|
Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
contents
| previous
| next
GIVE ME THE SPLENDID SILENT SUN.
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 arbor, 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 O 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, |
View Page 245
|
Day upon day and year upon year O 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;
|
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, |
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for.) |
Keep your splendid silent sun, |
Keep your woods O 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;
|
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!
|
O 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. |
contents
| previous
| next
|
| |