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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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A RIDDLE SONG.
THAT which eludes this verse and any verse, |
Unheard by sharpest ear, unform'd in clearest eye or cunningest
mind,
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Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth, |
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world
incessantly,
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Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss, |
Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion, |
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner, |
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose, |
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted, |
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter'd, |
Invoking here and now I challenge for my song. |
Indifferently, 'mid public, private haunts, in solitude, |
Behind the mountain and the wood, |
Companion of the city's busiest streets, through the assemblage, |
It and its radiations constantly glide. |
In looks of fair unconscious babes, |
Or strangely in the coffin'd dead, |
Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night, |
As some dissolving delicate film of dreams, |
Two little breaths of words comprising it, |
Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it. |
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How many ships have sail'd and sunk for it! |
How many travelers started from their homes and ne'er return'd! |
How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it! |
What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur'd for it! |
How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it—
and shall be to the end!
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How all heroic martyrdoms to it! |
How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth! |
How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and
land, have drawn men's eyes,
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Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the
cliffs,
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Or midnight's silent glowing northern lights unreachable. |
Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain, |
The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it, |
And heaven at last for it. |
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