of
material but spiritual worlds, in ceaseless succession through
time—the main thing being the average, the bodily, the concrete,
the democratic, the popular, on which all the superstructures of
the future are to permanently rest.
THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS. LETCHWORTH
 
 
 
 
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16o Leaves of Grass I Song of the Broad-Axe 16 r
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Where children are taught to be laws to themselves^ and to 1 Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,
depend on themselves, f Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs. r ere the Greek,
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged. f, Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same I. Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustanee,
as the men. I Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same I relics remain in Central America,
as the men; ? Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars
Where the city of the faithfullest friends stands. 1 and the druids,
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands. j. Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands. I cover'd hills of Scandinavia,
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands. « Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls
There the great city stands, ( rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean
I waves,
6 j Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the
I pastoral tribes and
How beggarly nomads,
appear arguments before a defiant deed !
I Served the long distant Kelt, served the hardy pirates of the
How the fioridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a
man's woman's look. j Baltic,
or * Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of
Ail till \ Ethiopia,
waits or goes by default a strong being appears; Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the
A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the
universe. making of those for war.
Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea.