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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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AS I EBB'D WITH THE OCEAN OF LIFE.
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, |
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.
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Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow
those slender windrows,
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Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, |
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the
tide,
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Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, |
Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses, |
These you presented to me you fish-shaped island, |
As I wended the shores I know, |
As I walk'd with that electric self seeking types. |
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. |
O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth, |
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, |
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I
have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
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But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet
untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
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Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and
bows,
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With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written, |
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath. |
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I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single
object, and that no man ever can,
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Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart
upon me and sting me,
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Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. |
You oceans both, I close with you, |
We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing
not why,
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These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all. |
You friable shore with trails of debris, |
You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot, |
What is yours is mine my father. |
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been
wash'd on your shores,
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I too am but a trail of drift and debris, |
I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. |
I throw myself upon your breast my father, |
I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, |
I hold you so firm till you answer me something. |
Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love, |
Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring
I envy.
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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.
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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.
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Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses, |
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, |
(See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last, |
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See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,) |
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, |
Buoy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting another, |
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, |
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, |
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, |
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,
drifted at random,
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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,
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You up there walking or sitting, |
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet. |
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