Assimilations

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Title:     Assimilations
Author: Walt Whitman [More Titles by Whitman]

1.

There was a child went forth every day;

And the first object he looked upon, that object he became;

And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or tretching cycles of years.

 

2.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning-glories,[1] and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,[2]

And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,

And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there--and the beautiful, curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful fiat heads--all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part or him;

 

3.
Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;

And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern, whence he had lately risen,

And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school,

And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys,

And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,

And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.

His own parents;

He that had fathered him, and she that had conceived him in her womb, and birthed him,

They gave this child more of themselves than that;

They gave him afterward every day--they became part of him.

The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;

The mother with mild words--clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odour falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;

The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust;

The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,

The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture--the yearning and swelling heart,

Affection that will not be gainsaid--the sense of what is real--the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time--the curious whether and how--

Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets--if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?

The streets themselves, and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,

Vehicles, teams, the heavy-planked wharves--the huge crossing at the ferries,

The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset--the river between;

Shadows, aureola and mist, light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off;

The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide--the little boat slack-towed astern,

The hurrying tumbling waves quick-broken crests slapping,

The strata of coloured clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint, away solitary by itself-the spread of purity it lies motionless in,

The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;--

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

 

[Footnote 1: The name of "morning-glory" is given to the bindweed, or a
sort of bindweed, in America. I am not certain whether this expressive name
is used in England also.]

[Footnote 2: A dun-coloured little bird with a cheerful note, sounding like
the word Phoebe.]

[The end]
Walt Whitman's poem: Assimilations

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