|
Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
contents
| previous
| next
EIDÓLONS.
Passing the hues and objects of the world, |
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, |
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, |
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, |
Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,) |
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering, |
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine, |
Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown, |
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, |
But really build eidólons. |
The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long, |
Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils, |
(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,) |
The whole or large or small summ'd, added up, |
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles, |
From science and the modern still impell'd, |
The old, old urge, eidólons. |
The present now and here, |
America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl, |
Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing, |
View Page 13
|
Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea, |
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages, |
Densities, growth, façades, |
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees, |
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, |
The visible but their womb of birth, |
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape, |
The mighty earth-eidólon. |
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, |
Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,) |
Fill'd with eidólons only. |
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, |
The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, |
The true realities, eidólons. |
Nor these the universes, they the universes, |
Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, |
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, eidólons. |
Ever shall be, ever have been and are, |
Sweeping the present to the infinite future, |
Eidólons, eidólons, eidólons. |
The prophet and the bard, |
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet, |
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them, |
View Page 14
|
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations, |
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, |
The body lurking there within thy body, |
The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself, |
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 eidólon. |
contents
| previous
| next
|
| |