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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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FACES.
1
SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country by-road, lo, such
faces!
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Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality, |
The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevo-
lent face,
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The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural law-
yers and judges broad at the back-top,
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The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved
blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens,
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The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face, |
The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or
despised face,
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The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of
many children,
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The face of an amour, the face of veneration, |
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock, |
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face, |
A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper, |
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder. |
Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces
and faces and faces,
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I see them and complain not, and am content with all. |
2
Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them
their own finalè?
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This now is too lamentable a face for a man, |
Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it, |
Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole. |
This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, |
Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat. |
This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea, |
Its sleepy and wabbling icebergs crunch as they go. |
This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label, |
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard. |
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This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly
cry,
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Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show nothing
but their whites,
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Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in
nails,
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The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he
speculates well.
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This face is bitten by vermin and worms, |
And this is some murderer's knife with a half-pull'd scabbard. |
This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee, |
An unceasing death-bell tolls there. |
3
Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas'd and
cadaverous march?
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Well, you cannot trick me. |
I see your rounded never-erased flow, |
I see 'neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises. |
Splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes
or rats,
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You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will. |
I saw the face of the most
smear'd and slobbering idiot they had
at the asylum,
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And I knew for my consolation what they knew not, |
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, |
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement, |
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages, |
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm'd, every
inch as good as myself.
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4
The Lord advances, and yet advances, |
Always the shadow in front, always the reach'd hand bringing up
the laggards.
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Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see
what is coming,
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I see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way, |
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This face is a life-boat, |
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the
rest,
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This face is flavor'd fruit ready for eating, |
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good. |
These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake, |
They show their descent from the Master himself. |
Off the word I have spoken I except not one—red, white, black,
are all deific,
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In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years. |
Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me, |
Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me, |
I read the promise and patiently wait. |
This is a full-grown lily's face, |
She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden pickets, |
Come here she blushingly cries, Come nigh to me limber-hipp'd
man,
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Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you, |
Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me, |
Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and
shoulders.
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5
The old face of the mother of many children, |
Whist! I am fully content. |
Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day morning, |
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, |
It hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under
them.
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I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree, |
I heard what the singers were singing so long, |
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the
water-blue.
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She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more
beautiful than the sky.
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She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse, |
The sun just shines on her old white head. |
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Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, |
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it
with the distaff and the wheel.
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The melodious character of the earth, |
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish
to go,
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The justified mother of men. |
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