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A poem by Walt Whitman |
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Song Of Myself |
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Title: Song Of Myself Author: Walt Whitman [More Titles by Whitman] 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.
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.
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.
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Always the procreant urge of the world.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes, That they turn from gazing after and down the road, And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent, Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?
Trippers and askers surround me, Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; But they are not the Me myself.
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.
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
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.
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, noteven the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
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.
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that 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.
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.
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
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.
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.
Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
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.
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
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.
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 the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
For me those that have been boys and that love women, For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted, For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers, For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears, For me children and the begetters of children.
The little one sleeps in its cradle, I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
I peeringly view them from the top.
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen.
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 big doors of the country barn stand open and ready, The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon, The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged, The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.
I 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.
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.
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.
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 heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and bruis'd feet, And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes, And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass'd north, I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean'd in the corner.
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 hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray.
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.
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.
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain, The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois'd on one leg on the string-piece, His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band, His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead, The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.
I go with the team also.
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing, Absorbing all to myself and for this song.
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else, And the 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.
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 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.
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
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.
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.
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bed-room;) The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, 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.
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine, One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same, A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live, A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian, A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye; At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland, At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking, At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch, Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving their big proportions,) Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat, A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest, A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons, Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion, A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my 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.)
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This the common air that bathes the globe.
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.
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
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!
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger, It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I make appointments with all, I will not have a single person slighted or left away, The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited, The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
This 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.
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods? Do I astonish more than they?
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?
Else it were time lost listening to me.
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
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 this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass, I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)
If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.
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.
I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into new tongue.
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.
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, I show that size is only development.
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Night of south winds--night of the large few stars! Still nodding night--mad naked summer night.
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbow'd earth--rich apple-blossom'd earth! Smile, for your lover comes.
O unspeakable passionate love.
You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean, I behold from the beach your crooked fingers, I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.
Sea 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.
Extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms.
(Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?)
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 guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified?
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine, Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.
There is no better than it and now.
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.
Endless unfolding of words of ages! And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.
Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.
That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.
Materialism first and last imbuing.
Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac, This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches, These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a mathematician.
Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.
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 doors themselves from their jambs!
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
Translucent mould of me it shall be you! Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you! Firm masculine colter it shall be you! Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! Sun so generous it shall be you! Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you.
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.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, The air tastes good to my palate.
Scooting obliquely high and low.
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head, The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?
Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I underlying causes to balance them at last, My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.)
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
Now I will do nothing but listen, To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals, I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals, The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence, The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters, The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights, The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two, (They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)
I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
Ah this indeed is music--this suits me.
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them, It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves, I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being.
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.
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself, On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, Depriving me of my best as for a purpose, Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields, Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.
They have left me helpless to a red marauder, They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.
Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.
Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch! Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.
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?)
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Only what nobody denies is so.)
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps, And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman, And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other, And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific, And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call any thing back again when I desire it.
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
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 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.
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?
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.
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them? Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.
Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall; Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot, Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand, Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance, 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, Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks, 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, Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd with the new and old, Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest, Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly, Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.
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 blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.
I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
They fetch my man's body up dripping and drown'd.
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, 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 mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on, The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am.
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
Tumbling walls buried me in their debris, Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.
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.
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.
I am there again.
Again the attacking cannon, mortars, Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.
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.
He gasps through the clot Mind not me--mind--the entrenchments.
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.
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship, Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate, Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters, Not a single one over thirty years of age.
The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.
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,
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.
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.
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.
My captain lash'd fast with his own hands.
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.
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.
They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.
The other asks if we demand quarter? If our colors are struck and the fighting done?
We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.
One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-mast, Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks.
They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.
He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.
Stretch'd and still lies the midnight,
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.
It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.
My face is ash-color'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.
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.
I resume the overstaid fraction, The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves, Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.
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.
Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.
The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California? The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations, They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers, They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask--lie over! You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
Say, old top-knot, what do you want?
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.
When I give I give myself.
Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you, Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets, I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare, And any thing I have I bestow.
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
On his right cheek I put the family kiss, And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed, Let the physician and the priest go home.
O despairer, here is my neck, By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force, Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
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.
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.
Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; It is middling well as far as it goes--but is that all?
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see, Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel, Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists, What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then, 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 boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on the reeds within.
Music rolls, but not from the organ, Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real, Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.
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,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets--but the pluck of the captain and engineers?
I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years, Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, 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, 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.
Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, atheistical, I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!
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.
But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.
It is time to explain myself--let us stand up.
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
And other births will bring us richness and variety.
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
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?)
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount.
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.
Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.
The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
45 O span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity! O manhood, balanced, florid and full.
Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, Lighting on every moment of my life, Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems.
Outward and outward and forever outward.
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail the long run, We should surely bring up again where we now stand, And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.
They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
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.
I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
You must travel it for yourself.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me, For after we start we never lie by again.
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then? And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
Now I wash the gum from your eyes, You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
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.
I am the teacher of athletes, He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own, He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts, And those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun.
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour, My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you, Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd.)
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves key, The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
But roughs and little children better than they.
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon, The young mother and old mother comprehend me,
I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
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.
And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.
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.
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons.
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)
O suns--O grass of graves--O perpetual transfers and promotions, If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected, And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.
There is that in me--I do not know what it is--but I know it is in me.
I sleep--I sleep long.
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal life--it is Happiness.
The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them. And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
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.)
Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Who wishes to walk with me?
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.
Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |