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"Leaves of Grass" [3] ("To Think of Time")
    Related Manuscripts
  • duk.00023 (low)

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[Front cover]

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[Ralph Waldo Emerson letter]

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[Frontispiece leaf] [Frontispiece engraving]

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Leaves
of
Grass.


  ⎯⎯⎯  

Brooklyn, New York:

1855.



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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1855, by WALTER WHITMAN, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.



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[Preface]

AMERICA does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . .
accepts the lesson with calmness . . . is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms . . . perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house . . . 
perceives that it waits a little while in the door . . . that it was fittest for its days . . . 
that its action has descended to the stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches . . . 
and that he shall be fittest for his days.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature.
The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir.
Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night.
Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.
Here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses.
Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes . . . . Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves.
Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance.
One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women.
Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people.
Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—
the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean—the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states—the fierceness of their roused resentment—
their curiosity and welcome of novelty—their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy—their susceptibility to a slight—
the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors—
the fluency of their speech—their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness—
the terrible significance of their elections—the President's taking off his hat to them not they to him—these too are unrhymed poetry.
It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.
The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen.
Not nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of man . . . nor suffice the poet.
No reminiscences may suffice either.
A live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest . . . namely from its own soul.
This is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets.—
As if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records!
As if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical!
As if men do not make their mark out of any times!
As if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in North and South America were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of the middle ages!
The pride of the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or

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iv shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of fullsized men or one fullsized man unconquerable and simple.
The American poets are to enclose old and new for America is the race of races.
Of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people.
To him the other continents arrive as contributions . . . he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake.
His spirit responds to his country's spirit . . . .
he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.
Mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, Missouri and Columbia and Ohio and Saint Lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine Hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him.
The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him.
When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south.
He spans between them also from east to west and reflects what is between them.
On him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and liveoak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree and cactus and wildvine and tamarind and persimmon . . . .
and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or swamp . . . .
and forests coated with transparent ice and icicles hanging from the boughs and crackling in the wind . . . . and sides and peaks of mountains . . . .
and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie . . . .
with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wildpigeon and highhold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and redshouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white-ibis and indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle.
To him the hereditary countenance descends both mother's and father's.
To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events—
of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines—
the tribes of red aborigines—
the weatherbeaten vessels entering new ports or making landings on rocky coasts—the first settlements north or south—the rapid stature and muscle—
the haughty defiance of '76, and the war and peace and formation of the constitution . . . .
the union always surrounded by blatherers and always calm and impregnable—
the perpetual coming of immigrants—
the wharf hem'd cities and superior marine—
the unsurveyed interior—the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and trappers . . . .
the free commerce—the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging—
the endless gestation of new states—
the convening of Congress every December, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost parts . . . .
the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free American workmen and workwomen . . . .
the general ardor and friendliness and enterprise—
the perfect equality of the female with the male . . . .
the large amativeness—
the fluid movement of the population—
the factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery—
the Yankee swap—the New-York firemen and the target excursion—the southern plantation life—
the character of the northeast and of the northwest and southwest—
slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it,
and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease.
For such the expression of the American poet is to be transcendant and new.
It is to be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic.
Its quality goes through these to much more.
Let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and characters be illustrated and that finish the verse.
Not so the great psalm of the republic.
Here the theme is creative and has vista.
Here comes one among the wellbeloved stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms.
Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest.
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.
Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man.
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.
Nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its place is bad.
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less.
He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key.
He is the equalizer of his age and land . . . .
he supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking.
If peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce—lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality—federal, state or municipal government,

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v marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel by land and sea . . . .
nothing too close, nothing too far off . . . the stars not too far off.
In war he is the most deadly force of the war.
Who recruits him recruits horse and foot . . . he fetches parks of artillery the best that engineer ever knew.
If the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it . . . he can make every word he speaks draw blood.
Whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation he never stagnates.
Obedience does not master him, he masters it.
High up out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light . . . he turns the pivot with his finger . . . he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and easily overtakes and envelops them.
The time straying toward infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith . . .
he spreads out his dishes . . . he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows men and women.
His brain is the ultimate brain.
He is no arguer . . . he is judgment.
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith.
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things.
In the talk on the soul and eternity and God off of his equal plane he is silent.
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement . . . .
he sees eternity in men and women . . . he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.
Faith is the antiseptic of the soul . . . it pervades the common people and preserves them . . . they never give up believing and expecting and trusting.
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist. . . . . .
The power to destroy or remould is freely used by him but never the power of attack.
What is past is past.
If he does not expose superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is wanted.
The presence of the greatest poet conquers . . . not parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts.
Now he has passed that way see after him!
there is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell . . . . . and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.
The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality.
If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe.
He is a seer . . . . he is individual . . . he is complete in himself . . . . the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.
He is not one of the chorus . . . . he does not stop for any regulation . . . he is the president of regulation.
What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest.
Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight?
The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world.
A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man and all the instruments and books of the earth and all reasoning.
What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit and given audience to far and near and to the sunset and had all things enter with electric swiftness softly and duly without confusion or jostling or jam.
The land and sea, the animals fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests mountains and rivers, are not small themes . . . but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects . . . . they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls.
Men and women perceive the beauty well enough . . probably as well as he.
The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people.
They can never be assisted by poets to perceive . . . some may but they never can.
The poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else and is in the soul.
The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight.
The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs or roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form.
The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but dependent.
All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain.
If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough . . . . the fact will prevail through the universe . . . . but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail.
Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost.
This is what you

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vi shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . . . . . .
The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work.
He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured . . . . others may not know it but he shall.
He shall go directly to the creation.
His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches . . . . and shall master all attachment.
The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet.
He consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay.
What balks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy.
Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions.
All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman.
His love above all love has leisure and expanse . . . . he leaves room ahead of himself.
He is no irresolute or suspicious lover . . . he is sure . . . he scorns intervals.
His experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing.
Nothing can jar him . . . . suffering and darkness cannot—death and fear cannot.
To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth . . . . he saw them buried.
The sea is not surer of the shore or the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of his love and of all perfection and beauty.
The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss . . . it is inevitable as life . . . . it is exact and plumb as gravitation.
From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man.
To these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest but in the rest themselves just the same.
These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods . . . that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself . . . that it is profuse and impartial . . . that there is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth or sea without it—nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn of events.
This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance . . . one part does not need to be thrust above another.
The best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ . . . the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and similes and sound.
Without effort and without exposing in the least how it is done the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons some more and some less to bear on your individual character as you hear or read.
To do this well is to compete with the laws that pursue and follow time.
What is the purpose must surely be there and the clue of it must be there . . . . and the faintest indication is the indication of the best and then becomes the clearest indication.
Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined.
The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is.
He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet . . . . he says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize you.
He learns the lesson . . . . he places himself where the future becomes present.
The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions . . . he finally ascends and finishes all . . . he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond . . . . he glows a moment on the extremest verge.
He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown . . . by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years.
The greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals . . . he knows the soul.
The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own.
But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride and the one balances the other and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other.
The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain.
The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both and they are vital in his style and thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity.
Nothing is better than simplicity . . . . nothing ca make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness


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vii
To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon.
But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.
If you have looked on him who has achieved it you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times.
You shall not contemplate the flight of the graygull over the bay or the mettlesome action of the blood horse or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven or the appearance of the moon afterward with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him.
The greatest poet has less a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself.
He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains.
I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
What I tell I tell for precisely what it is.
Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or sooth I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation.
What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition.
You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved by their unconstraint.
A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not.
Of the traits of the brotherhood of writers savans musicians inventors and artists nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms.
In the need of poems philosophy politics mechanism science behaviour, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest forever and forever who contributes the greatest original practical example.
The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one.
The messages of great poets to each man and woman are, Come to us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better than you, What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy.
Did you suppose there could be only one Supreme?
We affirm there can be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another . . and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them.
What do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments and the deadliest battles and wrecks and the wildest fury of the elements and the power of the sea and the motion of nature and of the throes of human desires and dignity and hate and love?
It is that something in the soul which says, Rage on, Whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere, Master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, Master of nature and passion and death, And of all terror and all pain.
The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors . .
They shall be kosmos . . without monopoly or secresy . . glad to pass any thing to any one . . hungry for equals night and day.
They shall not be careful of riches and privilege . . . . they shall be riches and privilege . . . . they shall perceive who the most affluent man is.
The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.
The American bard shall delineate no class of persons nor one or two out of the strata of interests nor love most nor truth most nor the soul most nor the body most . . . . and not be for the eastern states more than the western or the northern states more than the southern.
Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet but always his encouragement and support.
The outset and remembrance are there . . there the arms that lifted him first and brace him best . . . . there he returns after all his goings and comings.
The sailor and traveler . .
the anatomist chemist astronomer geologist phrenologist spiritualist mathematician historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem.
No matter what rises or is uttered they sent the seed of the conception of it . . . of them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls . . . . . always of their fatherstuff must be begotten the sinewy races of bards.
If there shall be love and content between the father and the son and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father there shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science.
In the beauty of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things.
Cleaving and circling here swells the soul of the poet yet it president of itself always.
The depths are fathomless and therefore calm.
The innocence and nakedness are resumed . . . they are neither modest nor immodest.
The whole theory of the special and supernatural and all that was twined with it or educed out of it departs as a dream.


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viii
What has ever happened . . . . what happens and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all . . . . they are sufficient for any case and for all cases . . . none to be hurried or retarded . . . .
any miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion and every spear of grass and the frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them are unspeakably perfect miracles all referring to all and each distinct and in its place.
It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.
Men and women and the earth and all upon it are simply to be taken as they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall be unintermitted and shall be done with perfect candor.
Upon this basis philosophy speculates ever looking toward the poet, ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul.
For the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy.
Whatever comprehends less than that . . . whatever is less than the laws of light and of astronomical motion . . . or less than the laws that follow the thief the liar the glutton and the drunkard through this life and doubtless afterward . . . . . . or less than vast stretches of time or the slow formation of density or the patient upheaving of strata—is of no account.
Whatever would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against some being or influence is also of no account.
Sanity and ensemble characterise the great master . . . spoilt in one principle all is spoilt.
The great master has nothing to do with miracles.
He sees health for himself in being one of the mass . . . . he sees the hiatus in singular eminence.
To the perfect shape comes common ground.
To be under the general law is great for that is to correspond with it.
The master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great . . . . that nothing for instance is greater than to conceive children and bring them up well . . . that to be is just as great as to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is indispensible.
Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women exist . . . . but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets.
They are the voice and exposition of liberty.
They out of ages are worthy the grand idea . . . . to them it is confided and they must sustain it.
Nothing has precedence of it and nothing can warp or degrade it.
The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots.
The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other.
Come nigh them awhile and though they neither speak or advise you shall learn the faithful American lesson.
Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures,
or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people,
or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes.
Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement.
The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat . . . .
the enemy triumphs . . . .
the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work . . . .
the cause is asleep . . . . the strong throats are choked with their own blood . . . .
the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other . . . .
and is liberty gone out of that place? No never.
When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go . .
it waits for all the rest to go . . it is the last. . .
When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away . . . .
when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators . . . .
when the boys are no more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and traitors instead . . . .
when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people . . . .
when I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves . . . .
when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority . . . .
when those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—
when the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no . . . .
when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart . . . .
and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large

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ix scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape . . . .
or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—
then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real body and soul and in the pleasure of things they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance.
As they emit themselves facts are showered over with light . . . . the daylight is lit with more volatile light . . . . also the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold.
Each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty . . . . the multiplication table its—old age its—the carpenter's trade its—the grand-opera its . . . .
the hugehulled cleanshaped New-York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatched beauty . . . .
the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs . . . . and the commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs.
The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles.
They are of use . . . . they dissolve poverty from its need and riches from its conceit.
You large proprietor they say shall not realize or perceive more than any one else.
The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it having bought and paid for it.
Any one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large. . . . . . . . .
These American states strong and healthy and accomplished shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models and must not permit them.
In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs or any thing to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies is a nuisance and revolt.
Of the human form especially it is so great it must never be made ridiculous.
Of ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allowed . . but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air and that flow out of the nature of the work and come irrepressibly from it and are necessary to the completion of the work.
Most works are most beautiful without ornament. . .
Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology.
Clean and vigorous children are jetted and conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public every day. . . . .
Great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances.
As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.
The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor.
Then folks echo a new cheap joy and a divine voice leaping from their brains: How beautiful is candor!
All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.
Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade—
and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person shall be discovered and despised . . . . and that the soul has never been once fooled and never can be fooled . . . . and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a fœtid puff . . . .
and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.
Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs . .
these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's womb and from her birth out of her mother's.
Caution seldom goes far enough.
It has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid gains and did well for himself and his family and completed a lawful life without debt or crime.
The greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives

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x a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate.
The premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of it or the ripeness and harvest of it.
Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for burial-money,
and of a few clapboards around and shingles overhead on a lot of American soil owned,
and the easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals,
the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of moneymaking with all their scorching days and icy nights
and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitessimals of parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve . .
and all the loss of the bloom and odor of the earth and of the flowers and atmosphere and of the sea and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age,
and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naivete,
and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or majesty,
is the great fraud upon modern civilization and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reached kisses of the soul . . .
Still the right explanation remains to be made about prudence.
The prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteemed life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when little and large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for immortality.
What is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year or seventy or eighty years to wisdom spaced out by ages and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction running gaily toward you?
Only the soul is of itself . . . .
all else has reference to what ensues.
All that a person does or thinks is of consequence.
Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in a day or a month or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of death
but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime.
The indirect is always as great and real as the direct.
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body.
Not one name of word or deed . . not of venereal sores or discolorations . . not the privacy of the onanist . .
not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rumdrinkers . . . not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder . . no serpentine poison of those that seduce women . . not the foolish yielding of women . . not prostitution . . not of any depravity of young men . . not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means . . not any nastiness of appetite . . not any harshness of officers to men or judges to prisoners or fathers to sons or sons to fathers or of husbands to wives or bosses to their boys . . not of greedy looks or malignant wishes . . . nor any of the wiles practised by people upon themselves . . .
ever is or ever can be stamped on the programme but it is duly realized and returned, and that returned in further performances . . . and they returned again.
Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be any thing else than the profoundest reason, whether it bring arguments to hand or no.
No specification is necessary . . to add or subtract or divide is in vain.
Little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it,
all that a male or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her
in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it forever.
If the savage or felon is wise it is well . . . . if the greatest poet or savan is wise it is simply the same . . if the President or chief justice is wise it is the same . . . if the young mechanic or farmer is wise it is no more or less . . if the prostitute is wise it is no more nor less.
The interest will come round . . all will come round.
All the best actions of war and peace . . .
all help given to relatives and strangers and the poor and old and sorrowful and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons . .
all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves . .
all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks and saw others take the seats of the boats . . .
all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake . . .
all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbors . .
all the vast sweet love and precious suffering of mothers . . .
all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded . . . .
all the grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit . .
and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient nations unknown to us by name or date or location . . . .
all that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no . . . .
all that has at any time been well suggested out of the divine heart of man or by the divinity of his mouth or by the shaping of his great hands . .
and all that is well thought or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe . . or on any of the wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here . .
or that is henceforth to be well thought or done by you whoever you are, or by any one—
these singly and wholly inured at their time and inure now and will inure always to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring . . .
Did you guess any of them lived only its mo-

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ximent?
The world does not so exist . . no parts palpable or impalpable so exist . . .
no result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and that from its antecedent,
and so backward without the farthest mentionable spot coming a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot.  . . . .
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and glut of the soul,
is not contemptuous of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or judgment-day,
divides not the living from the dead or the righteous from the unrighteous,
is satisfied with the present,
matches every thought or act by its correlative,
knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement . .
knows that the young man who composedly periled his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself,
while the man who has not periled his life and retains it to old age in riches and ease has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning . .
and that only that person has no great prudence to learn who has learnt to prefer real longlived things,
and favors body and soul the same,
and perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,
and what evil or good he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again—
and who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries or avoids death.
The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is today.
If he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides . . . . .
and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself and hang on its neck with incomparable love
and plunge his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits . . .
and if he be not himself the age transfigured . . . .
and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of today, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave—
let him merge in the general run and wait his developement. . . . . . . .
Still the final test of poems or any character or work remains.
The prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead and judges performer or performance after the changes of time.
Does it live through them?
Does it still hold on untired?
Will the same style and the direction of genius to similar points be satisfactory now?
Has no new discovery in science or arrival at superior planes of thought and judgment and behaviour fixed him or his so that either can be looked down upon?
Have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake?
Is he beloved long and long after he is buried?
Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middleaged and the old think of him?
A great poem is for ages and ages in common and for all degrees and complexions and all departments and sects and for a woman as much as a man and a man as much as a woman.
A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning.
Has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority and rest satisfied with explanations and realize and be content and full?
To no such terminus does the greatest poet bring . . .
he brings neither cessation or sheltered fatness and ease.
The touch of him tells in action.
Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained . . . . thenceforward is no rest . . . . they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums.
The companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars and learns one of the meanings.
Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos . . . . the elder encourages the younger and shows him how . . .
they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again.
There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done.
They may wait awhile . . perhaps a generation or two . . dropping off by degrees.
A superior breed shall take their place . . . .
the gangs of kosmos and prophets en masse shall take their place.
A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest.
The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women.
Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things.
They shall find their inspiration in real objects today, symptoms of the past and future . . . .
They shall not deign to defend immortality or God or the perfection of things or liberty or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul.
They shall arise in America and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.
The English language befriends the grand American expression . . . . it is brawny enough and limber and full enough.
On the tough stock of a race who through all change of circumstance was never with-

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xiiout the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues.
It is the powerful language of resistance . . . it is the dialect of common sense.
It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and of all who aspire.
It is the chosen tongue to express growth faith self-esteem freedom justice equality friendliness amplitude prudence decision and courage.
It is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible.
No great literature nor any like style of behaviour or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions or the treatment by bosses of employed people, nor executive detail or detail of the army or navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts or police or tuition or architecture or songs or amusements or the costumes of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of American standards.
Whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart after that which passes by or this built to remain.
Is it uniform with my country? Are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the evergrowing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well-united, proud beyond the old models, generous beyond all models?
Is it something grown fresh out of the fields or drawn from the sea for use to me today here?
I know that what answers for me an American must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part of my materials.
Does this answer? or is it without reference to universal needs?
or sprung of the needs of the less developed society of special ranks?
or old needs of pleasure overlaid by modern science and forms?
Does this acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgement, and set slavery at nought for life and death?
Will it help breed one goodshaped and wellhung man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate?
Does it improve manners?
Is it for the nursing of the young of the republic?
Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples of the breasts of the mother of many children?
Has it too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
Does it look with the same love on the last born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside of their own?
The poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away.
The coward will surely pass away.
The expectation of the vital and great can only be satisfied by the demeanor of the vital and great.
The swarms of the polished deprecating and reflectors and the polite float off and leave no remembrance.
America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word.
It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome.
The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite . . they are not unappreciated . . they fall in their place and do their work.
The soul of the nation also does its work.
No disguise can pass on it . . no disguise can conceal from it.
It rejects none, it permits all.
Only toward as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way.
An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation.
The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets.
The signs are effectual.
There is no fear of mistake.
If the one is true the other is true.
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.


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"Leaves of Grass" [1]
("Song of Myself")

Leaves of Grass.



  ⎯⎯⎯  

1
I CELEBRATE myself,
2
And what I assume you shall assume,
3
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

4
I loafe and invite my soul,
5
I lean and loafe at my ease . . . . observing a spear of summer grass.

6
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes . . . . the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
7
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
8
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

9
The atmosphere is not a perfume . . . . it has no taste of the distillation . . . . it is
                    odorless,
10
It is for my mouth forever . . . . I am in love with it,
11
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
12
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

13
The smoke of my own breath,
14
Echos, ripples, and buzzed whispers . . . . loveroot, silkthread, crotch and vine,
15
My respiration and inspiration . . . . the beating of my heart . . . . the passing of blood
                    and air through my lungs,
16
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and darkcolored sea-
                    rocks, and of hay in the barn,
17
The sound of the belched words of my voice . . . . words loosed to the eddies of
                    the wind,
18
A few light kisses . . . . a few embraces . . . . a reaching around of arms,
19
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
20
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides,
21
The feeling of health . . . . the full-noon trill . . . . the song of me rising from bed
                    and meeting the sun.


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14 Leaves of Grass.

22
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much?
23
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
24
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

25
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
26
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left,
27
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the
                    eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books,
28
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
29
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

30
I have heard what the talkers were talking . . . . the talk of the beginning and the end,
31
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

32
There was never any more inception than there is now,
33
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
34
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
35
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

36
Urge and urge and urge,
37
Always the procreant urge of the world.

38
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance . . . . Always substance and increase,
39
Always a knit of identity . . . . always distinction . . . . always a breed of life.

40
To elaborate is no avail . . . . Learned and unlearned feel that it is so.

41
Sure as the most certain sure . . . . plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in
                    the beams,
42
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
43
I and this mystery here we stand.

44
Clear and sweet is my soul . . . . and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

45
Lack one lacks both . . . . and the unseen is proved by the seen,
46
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

47
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age,
48
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent,
                    and go bathe and admire myself.

49
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
50
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

51
I am satisfied . . . . I see, dance, laugh, sing;


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Leaves of Grass. 15

52
As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and close on the
                    peep of the day,
53
And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels bulging the house with their
                    plenty,
54
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
55
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
56
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
57
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is ahead?

58
Trippers and askers surround me,
59
People I meet . . . . . the effect upon me of my early life . . . . of the ward and city I
                    live in . . . . of the nation,
60
The latest news . . . . discoveries, inventions, societies . . . . authors old and new,
61
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
62
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
63
The sickness of one of my folks—or of myself . . . . or ill-doing . . . . or loss or lack
                    of money . . . . or depressions or exaltations,
64
They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
65
But they are not the Me myself.

66
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
67
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
68
Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
69
Looks with its sidecurved head curious what will come next,
70
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.

71
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and
                    contenders,
72
I have no mockings or arguments . . . . I witness and wait.

73
I believe in you my soul . . . . the other I am must not abase itself to you,
74
And you must not be abased to the other.

75
Loafe with me on the grass . . . . loose the stop from your throat,
76
Not words, not music or rhyme I want . . . . not custom or lecture, not even the best,
77
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

78
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;
79
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,
80
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript
                    heart,
81
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

82
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all
                    the art and argument of the earth;
83
And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,


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16 Leaves of Grass,

84
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
85
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers . . . . and the women my sisters
                    and lovers,
86
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
87
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
88
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
89
And mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullen and
                    pokeweed.

90
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
91
How could I answer the child? . . . . I do not know what it is any more than he.

92
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

93
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
94
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
95
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark,
                    and say Whose?

96
Or I guess the grass is itself a child . . . . the produced babe of the vegetation.

97
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
98
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
99
Growing among black folks as among white,
100
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the
                    same.

101
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

102
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
103
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
104
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
105
It may be you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon
                    out of their mothers' laps,
106
And here you are the mothers' laps.

107
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
108
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
109
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

110
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
111
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

112
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
113
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their
                    laps.



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Leaves of Grass. 17

114
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
115
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

116
They are alive and well somewhere;
117
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
118
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
119
And ceased the moment life appeared.

120
All goes onward and outward . . . . and nothing collapses,
121
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

122
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
123
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

124
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe . . . . and am not
                    contained between my hat and boots,
125
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
126
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

127
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
128
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as
                    myself;
129
They do not know how immortal, but I know.

130
Every kind for itself and its own . . . . for me mine male and female,
131
For me all that have been boys and that love women,
132
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
133
For me the sweetheart and the old maid . . . . for me mothers and the mothers of
                    mothers,
134
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
135
For me children and the begetters of children.

136
Who need be afraid of the merge?
137
Undrape . . . . you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
138
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
139
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless . . . . and can never be shaken away.

140
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
141
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.

142
The youngster and the redfaced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
143
I peeringly view them from the top.

144
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
145
It is so . . . . I witnessed the corpse . . . . there the pistol had fallen.



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18 Leaves of Grass.

146
The blab of the pave . . . . the tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles and talk of the
                    promenaders,
147
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod
                    horses on the granite floor,
148
The carnival of sleighs, the clinking and shouted jokes and pelts of snowballs;
149
The hurrahs for popular favorites . . . . the fury of roused mobs,
150
The flap of the curtained litter—the sick man inside, borne to the hospital,
151
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
152
The excited crowd—the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the
                    centre of the crowd;
153
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
154
The souls moving along . . . . are they invisible while the least atom of the stones is
                    visible?
155
What groans of overfed or half-starved who fall on the flags sunstruck or in fits,
156
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to
                    babes,
157
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here . . . . what howls restrained
                    by decorum,
158
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with
                    convex lips,
159
I mind them or the resonance of them . . . . I come again and again.

160
The big doors of the country-barn stand open and ready,
161
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
162
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
163
The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow:
164
I am there . . . . I help . . . . I came stretched atop of the load,
165
I felt its soft jolts . . . . one leg reclined on the other,
166
I jump from the crossbeams, and seize the clover and timothy,
167
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.

168
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
169
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
170
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
171
Kindling a fire and broiling the freshkilled game,
172
Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by my side.

173
The Yankee clipper is under her three skysails . . . . she cuts the sparkle and scud,
174
My eyes settle the land . . . . I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.

175
The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me,
176
I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time,
177
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

178
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far-west . . . . the bride was
                    a red girl,


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Leaves of Grass. 19

179
Her father and his friends sat near by crosslegged and dumbly smoking . . . . they
                    had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their
                    shoulders;
180
On a bank lounged the trapper . . . . he was dressed mostly in skins . . . . his luxuriant
                    beard and curls protected his neck,
181
One hand rested on his rifle . . . . the other hand held firmly the wrist of the red girl,
182
She had long eyelashes . . . . her head was bare . . . . her coarse straight locks
                    descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reached to her feet.

183
The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
184
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
185
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak,
186
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
187
And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet,
188
And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean
                    clothes,
189
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
190
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
191
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed north,
192
I had him sit next me at table . . . . my firelock leaned in the corner.

193
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
194
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly,
195
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.

196
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
197
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

198
Which of the young men does she like the best?
199
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

200
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
201
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

202
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
203
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

204
The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair,
205
Little streams passed all over their bodies.

206
An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,
207
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

208
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to the sun . . . . they do
                    not ask who seizes fast to them,


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20 Leaves of Grass.

209
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
210
They do not think whom they souse with spray.

211
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the
                    market,
212
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.

213
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
214
Each has his main-sledge . . . . they are all out . . . . there is a great heat in the fire.

215
From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements,
216
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
217
Overhand the hammers roll—overhand so slow—overhand so sure,
218
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

219
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses . . . . the block swags underneath
                    on its tied-over chain,
220
The negro that drives the huge dray of the stoneyard . . . . steady and tall he stands
                    poised on one leg on the stringpiece,
221
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hipband,
222
His glance is calm and commanding . . . . he tosses the slouch of his hat away from
                    his forehead,
223
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache . . . . falls on the black of his polish'd
                    and perfect limbs.

224
I behold the picturesque giant and love him . . . . and I do not stop there,
225
I go with the team also.

226
In me the caresser of life wherever moving . . . . backward as well as forward slue-
                    ing,
227
To niches aside and junior bending.

228
Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade, what is that you express in your eyes?
229
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

230
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and daylong ramble,
231
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
232
 . . . . I believe in those winged purposes,
233
And acknowledge the red yellow and white playing within me,
234
And consider the green and violet and the tufted crown intentional;
235
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
236
And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to
                    me,
237
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

238
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,


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Leaves of Grass. 21

239
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
240
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
241
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

242
The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the housesill, the chickadee, the
                    prairie-dog,
243
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
244
The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread wings,
245
I see in them and myself the same old law.

246
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
247
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

248
I am enamoured of growing outdoors,
249
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
250
Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers
                    of horses,
251
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

252
What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,
253
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
254
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
255
Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,
256
Scattering it freely forever.

257
The pure contralto sings in the organloft,
258
The carpenter dresses his plank . . . . the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild
                    ascending lisp,
259
The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,
260
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
261
The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoon are ready,
262
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
263
The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
264
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
265
The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats and rye,
266
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,
267
He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;
268
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
269
He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript;
270
The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
271
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
272
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand . . . . the drunkard nods by the barroom stove,
273
The machinist rolls up his sleeves . . . . the policeman travels his beat . . . . the gate-
                    keeper marks who pass,


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22 Leaves of Grass.

274
The young fellow drives the express-wagon . . . . I love him though I do not know
                    him;
275
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
276
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young . . . . some lean on their rifles,
                    some sit on logs,
277
Out from the crowd steps the marksman and takes his position and levels his piece;
278
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
279
The woollypates hoe in the sugarfield, the overseer views them from his saddle;
280
The bugle calls in the ballroom, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers
                    bow to each other;
281
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret and harks to the musical rain,
282
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
283
The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
284
The company returns from its excursion, the darkey brings up the rear and bears the
                    well-riddled target,
285
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and beadbags for
                    sale,
286
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with halfshut eyes bent sideways,
287
The deckhands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shoregoing
                    passengers,
288
The young sister holds out the skein, the elder sister winds it off in a ball and stops
                    now and then for the knots,
289
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, a week ago she bore her first child,
290
The cleanhaired Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or
                    mill,
291
The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are ad-
                    vancing;
292
The pavingman leans on his twohanded rammer—the reporter's lead flies swiftly
                    over the notebook—the signpainter is lettering with red and gold,
293
The canal-boy trots on the towpath—the bookkeeper counts at his desk—the
                    shoemaker waxes his thread,
294
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him,
295
The child is baptised—the convert is making the first professions,
296
The regatta is spread on the bay . . . . how the white sails sparkle!
297
The drover watches his drove, he sings out to them that would stray,
298
The pedlar sweats with his pack on his back—the purchaser higgles about the odd
                    cent,
299
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype,
300
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minutehand of the clock moves slowly,
301
The opium eater reclines with rigid head and just-opened lips,
302
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
303
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
304
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you,)
305
The President holds a cabinet council, he is surrounded by the great secretaries,


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Leaves of Grass. 23

306
On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;
307
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
308
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
309
The fare-collector goes through the train—he gives notice by the jingling of loose
                    change,
310
The floormen are laying the floor—the tinners are tinning the roof—the masons
                    are calling for mortar,
311
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
312
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gathered . . . . it is the
                    Fourth of July . . . . what salutes of cannon and small arms!
313
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs and the mower mows and the
                    wintergrain falls in the ground;
314
Off on the lakes the pikefisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
315
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,
316
The flatboatmen make fast toward dusk near the cottonwood or pekantrees,
317
The coon-seekers go now through the regions of the Red river, or through those
                    drained by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
318
The torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or Altamahaw;
319
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great grandsons around them,
320
In walls of abode, in canvass tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport.
321
The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
322
The living sleep for their time . . . . the dead sleep for their time,
323
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
324
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
325
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am.

326
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
327
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
328
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
329
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,
330
One of the great nation, the nation of many nations—the smallest the same and the
                    largest the same,
331
A southerner soon as a northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable,
332
A Yankee bound my own way . . . . ready for trade . . . . my joints the limberest
                    joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
333
A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deerskin leggings,
334
A boatman over the lakes or bays or along coasts . . . . a Hoosier, a Badger, a
                    Buckeye,
335
A Louisianian or Georgian, a poke-easy from sandhills and pines,
336
At home on Canadian snowshoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off New-
                    foundland,
337
At home in the fleet of iceboats, sailing with the rest and tacking,
338
At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine or the Texan ranch,
339
Comrade of Californians . . . . comrade of free northwesterners, loving their big
                    proportions,


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24 Leaves of Grass,

340
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen—comrade of all who shake hands and welcome
                    to drink and meat;
341
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulest,
342
A novice beginning experient of myriads of seasons,
343
Of every hue and trade and rank, of every caste and religion,
344
Not merely of the New World but of Africa Europe or Asia . . . . a wandering
                    savage,
345
A farmer, mechanic, or artist . . . . a gentleman, sailor, lover or quaker,
346
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician or priest.

347
I resist anything better than my own diversity,
348
And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,
349
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

350
The moth and the fisheggs are in their place,
351
The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,
352
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

353
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with
                    me,
354
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing,
355
If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing,
356
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
357
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

358
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
359
This is the common air that bathes the globe.

360
This is the breath of laws and songs and behaviour,
361
This is the the tasteless water of souls . . . . this is the true sustenance,
362
It is for the illiterate . . . . it is for the judges of the supreme court . . . . it is for the
                    federal capitol and the state capitols,
363
It is for the admirable communes of literary men and composers and singers and
                    lecturers and engineers and savans,
364
It is for the endless races of working people and farmers and seamen.

365
This is the trill of a thousand clear cornets and scream of the octave flute and strike
                    of triangles.

366
I play not a march for victors only . . . . I play great marches for conquered and
                    slain persons.

367
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
368
I also say it is good to fall . . . . battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are
                    won.



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Leaves of Grass. 25

369
I sound triumphal drums for the dead . . . . I fling through my embouchures the
                    loudest and gayest music to them,
370
Vivas to those who have failed, and to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea,
                    and those themselves who sank in the sea,
371
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes, and the number-
                    less unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known.

372
This is the meal pleasantly set . . . . this is the meat and drink for natural hunger,
373
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous . . . . I make appointments with all,
374
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
375
The keptwoman and sponger and thief are hereby invited . . . . the heavy-lipped slave
                    is invited . . . . the venerealee is invited,
376
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

377
This is the press of a bashful hand . . . . this is the float and odor of hair,
378
This is the touch of my lips to yours . . . . this is the murmur of yearning,
379
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
380
This is the thoughtful merge of myself and the outlet again.

381
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
382
Well I have . . . . for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has.

383
Do you take it I would astonish?
384
Does the daylight astonish? or the early redstart twittering through the woods?
385
Do I astonish more than they?

386
This hour I tell things in confidence,
387
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you.

388
Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, nude?
389
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

390
What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you?
391
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
392
Else it were time lost listening to me.

393
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
394
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,
395
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape
                    and tears.

396
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids . . . . conformity goes to
                    the fourth-removed,
397
I cock my hat as I please indoors or out.

398
Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious?



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26 Leaves of Grass.

399
I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair,
400
And counselled with doctors and calculated close and found no sweeter fat than
                    sticks to my own bones.

401
In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less,
402
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

403
And I know I am solid and sound,
404
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
405
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

406
And I know I am deathless,
407
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
408
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

409
I know I am august,
410
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
411
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
412
I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.

413
I exist as I am, that is enough,
414
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
415
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

416
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
417
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,
418
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

419
My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
420
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
421
And I know the amplitude of time.

422
I am the poet of the body,
423
And I am the poet of the soul.

424
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
425
The first I graft and increase upon myself . . . . the latter I translate into a new
                    tongue.

426
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
427
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
428
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

429
I chant a new chant of dilation or pride,
430
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
431
I show that size is only developement.



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Leaves of Grass. 27

432
Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?
433
It is a trifle . . . . they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

434
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;
435
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

436
Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night!
437
Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!
438
Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night!

439
Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!
440
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
441
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!
442
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
443
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
444
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
445
Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!
446
Smile, for your lover comes!

447
Prodigal! you have given me love! . . . . therefore I to you give love!
448
O unspeakable passionate love!

449
Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
450
We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

451
You sea! I resign myself to you also . . . . I guess what you mean,
452
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
453
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
454
We must have a turn together . . . . I undress . . . . hurry me out of sight of the land,
455
Cushion me soft . . . . rock me in billowy drowse,
456
Dash me with amorous wet . . . . I can repay you.

457
Sea of stretched ground-swells!
458
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
459
Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!
460
Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!
461
I am integral with you . . . . I too am of one phase and of all phases.

462
Partaker of influx and efflux . . . . extoler of hate and conciliation,
463
Extoler of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms.

464
I am he attesting sympathy;
465
Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?

466
I am the poet of commonsense and of the demonstrable and of immortality;
467
And am not the poet of goodness only . . . . I do not decline to be the poet of wick-
                    edness also.



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28 Leaves of Grass.

468
Washes and razors for foofoos . . . . for me freckles and a bristling beard.

469
What blurt is it about virtue and about vice?
470
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me . . . . I stand indifferent,
471
My gait is no faultfinder's or rejecter's gait,
472
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

473
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
474
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?

475
I step up to say that what we do is right and what we affirm is right . . . . and some
                    is only the ore of right,
476
Witnesses of us . . . . one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,
477
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
478
Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

479
This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
480
There is no better than it and now.

481
What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder,
482
The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

483
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
484
And mine a word of the modern . . . . a word en masse.

485
A word of the faith that never balks,
486
One time as good as another time . . . . here or henceforward it is all the same to
                    me.

487
A word of reality . . . . materialism first and last imbueing.

488
Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
489
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
490
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old
                    cartouches,
491
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
492
This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

493
Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
494
The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to
                    an area of the dwelling.

495
I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,
496
And go on the square for my own sake and for others' sakes,


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Leaves of Grass. 29

497
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully
                    equipped,
498
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.

499
Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
500
Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding,
501
No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no
                    more modest than immodest.

502
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
503
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

504
Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns
                    at last to me,
505
And whatever I do or say I also return.

506
Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index.

507
I speak the password primeval . . . . I give the sign of democracy;
508
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the
                    same terms.

509
Through me many long dumb voices,
510
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
511
Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,
512
Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
513
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
514
And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
515
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
516
Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,
517
Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.

518
Through me forbidden voices,
519
Voices of sexes and lusts . . . . voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
520
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.

521
I do not press my finger across my mouth,
522
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
523
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

524
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
525
Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

526
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
527
The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
528
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.



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30 Leaves of Grass.

529
If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of my body;
530
Translucent mould of me it shall be you,
531
Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you,
532
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you,
533
You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my life;
534
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you,
535
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,
536
Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it
                    shall be you,
537
Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,
538
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you;
539
Sun so generous it shall be you,
540
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you,
541
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,
542
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,
543
Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it
                    shall be you,
544
Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.

545
I dote on myself . . . . there is that lot of me, and all so luscious,
546
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.

547
I cannot tell how my ankles bend . . . . nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,
548
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit . . . . nor the cause of the friendship I take
                    again.

549
To walk up my stoop is unaccountable . . . . I pause to consider if it really be,
550
That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great authors and schools,
551
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

552
To behold the daybreak!
553
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
554
The air tastes good to my palate.

555
Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently rising, freshly exuding,
556
Scooting obliquely high and low.

557
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
558
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

559
The earth by the sky staid with . . . . the daily close of their junction,
560
The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head,
561
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

562
Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,
563
If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.



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Leaves of Grass. 31

564
We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
565
We found our own my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.

566
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
567
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

568
Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself.

569
It provokes me forever,
570
It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough . . . . why don't you let it out
                    then?

571
Come now I will not be tantalized . . . . you conceive too much of articulation.

572
Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?
573
Waiting in gloom protected by frost,
574
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
575
I underlying causes to balance them at last,
576
My knowledge my live parts . . . . it keeping tally with the meaning of things,
577
Happiness . . . . which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this
                    day.

578
My final merit I refuse you . . . . I refuse putting from me the best I am.

579
Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,
580
I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.

581
Writing and talk do not prove me,
582
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
583
With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.

584
I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,
585
And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me.

586
I hear the bravuras of birds . . . . the bustle of growing wheat . . . . gossip of flames
                     . . . . clack of sticks cooking my meals.

587
I hear the sound of the human voice . . . . a sound I love,
588
I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses . . . . sounds of the city and sounds
                    out of the city . . . . sounds of the day and night;
589
Talkative young ones to those that like them . . . . the recitative of fish-pedlars and
                    fruit-pedlars . . . . the loud laugh of workpeople at their meals,
590
The angry base of disjointed friendship . . . . the faint tones of the sick,
591
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips pronouncing a death-sentence,
592
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves . . . . the refrain of the
                    anchor-lifters;


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32 Leaves of Grass.

593
The ring of alarm-bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines
                    and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights,
594
The steam-whistle . . . . the solid roll of the train of approaching cars;
595
The slow-march played at night at the head of the association,
596
They go to guard some corpse . . . . the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.

597
I hear the violincello or man's heart's complaint,
598
And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset.

599
I hear the chorus . . . . it is a grand-opera . . . . this indeed is music!

600
A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
601
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

602
I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip;
603
The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,
604
It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast,
605
It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
606
It sails me . . . . I dab with bare feet . . . . they are licked by the indolent waves,
607
I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail,
608
Steeped amid honeyed morphine . . . . my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death,
609
Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
610
And that we call Being.

611
To be in any form, what is that?
612
If nothing lay more developed the quahaug and its callous shell were enough.

613
Mine is no callous shell,
614
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
615
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

616
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
617
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

618
Is this then a touch? . . . . quivering me to a new identity,
619
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
620
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
621
My flesh and blood playing out lightning, to strike what is hardly different from
                    myself,
622
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
623
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
624
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
625
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
626
Unbuttoning my clothes and holding me by the bare waist,
627
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields,


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Leaves of Grass. 33

628
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
629
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me,
630
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
631
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile,
632
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

633
The sentries desert every other part of me,
634
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
635
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

636
I am given up by traitors;
637
I talk wildly . . . . I have lost my wits . . . . I and nobody else am the greatest
                    traitor,
638
I went myself first to the headland . . . . my own hands carried me there.

639
You villain touch! what are you doing? . . . . my breath is tight in its throat;
640
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

641
Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed touch!
642
Did it make you ache so leaving me?

643
Parting tracked by arriving . . . . perpetual payment of the perpetual loan,
644
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

645
Sprouts take and accumulate . . . . stand by the curb prolific and vital,
646
Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.

647
All truths wait in all things,
648
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
649
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
650
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
651
What is less or more than a touch?

652
Logic and sermons never convince,
653
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

654
Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
655
Only what nobody denies is so.

656
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
657
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
658
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
659
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
660
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
661
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.



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34 Leaves of Grass.

662
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,
663
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
664
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'ouvre for the highest,
665
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
666
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
667
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
668
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
669
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's girl boiling her
                    iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

670
I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and fruits and grains and
                    esculent roots,
671
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
672
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
673
And call any thing close again when I desire it.

674
In vain the speeding or shyness,
675
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
676
In vain the mastadon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
677
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
678
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
679
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
680
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
681
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
682
In vain the razorbilled auk sails far north to Labrador,
683
I follow quickly . . . . I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

684
I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals . . . . they are so placid and self-
                    contained,
685
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

686
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
687
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
688
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
689
Not one is dissatisfied . . . . not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
690
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
691
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

692
So they show their relations to me and I accept them;
693
They bring me tokens of myself . . . . they evince them plainly in their possession.

694
I do not know where they got those tokens,
695
I must have passed that way untold times ago and negligently dropt them,
696
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
697
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,


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Leaves of Grass. 35

698
Infinite and omnigenous and the like of these among them;
699
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
700
Picking out here one that shall be my amie,
701
Choosing to go with him on brotherly terms.

702
A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
703
Head high in the forehead and wide between the ears,
704
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
705
Eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness . . . . ears finely cut and flexibly
                    moving.

706
His nostrils dilate . . . . my heels embrace him . . . . his well built limbs tremble with
                    pleasure . . . . we speed around and return.

707
I but use you a moment and then I resign you stallion . . . . and do not need your
                    paces, and outgallop them,
708
And myself as I stand or sit pass faster than you.

709
Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I guessed at;
710
What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,
711
What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed . . . . and again as I walked the beach
                    under the paling stars of the morning.

712
My ties and ballasts leave me . . . . I travel . . . . I sail . . . . my elbows rest in the
                    sea-gaps,
713
I skirt the sierras . . . . my palms cover continents,
714
I am afoot with my vision.

715
By the city's quadrangular houses . . . . in log-huts, or camping with lumbermen,
716
Along the ruts of the turnpike . . . . along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
717
Hoeing my onion-patch, and rows of carrots and parsnips . . . . crossing savannas . . . 
                    trailing in forests,
718
Prospecting . . . . gold-digging . . . . girdling the trees of a new purchase,
719
Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand . . . . hauling my boat down the shallow river;
720
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead . . . . where the buck turns
                    furiously at the hunter,
721
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock . . . . where the otter is
                    feeding on fish,
722
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
723
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey . . . . where the beaver pats
                    the mud with his paddle-tail;
724
Over the growing sugar . . . . over the cottonplant . . . . over the rice in its low
                    moist field;
725
Over the sharp-peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from
                    the gutters;


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36 Leaves of Grass.

726
Over the western persimmon . . . . over the longleaved corn and the delicate blue-
                    flowered flax;
727
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and a buzzer there with the rest,
728
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
729
Scaling mountains . . . . pulling myself cautiously up . . . . holding on by low scrag-
                    ged limbs,
730
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush;
731
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheatlot,
732
Where the bat flies in the July eve . . . . where the great goldbug drops through the
                    dark;
733
Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,
734
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,
735
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their
                    hides,
736
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, and andirons straddle the hearth-slab,
                    and cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
737
Where triphammers crash . . . . where the press is whirling its cylinders;
738
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs;
739
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft . . . . floating in it myself and look-
                    ing composedly down;
740
Where the life-car is drawn on the slipnoose . . . . where the heat hatches pale-
                    green eggs in the dented sand,
741
Where the she-whale swims with her calves and never forsakes them,
742
Where the steamship trails hindways its long pennant of smoke,
743
Where the ground-shark's fin cuts like a black chip out of the water,
744
Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents,
745
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, and the dead are corrupting below;
746
Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments;
747
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,
748
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;
749
Upon a door-step . . . . upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
750
Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,
751
At he-festivals with blackguard jibes and ironical license and bull-dances and
                    drinking and laughter,
752
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown sqush . . . . sucking the juice
                    through a straw,
753
At apple-pealings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
754
At musters and beach-parties and friendly bees and huskings and house-raisings;
755
Where the mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgles, and cackles and screams and
                    weeps,
756
Where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, and the dry-stalks are scattered, and the
                    brood cow waits in the hovel,
757
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, and the stud to the mare, and the
                    cock is treading the hen,
758
Where the heifers browse, and the geese nip their food with short jerks;


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Leaves of Grass. 37

759
Where the sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,
760
Where the herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and
                    near;
761
Where the hummingbird shimmers . . . . where the neck of the longlived swan is
                    curving and winding;
762
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the slappy shore and laughs her near-human
                    laugh;
763
Where beehives range on a gray bench in the garden half-hid by the high weeds;
764
Where the band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads
                    out;
765
Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery;
766
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees;
767
Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds
                    upon small crabs;
768
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon;
769
Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well;
770
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
771
Through the salt-lick or orange glade . . . . or under conical furs;
772
Through the gymnasium . . . . through the curtained saloon . . . . through the office
                    or public hall;
773
Pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign . . . . pleased with the new
                    and old,
774
Pleased with women, the homely as well as the handsome,
775
Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,
776
Pleased with the primitive tunes of the choir of the whitewashed church,
777
Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any preacher
                     . . . . looking seriously at the camp-meeting;
778
Looking in at the shop-windows in Broadway the whole forenoon . . . . pressing the
                    flesh of my nose to the thick plate-glass,
779
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds;
780
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends and I in the middle;
781
Coming home with the bearded and dark-cheeked bush-boy . . . . riding behind him
                    at the drape of the day;
782
Far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print;
783
By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
784
By the coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;
785
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure;
786
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any,
787
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him;
788
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
789
Walking the old hills of Judea with the beautiful gentle god by my side;
790
Speeding through space . . . . speeding through heaven and the stars,
791
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring and the diameter of eighty
                    thousand miles,


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38 Leaves of Grass.

792
Speeding with tailed meteors . . . . throwing fire-balls like the rest,
793
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly;
794
Storming enjoying planning loving cautioning,
795
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
796
I tread day and night such roads.

797
I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product,
798
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

799
I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul,
800
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

801
I help myself to material and immaterial,
802
No guard can shut me off, no law can prevent me.

803
I anchor my ship for a little while only,
804
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.

805
I go hunting polar furs and the seal . . . . leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff
                     . . . . clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

806
I ascend to the foretruck . . . . I take my place late at night in the crow's nest . . . .
                    we sail through the arctic sea . . . . it is plenty light enough,
807
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,
808
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them . . . . the scenery is plain in
                    all directions,
809
The white-topped mountains point up in the distance . . . . I fling out my fancies
                    toward them;
810
We are about approaching some great battlefield in which we are soon to be
                    engaged,
811
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampments . . . . we pass with still feet and
                    caution;
812
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruined city . . . . the blocks and
                    fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.

813
I am a free companion . . . . I bivouac by invading watchfires.

814
I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
815
And tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

816
My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,
817
They fetch my man's body up dripping and drowned.

818
I understand the large hearts of heroes,
819
The courage of present times and all times;


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Leaves of Grass. 39

820
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and death
                    chasing it up and down the storm,
821
How he knuckled tight and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and
                    faithful of nights,
822
And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, We will not desert you;
823
How he saved the drifting company at last,
824
How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their
                    prepared graves,
825
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved
                    men;
826
All this I swallow and it tastes good . . . . I like it well, and it becomes mine,
827
I am the man . . . . I suffered . . . . I was there.

828
The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
829
The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children
                    gazing on;
830
The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and
                    covered with sweat,
831
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck,
832
The murderous buckshot and the bullets,
833
All these I feel or am.

834
I am the hounded slave . . . . I wince at the bite of the dogs,
835
Hell and despair are upon me . . . . crack and again crack the marksmen,
836
I clutch the rails of the fence . . . . my gore dribs thinned with the ooze of my skin,
837
I fall on the weeds and stones,
838
The riders spur their unwilling horses and haul close,
839
They taunt my dizzy ears . . . . they beat me violently over the head with their
                    whip-stocks.

840
Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
841
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels . . . . I myself become the wounded
                    person,
842
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

843
I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken . . . . tumbling walls buried me in
                    their debris,
844
Heat and smoke I inspired . . . . I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
845
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
846
They have cleared the beams away . . . . they tenderly lift me forth.

847
I lie in the night air in my red shirt . . . . the pervading hush is for my sake,
848
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy,
849
White and beautiful are the faces around me . . . . the heads are bared of their fire-
                    caps,
850
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.



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40 Leaves of Grass.

851
Distant and dead resuscitate,
852
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me . . . . and I am the clock myself.

853
I am an old artillerist, and tell of some fort's bombardment . . . . and am there again.

854
Again the reveille of drummers . . . . again the attacking cannon and mortars and
                    howitzers,
855
Again the attacked send their cannon responsive.

856
I take part . . . . I see and hear the whole,
857
The cries and curses and roar . . . . the plaudits for well aimed shots,
858
The ambulanza slowly passing and trailing its red drip,
859
Workmen searching after damages and to make indispensible repairs,
860
The fall of grenades through the rent roof . . . . the fan-shaped explosion,
861
The whizz of limbs heads stone wood and iron high in the air.

862
Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general . . . . he furiously waves with his
                    hand,
863
He gasps through the clot . . . . Mind not me . . . . mind . . . . the entrenchments.

864
I tell not the fall of Alamo . . . . not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
865
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.

866
Hear now the tale of a jetblack sunrise,
867
Hear of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.

868
Retreating they had formed in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks,
869
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's nine times their number was the
                    price they took in advance,
870
Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,
871
They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their
                    arms, and marched back prisoners of war.

872
They were the glory of the race of rangers,
873
Matchless with a horse, a rifle, a song, a supper or a courtship,
874
Large, turbulent, brave, handsome, generous, proud and affectionate,
875
Bearded, sunburnt, dressed in the free costume of hunters,
876
Not a single one over thirty years of age.

877
The second Sunday morning they were brought out in squads and massacred . . . . it
                    was beautiful early summer,
878
The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.

879
None obeyed the command to kneel,
880
Some made a mad and helpless rush . . . . some stood stark and straight,
881
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart . . . . the living and dead lay together,


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Leaves of Grass. 41

882
The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt . . . . the new-comers saw them there;
883
Some half-killed attempted to crawl away,
884
These were dispatched with bayonets or battered with the blunts of muskets;
885
A youth not seventeen years old seized his assassin till two more came to release
                    him,
886
The three were all torn, and covered with the boy's blood.

887
At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies;
888
And that is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men,
889
And that was a jetblack sunrise.

890
Did you read in the seabooks of the oldfashioned frigate-fight?
891
Did you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?

892
Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you,
893
His was the English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and
                    never will be;
894
Along the lowered eve he came, horribly raking us.

895
We closed with him . . . . the yards entangled . . . . the cannon touched,
896
My captain lashed fast with his own hands.

897
We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water,
898
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around
                    and blowing up overhead.

899
Ten o'clock at night, and the full moon shining and the leaks on the gain, and five feet
                    of water reported,
900
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a
                    chance for themselves.

901
The transit to and from the magazine was now stopped by the sentinels,
902
They saw so many strange faces they did not know whom to trust.

903
Our frigate was afire . . . . the other asked if we demanded quarters? if our colors
                    were struck and the fighting done?

904
I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little captain,
905
We have not struck, he composedly cried, We have just begun our part of the
                    fighting.

906
Only three guns were in use,
907
One was directed by the captain himself against the enemy's mainmast,
908
Two well-served with grape and canister silenced his musketry and cleared his decks.



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42 Leaves of Grass.

909
The tops alone seconded the fire of this little battery, especially the maintop,
910
They all held out bravely during the whole of the action.

911
Not a moment's cease,
912
The leaks gained fast on the pumps . . . . the fire eat toward the powder-magazine,
913
One of the pumps was shot away . . . . it was generally thought we were sinking.

914
Serene stood the little captain,
915
He was not hurried . . . . his voice was neither high nor low,
916
His eyes gave more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

917
Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon they surrendered to us.

918
Stretched and still lay the midnight,
919
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
920
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking . . . . preparations to pass to the one we had
                    conquered,
921
The captain on the quarter deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance
                    white as a sheet,
922
Near by the corpse of the child that served in the cabin,
923
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers,
924
The flames spite of all that could be done flickering aloft and below,
925
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
926
Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves . . . . dabs of flesh upon the
                    masts and spars,
927
The cut of cordage and dangle of rigging . . . . the slight shock of the soothe of
                    waves,
928
Black and impassive guns, and litter of powder-parcels, and the strong scent,
929
Delicate sniffs of the seabreeze . . . . smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore . . . 
                    death-messages given in charge to survivors,
930
The hiss of the surgeon's knife and the gnawing teeth of his saw,
931
The wheeze, the cluck, the swash of falling blood . . . . the short wild scream, the
                    long dull tapering groan,
932
These so . . . . these irretrievable.

933
O Christ! My fit is mastering me!
934
What the rebel said gaily adjusting his throat to the rope-noose,
935
What the savage at the stump, his eye-sockets empty, his mouth spirting whoops
                    and defiance,
936
What stills the traveler come to the vault at Mount Vernon,
937
What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the shores of the Wallabout and
                    remembers the prison ships,
938
What burnt the gums of the redcoat at Saratoga when he surrendered his brigades,
939
These become mine and me every one, and they are but little,
940
I become as much more as I like.



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Leaves of Grass. 43

941
I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
942
And see myself in prison shaped like another man,
943
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

944
For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
945
It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.

946
Not a mutineer walks handcuffed to the jail, but I am handcuffed to him and walk
                    by his side,
947
I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching
                    lips.

948
Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too and am tried and sentenced.

949
Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp, but I also lie at the last gasp,
950
My face is ash-colored, my sinews gnarl . . . . away from me people retreat.

951
Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied in them,
952
I project my hat and sit shamefaced and beg.

953
I rise extatic through all, and sweep with the true gravitation,
954
The whirling and whirling is elemental within me.

955
Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
956
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head and slumbers and dreams and gaping,
957
I discover myself on a verge of the usual mistake.

958
That I could forget the mockers and insults!
959
That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!
960
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning!

961
I remember . . . . I resume the overstaid fraction,
962
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it  . . . . or to any
                    graves,
963
The corpses rise . . . . the gashes heal . . . . the fastenings roll away.

964
I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending
                    procession,
965
We walk the roads of Ohio and Massachusetts and Virginia and Wisconsin and
                    New York and New Orleans and Texas and Montreal and San Francisco and
                    Charleston and Savannah and Mexico,
966
Inland and by the seacoast and boundary lines . . . . and we pass the boundary lines.

967
Our swift ordinances are on their way over the whole earth,
968
The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years.



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44 Leaves of Grass.

969
Eleves I salute you,
970
I see the approach of your numberless gangs . . . . I see you understand yourselves
                    and me,
971
And know that they who have eyes are divine, and the blind and lame are equally
                    divine,
972
And that my steps drag behind yours yet go before them,
973
And are aware how I am with you no more than I am with everybody.

974
The friendly and flowing savage . . . . Who is he?
975
Is he waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it?

976
Is he some southwesterner raised outdoors? Is he Canadian?
977
Is he from the Mississippi country? or from Iowa, Oregon or California? or from
                    the mountains? or prairie life or bush-life? or from the sea?

978
Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
979
They desire he should like them and touch them and speak to them and stay with
                    them.

980
Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes . . . . words simple as grass . . . . uncombed head
                    and laughter and naivete;
981
Slowstepping feet and the common features, and the common modes and emanations,
982
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
983
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath . . . . they fly out of the glance
                    of his eyes.

984
Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask . . . . lie over,
985
You light surfaces only . . . . I force the surfaces and the depths also.

986
Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
987
Say old topknot! what do you want?

988
Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
989
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
990
And might tell the pinings I have . . . . the pulse of my nights and days.

991
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,
992
What I give I give out of myself.

993
You there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarfed chops till I blow grit
                    within you,
994
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
995
I am not to be denied . . . . I compel . . . . I have stores plenty and to spare,
996
And any thing I have I bestow.



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Leaves of Grass. 45

997
I do not ask who you are . . . . that is not important to me,
998
You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

999
To a drudge of the cottonfields or emptier of privies I lean . . . . on his right cheek
                    I put the family kiss,
1000
And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

1001
On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,
1002
This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.

1003
To any one dying . . . . thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
1004
Turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed,
1005
Let the physician and the priest go home.

1006
I seize the descending man . . . . I raise him with resistless will.

1007
O despairer, here is my neck,
1008
By God! you shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me.

1009
I dilate you with tremendous breath . . . . I buoy you up;
1010
Every room of the house do I fill with am armed force . . . . lovers of me, bafflers
                    of graves:
1011
Sleep! I and they keep guard all night;
1012
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
1013
I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
1014
And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.

1015
I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
1016
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

1017
I heard what was said of the universe,
1018
Heard it and heard of several thousand years;
1019
It is middling well as far as it goes . . . . but is that all?

1020
Magnifying and applying come I,
1021
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
1022
The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of my own seminal
                    wet,
1023
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them away,
1024
Lithographing Kronos and Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
1025
Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and Adonai,
1026
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, and Allah on a leaf, and the crucifix engraved,
1027
With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and all idols and images,
1028
Honestly taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more,
1029
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,


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46 Leaves of Grass.

1030
Admitting they bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and
                    sing for themselves,
1031
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself . . . . bestowing them
                    freely on each man and woman I see,
1032
Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,
1033
Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-up sleeves, driving the mallet and
                    chisel;
1034
Not objecting to special revelations . . . . considering a curl of smoke or a hair on
                    the back of my hand as curious as any revelation;
1035
Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes more to me than the gods of
                    the antique wars,
1036
Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
1037
Their brawny limbs passing safe over charred laths . . . . their white foreheads whole
                    and unhurt out of the flames;
1038
By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person
                    born;
1039
Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts
                    bagged out at their waists;
1040
The snag-toothed hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
1041
Selling all he possesses and traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit
                    by him while he is tried for forgery:
1042
What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling
                    the square rod then;
1043
The bull and the bug never worshipped half enough,
1044
Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed,
1045
The supernatural of no account . . . . myself waiting my time to be one of the
                    supremes,
1046
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as
                    prodigious,
1047
Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs out of pulpit or
                    print;
1048
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator!
1049
Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows!

1050
 . . . . A call in the midst of the crowd,
1051
My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

1052
Come my children,
1053
Come my boys and girls, and my women and household and intimates,
1054
Now the performer launches his nerve . . . . he has passed his prelude on the reeds
                    within.

1055
Easily written loosefingered chords! I feel the thrum of their climax and close.

1056
My head evolves on my neck,


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Leaves of Grass. 47

1057
Music rolls, but not from the organ . . . . folks are around me, but they are no
                    household of mine.

1058
Ever the hard and unsunk ground,
1059
Ever the eaters and drinkers . . . . ever the upward and downward sun . . . . ever the
                    air and the ceaseless tides,
1060
Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing and wicked and real,
1061
Ever the old inexplicable query . . . . ever that thorned thumb—that breath of itches
                    and thirsts,
1062
Ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him
                    forth;
1063
Ever love . . . . ever the sobbing liquid of life,
1064
Ever the bandage under the chin . . . . ever the tressels of death.

1065
Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
1066
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
1067
Tickets buying or taking or selling, but in to the feast never once going;
1068
Many sweating and ploughing and thrashing, and then the chaff for payment re-
                    ceiving,
1069
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

1070
This is the city . . . . and I am one of the citizens;
1071
Whatever interests the rest interests me . . . . politics, churches, newspapers,
                    schools,
1072
Benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, markets,
1073
Stocks and stores and real estate and personal estate.

1074
They who piddle and patter here in collars and tailed coats . . . . I am aware who
                    they are . . . . and that they are not worms or fleas,
1075
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself under all the scrape-lipped and pipe-legged
                    concealments.

1076
The weakest and shallowest is deathless with me,
1077
What I do and say the same waits for them,
1078
Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

1079
I know perfectly well my own egotism,
1080
And know my omniverous words, and cannot say any less,
1081
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

1082
My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;
1083
This printed and bound book . . . . but the printer and the printing-office boy?
1084
The marriage estate and settlement . . . . but the body and mind of the bridegroom?
                    also those of the bride?
1085
The panorama of the sea . . . . but the sea itself?


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48 Leaves of Grass.

1086
The well-taken photographs . . . . but your wife or friend close and solid in your
                    arms?
1087
The fleet of ships of the line and all the modern improvements . . . . but the craft
                    and pluck of the admiral?
1088
The dishes and fare and furniture . . . . but the host and hostess, and the look out of
                    their eyes?
1089
The sky up there . . . . yet here or next door or across the way?
1090
The saints and sages in history . . . . but you yourself?
1091
Sermons and creeds and theology . . . . but the human brain, and what is called
                    reason, and what is called love, and what is called life?

1092
I do not despise you priests;
1093
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
1094
Enclosing all worship ancient and modern, and all between ancient and modern,
1095
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
1096
Waiting responses from oracles . . . . honoring the gods  . . . . saluting the sun,
1097
Making a fetish of the first rock or stump . . . . powowing with sticks in the circle of
                    obis,
1098
Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
1099
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession . . . . rapt and austere in the
                    woods, a gymnosophist,
1100
Drinking mead from the skull-cup . . . . to shasta and vedas admirant . . . . minding
                    the koran,
1101
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife—beating the
                    serpent-skin drum;
1102
Accepting the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he
                    is divine,
1103
To the mass kneeling—to the puritan's prayer rising—sitting patiently in a pew,
1104
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis—waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me;
1105
Looking forth on pavement and land, and outside of pavement and land,
1106
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

1107
One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang,
1108
I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey.

1109
Down-hearted doubters, dull and excluded,
1110
Frivolous sullen moping angry affected disheartened atheistical,
1111
I know every one of you, and know the unspoken interrogatories,
1112
By experience I know them.

1113
How the flukes splash!
1114
How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!

1115
Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
1116
I take my place among you as much as among any;


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Leaves of Grass. 49

1117
The past is the push of you and me and all precisely the same,
1118
And the day and night are for you and me and all,
1119
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you and me and all.

1120
I do not know what is untried and afterward,
1121
But I know it is sure and alive and sufficient.

1122
Each who passes is considered, and each who stops is considered, and not a single
                    one can it fail.

1123
It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
1124
Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
1125
Nor the little child that peeped in at the door and then drew back and was never
                    seen again,
1126
Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse
                    than gall,
1127
Nor him in the poorhouse tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
1128
Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked . . . . nor the brutish koboo, called the
                    ordure of humanity,
1129
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
1130
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
1131
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor one of the myriads of myriads that in-
                    habit them,
1132
Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.

1133
It is time to explain myself . . . . let us stand up.

1134
What is known I strip away . . . . I launch all men and women forward with me into
                    the unknown.

1135
The clock indicates the moment . . . . but what does eternity indicate?

1136
Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs . . . . its buckets are rising forever and ever,
1137
They pour and they pour and they exhale away.

1138
We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers;
1139
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

1140
Births have brought us richness and variety,
1141
And other births will bring us richness and variety.

1142
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
1143
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

1144
Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or my sister?


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50 Leaves of Grass.

1145
I am sorry for you . . . . they are not murderous or jealous upon me;
1146
All has been gentle with me . . . . . . I keep no account with lamentation;
1147
What have I to do with lamentation?

1148
I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.

1149
My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
1150
On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
1151
All below duly traveled—and still I mount and mount.

1152
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
1153
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, the vapor from the nostrils of death,
1154
I know I was even there . . . . I waited unseen and always,
1155
And slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist,
1156
And took my time . . . . and took no hurt from the fœtid carbon.

1157
Long I was hugged close . . . . long and long.

1158
Immense have been the preparations for me,
1159
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.

1160
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;
1161
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
1162
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

1163
Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
1164
My embryo has never been torpid . . . . nothing could overlay it;
1165
For it the nebula cohered to an orb . . . . the long slow strata piled to rest it on
                     . . . . vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
1166
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

1167
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me,
1168
Now I stand on this spot with my soul.

1169
Span of youth! Ever-pushed elasticity! Manhood balanced and florid and full!

1170
My lovers suffocate me!
1171
Crowding my lips, and thick in the pores of my skin,
1172
Jostling me through streets and public halls . . . . coming naked to me at night,
1173
Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river . . . . swinging and chirping over my
                    head,
1174
Calling my name from flowerbeds or vines or tangled underbrush,
1175
Or while I swim in the bath . . . . or drink from the pump at the corner . . . . or the
                    curtain is down at the opera . . . . or I glimpse at a woman's face in the
                    railroad car;


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Leaves of Grass. 51

1176
Lighting on every moment of my life,
1177
Bussing my body with soft and balsamic busses,
1178
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.

1179
Old age superbly rising! Ineffable grace of dying days!

1180
Every condition promulges not only itself . . . . it promulges what grows after and out
                    of itself,
1181
And the dark hush promulges as much as any.

1182
I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
1183
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther
                    systems.

1184
Wider and wider they spread, expanding and always expanding,
1185
Outward and outward and forever outward.

1186
My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
1187
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
1188
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.

1189
There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
1190
If I and you and the worlds and all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the
                    palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not
                    avail in the long run,
1191
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
1192
And as surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

1193
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span,
                    or make it impatient,
1194
They are but parts . . . . any thing is but a part.

1195
See ever so far . . . . there is limitless space outside of that,
1196
Count ever so much . . . . there is limitless time around that.

1197
Our rendezvous is fitly appointed . . . . God will be there and wait till we come.

1198
I know I have the best of time and space—and that I was never measured, and
                    never will be measured.

1199
I tramp a perpetual journey,
1200
My signs are a rain-proof coat and good shoes and a staff cut from the woods;
1201
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
1202
I have no chair, nor church nor philosophy;
1203
I lead no man to a dinner-table or library or exchange,


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52 Leaves of Grass.

1204
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
1205
My left hand hooks you round the waist,
1206
My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.

1207
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
1208
You must travel it for yourself.

1209
It is not far . . . . it is within reach,
1210
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
1211
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.

1212
Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth;
1213
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

1214
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
1215
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me;
1216
For after we start we never lie by again.

1217
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven,
1218
And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs and the plea-
                    sure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?
1219
And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

1220
You are also asking me questions, and I hear you;
1221
I answer that I cannot answer . . . . you must find out for yourself.

1222
Sit awhile wayfarer,
1223
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
1224
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes I will certainly kiss you
                    with my goodbye kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

1225
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
1226
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
1227
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your
                    life

1228
Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore,
1229
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
1230
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me and shout, and
                    laughingly dash with your hair.

1231
I am the teacher of athletes,
1232
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
1233
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.



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Leaves of Grass. 53

1234
The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power but in his own
                    right,
1235
Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
1236
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
1237
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than a wound cuts,
1238
First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play
                    on the banjo,
1239
Preferring scars and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers and those that
                    keep out of the sun.

1240
I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
1241
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour;
1242
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

1243
I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat;
1244
It is you talking just as much as myself . . . . I act as the tongue of you,
1245
It was tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

1246
I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,
1247
And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately
                    stays with me in the open air.

1248
If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
1249
The nearest gnat is an explanation and a drop or the motion of waves a key,
1250
The maul the oar and the handsaw second my words.

1251
No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
1252
But roughs and little children better than they.

1253
The young mechanic is closest to me . . . . he knows me pretty well,
1254
The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day,
1255
The farmboy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,
1256
In vessels that sail my words must sail . . . . I go with fishermen and seamen, and
                    love them,
1257
My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket,
1258
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,
1259
The young mother and old mother shall comprehend me,
1260
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,
1261
They and all would resume what I have told them.

1262
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
1263
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
1264
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is,
1265
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in
                    his shroud,


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54 Leaves of Grass.

1266
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,
1267
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all
                    times,
1268
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a
                    hero,
1269
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe,
1270
And any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes.

1271
And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,
1272
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
1273
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.

1274
I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
1275
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

1276
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
1277
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
1278
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
1279
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
1280
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come for-
                    ever and ever.

1281
And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to alarm
                    me.

1282
To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
1283
I see the elderhand pressing receiving supporting,
1284
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors . . . . and mark the outlet, and
                    mark the relief and escape.

1285
And as to you corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,
1286
I smell the white roses sweetscented and growing,
1287
I reach to the leafy lips . . . . I reach to the polished breasts of melons.

1288
And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
1289
No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

1290
I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,
1291
O suns . . . . O grass of graves . . . . O perpetual transfers and promotions . . . . if
                    you do not say anything how can I say anything?

1292
Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
1293
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
1294
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk . . . . toss on the black stems that decay in the muck,
1295
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.



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Leaves of Grass. 55

1296
I ascend from the moon . . . . I ascend from the night,
1297
And perceive of the ghastly glitter the sunbeams reflected,
1298
And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.

1299
There is that in me . . . . I do not know what it is . . . . but I know it is in me.

1300
Wrenched and sweaty . . . . calm and cool then my body becomes;
1301
I sleep . . . . I sleep long.

1302
I do not know it . . . . it is without name . . . . it is a word unsaid,
1303
It is not in any dictionary or utterance or symbol.

1304
Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
1305
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

1306
Perhaps I might tell more . . . . Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

1307
Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
1308
It is not chaos or death . . . . it is form and union and plan . . . . it is eternal life . . . .
                    it is happiness.

1309
The past and present wilt . . . . I have filled them and emptied them,
1310
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

1311
Listener up there! Here you . . . . what have you to confide to me?
1312
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
1313
Talk honestly, for no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.

1314
Do I contradict myself?
1315
Very well then . . . . I contradict myself;
1316
I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.

1317
I concentrate toward them that are nigh . . . . I wait on the door-slab.

1318
Who has done his day's work and will soonest be through with his supper?
1319
Who wishes to walk with me?

1320
Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?

1321
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me . . . . he complains of my gab and my
                    loitering.

1322
I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable,
1323
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

1324
The last scud of day holds back for me,


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56 Leaves of Grass.

1325
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
1326
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

1327
I depart as air . . . . I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
1328
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags.

1329
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
1330
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

1331
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
1332
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
1333
And filter and fibre your blood.

1334
Failing to fetch me me at first keep encouraged,
1335
Missing me one place search another,
1336
I stop some where waiting for you



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"Leaves of Grass" [2]
("A Song for Occupations")

Leaves of Grass.



  ⎯⎯⎯  

1337
COME closer to me,
1338
Push close my lovers and take the best I possess,
1339
Yield closer and closer and give me the best you possess.

1340
This is unfinished business with me . . . . how is it with you?
1341
I was chilled with the cold types and cylinder and wet paper between us.

1342
I pass so poorly with paper and types . . . . I must pass with the contact of bodies
                    and souls.

1343
I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me . . . . I know that
                    it is good for you to do so.

1344
Were all educations practical and ornamental well displayed out of me, what would
                    it amount to?
1345
Were I as the head teacher or charitable proprietor or wise statesman, what would
                    it amount to?
1346
Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

1347
The learned and virtuous and benevolent, and the usual terms;
1348
A man like me, and never the usual terms.

1349
Neither a servant nor a master am I,
1350
I take no sooner a large price than a small price . . . . I will have my own whoever
                    enjoys me,
1351
I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.

1352
If you are a workman or workwoman I stand as nigh as the nighest that works in
                    the same shop,
1353
If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your
                    brother or dearest friend,
1354
If your lover or husband or wife is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as
                    welcome;


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58 Leaves of Grass.

1355
If you have become degraded or ill, then I will become so for your sake;
1356
If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember
                    my foolish and outlawed deeds?
1357
If you carouse at the table I say I will carouse at the opposite side of the table;
1358
If you meet some stranger in the street and love him or her, do I not often meet
                    strangers in the street and love them?
1359
If you see a good deal remarkable in me I see just as much remarkable in you.

1360
Why what have you thought of yourself?
1361
Is it you then that thought yourself less?
1362
Is it you that thought the President greater than you? or the rich better off than
                    you? or the educated wiser than you?

1363
Because you are greasy or pimpled—or that you was once drunk, or a thief, or
                    diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute—or are so now—or from frivolity or
                    impotence—or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in print . . . .
                    do you give in that you are any less immortal?

1364
Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and
                    untouching;
1365
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or
                    no;
1366
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns . . . . aud see and hear you, and
                    what you give and take;
1367
What is there you cannot give and take?

1368
I see not merely that you are polite or whitefaced . . . . married or single . . . .
                    citizens of old states or citizens of new states . . . . eminent in some profession
                     . . . . a lady or gentleman in a parlor . . . . or dressed in the jail uniform . . . .
                    or pulpit uniform,
1369
Not only the free Utahan, Kansian, or Arkansian . . . . not only the free Cuban . . . 
                    not merely the slave . . . . not Mexican native, or Flatfoot, or negro from
                    Africa,
1370
Iroquois eating the warflesh—fishtearer in his lair of rocks and sand . . . .
                    Esquimaux in the dark cold snowhouse . . . . Chinese with his transverse eyes
                     . . . . Bedowee—or wandering nomad—or tabounschik at the head of his
                    droves,
1371
Grown, half-grown, and babe—of this country and every country, indoors and out-
                    doors I see . . . . and all else is behind or through them.

1372
The wife—and she is not one jot less than the husband,
1373
The daughter—and she is just as good as the son,
1374
The mother—and she is every bit as much as the father.

1375
Offspring of those not rich—boys apprenticed to trades,


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Leaves of Grass. 59

1376
Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms;
1377
The naive . . . . the simple and hardy . . . . he going to the polls to vote . . . . he
                    who has a good time, and he who has a bad time;
1378
Mechanics, southerners, new arrivals, sailors, mano'warsmen, merchantmen, coast-
                    ers,
1379
All these I see . . . . but nigher and farther the same I see;
1380
None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.

1381
I bring what you much need, yet always have,
1382
I bring not money or amours or dress or eating . . . . but I bring as good;
1383
And send no agent or medium . . . . and offer no representative of value—but offer
                    the value itself.

1384
There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually,
1385
It is not what is printed or preached or discussed . . . . it eludes discussion and
                    print,
1386
It is not to be put in a book . . . . it is not in this book,
1387
It is for you whoever you are . . . . it is no farther from you than your hearing and
                    sight are from you,
1388
It is hinted by nearest and commonest and readiest . . . . it is not them, though it is
                    endlessly provoked by them . . . . What is there ready and near you now?

1389
You may read in many languages and read nothing about it;
1390
You may read the President's message and read nothing about it there,
1391
Nothing in the reports from the state department or treasury department . . . . or in
                    the daily papers, or the weekly papers,
1392
Or in the census returns or assessors' returns or prices current or any accounts of
                    stock.

1393
The sun and stars that float in the open air . . . . the appleshaped earth and we upon
                    it . . . . surely the drift of them is something grand;
1394
I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,
1395
And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot or
                    reconnoissance,
1396
And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without
                    luck must be a failure for us,
1397
And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

1398
The light and shade—the curious sense of body and identity—the greed that
                    with perfect complaisance devours all things—the endless pride and out-
                    stretching of man—unspeakable joys and sorrows,
1399
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees . . . . and the wonders that fill
                    each minute of time forever and each acre of surface and space forever,


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60 Leaves of Grass.

1400
Have you reckoned them as mainly for a trade or farmwork? or for the profits of
                    a store? or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure or a
                    lady's leisure?

1401
Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted
                    in a picture?
1402
Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?
1403
Or the attraction of gravity and the great laws and harmonious combinations and
                    the fluids of the air as subjects for the savans?
1404
Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
1405
Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?
1406
Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables or agriculture itself?

1407
Old institutions . . . . these arts libraries legends collections—and the practice
                    handed along in manufactures  . . . . will we rate them so high?
1408
Will we rate our prudence and business so high? . . . . I have no objection,
1409
I rate them as high as the highest . . . . but a child born of a woman and man I rate
                    beyond all rate.

1410
We thought our Union grand and our Constitution grand;
1411
I do not say they are not grand and good—for they are,
1412
I am this day just as much in love with them as you,
1413
But I am eternally in love with you and with all my fellows upon the earth.

1414
We consider the bibles and religions divine . . . . I do not say they are not divine,
1415
I say they have all grown out of you and may grow out of you still,
1416
It is not they who give the life . . . . it is you who give the life;
1417
Leaves are not more shed from the trees or trees from the earth than they are shed
                    out of you.

1418
The sum of all known value and respect I add up in you whoever you are;
1419
The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are
                    here for him,
1420
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you . . . . not you here for them,
1421
The Congress convenes every December for you,
1422
Laws, courts, the forming of states, the charters of cities, the going and coming of
                    commerce and mails are all for you.

1423
All doctrines, all politics and civilization exurge from you,
1424
All sculpture and monuments and anything inscribed anywhere are tallied in you,
1425
The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach is in you this
                    hour—and myths and tales the same;
1426
If you were not breathing and walking here where would they all be?
1427
The most renowned poems would be ashes . . . . orations and plays would be
                    vacuums.



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Leaves of Grass. 61

1428
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
1429
Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and
                    cornices?

1430
All music is what awakens from you when you are reminded by the instruments,
1431
It is not the violins and the cornets . . . . it is not the oboe nor the beating drums—
                    nor the notes of the baritone singer singing his sweet romanza . . . . nor those
                    of the men's chorus, nor those of the women's chorus,
1432
It is nearer and farther than they.

1433
Will the whole come back then?
1434
Can each see the signs of the best by a look in the lookingglass? Is there nothing
                    greater or more?
1435
Does all sit there with you and here with me?

1436
The old forever new things . . . . you foolish child! . . . . the closest simplest things
                    —this moment with you,
1437
Your person and every particle that relates to your person,
1438
The pulses of your brain waiting their chance and encouragement at every deed
                    or sight;
1439
Anything you do in public by day, and anything you do in secret betweendays,
1440
What is called right and what is called wrong . . . . what you behold or touch . . . .
                    what causes your anger or wonder,
1441
The anklechain of the slave, the bed of the bedhouse, the cards of the gambler, the
                    plates of the forger;
1442
What is seen or learned in the street, or intuitively learned,
1443
What is learned in the public school—spelling, reading, writing and ciphering . . . .
                    the blackboard and the teacher's diagrams:
1444
The panes of the windows and all that appears through them . . . . the going forth
                    in the morning and the aimless spending of the day;
1445
(What is it that you made money? what is it that you got what you wanted?)
1446
The usual routine . . . . the workshop, factory, yard, office, store, or desk;
1447
The jaunt of hunting or fishing, or the life of hunting or fishing,
1448
Pasturelife, foddering, milking and herding, and all the personnel and usages;
1449
The plum-orchard and apple-orchard . . . . gardening . . seedlings, cuttings, flowers
                    and vines,
1450
Grains and manures . . marl, clay, loam . . the subsoil plough . . the shovel and pick
                    and rake and hoe . . irrigation and draining;
1451
The currycomb . . the horse-cloth . . the halter and bridle and bits . . the very wisps
                    of straw,
1452
The barn and barn-yard . . the bins and mangers . . the mows and racks:
1453
Manufactures . . commerce . . engineering . . the building of cities, and every trade
                    carried on there . . and the implements of every trade,
1454
The anvil and tongs and hammer . . the axe and wedge . .  the square and mitre and
                    jointer and smoothingplane;


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62 Leaves of Grass.

1455
The plumbob and trowel and level . . the wall-scaffold, and the work of walls and
                    ceilings . . or any mason-work:
1456
The ship's compass . . the sailor's tarpaulin . . the stays and lanyards, and the ground-
                    tackle for anchoring or mooring,
1457
The sloop's tiller . . the pilot's wheel and bell . . the yacht or fish-smack . . the great
                    gay-pennanted three-hundred-foot steamboat under full headway, with her proud
                    fat breasts and her delicate swift-flashing paddles;
1458
The trail and line and hooks and sinkers . . the seine, and hauling the seine;
1459
Smallarms and rifles . . . . the powder and shot and caps and wadding . . . . the
                    ordnance for war . . . . the carriages:
1460
Everyday objects . . . . the housechairs, the carpet, the bed and the counterpane of
                    the bed, and him or her sleeping at night, and the wind blowing, and the indefi-
                    nite noises:
1461
The snowstorm or rainstorm . . . . the tow-trowsers . . . . the lodge-hut in the woods,
                    and the still-hunt:
1462
City and country . . fireplace and candle . . gaslight and heater and aqueduct;
1463
The message of the governor, mayor, or chief of police . . . . the dishes of breakfast
                    or dinner or supper;
1464
The bunkroom, the fire-engine, the string-team, and the car or truck behind;
1465
The paper I write on or you write on . . and every word we write . . and every
                    cross and twirl of the pen . . and the curious way we write what we think . . . .
                    yet very faintly;
1466
The directory, the detector, the ledger . . . . the books in ranks or the bookshelves
                     . . . . the clock attached to the wall,
1467
The ring on your finger . . the lady's wristlet . . the hammers of stonebreakers or
                    coppersmiths . . the druggist's vials and jars;
1468
The etui of surgical instruments, and the etui of oculist's or aurist's instruments, or
                    dentist's instruments;
1469
Glassblowing, grinding of wheat and corn . . casting, and what is cast . . tinroofing,
                    shingledressing,
1470
Shipcarpentering, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers . . dockbuilding, fishcuring, ferry-
                    ing;
1471
The pump, the piledriver, the great derrick . . the coalkiln and brickkiln,
1472
Ironworks or whiteleadworks . . the sugarhouse . .  steam-saws, and the great mills
                    and factories;
1473
The cottonbale . . the stevedore's hook . . the saw and buck of the sawyer . . the
                    screen of the coalscreener . .  the mould of the moulder . . the workingknife of
                    the butcher;
1474
The cylinder press . . the handpress . . the frisket and tympan . . the compositor's
                    stick and rule,
1475
The implements for daguerreotyping . . . . the tools of the rigger or grappler or sail-
                    maker or blockmaker,
1476
Goods of guttapercha or papiermache . . . . colors and brushes . . . . glaziers' im-
                    plements,


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Leaves of Grass. 63

1477
The veneer and gluepot . . the confectioner's ornaments . . the decanter and glasses
                     . . the shears and flatiron;
1478
The awl and kneestrap . . the pint measure and quart measure . . the counter and
                    stool . . the writingpen of quill or metal;
1479
Billiards and tenpins . . . . the ladders and hanging ropes of the gymnasium, and the
                    manly exercises;
1480
The designs for wallpapers or oilcloths or carpets . . . . the fancies for goods for
                    women . . . . the bookbinder's stamps;
1481
Leatherdressing, coachmaking, boilermaking, ropetwisting, distilling, signpainting,
                    limeburning, coopering, cottonpicking,
1482
The walkingbeam of the steam-engine . . the throttle and governors, and the up and
                    down rods,
1483
Stavemachines and plainingmachines . . . . the cart of the carman . . the omnibus . . 
                    the ponderous dray;
1484
The snowplough and two engines pushing it . . . . the ride in the express train of
                    only one car . . . . the swift go through a howling storm:
1485
The bearhunt or coonhunt . . . . the bonfire of shavings in the open lot in the city
                     . . the crowd of children watching;
1486
The blows of the fighting-man . . the upper cut and one-two-three;
1487
The shopwindows . . . . the coffins in the sexton's wareroom . . . . the fruit on the
                    fruitstand . . . . the beef on the butcher's stall,
1488
The bread and cakes in the bakery . . . . the white and red pork in the pork-store;
1489
The milliner's ribbons . . the dressmaker's patterns . . . . the tea-table . . the home-
                    made sweetmeats:
1490
The column of wants in the one-cent paper . . the news by telegraph . . . . the
                    amusements and operas and shows:
1491
The cotton and woolen and linen you wear . . . . the money you make and spend;
1492
Your room and bedroom . . . . your piano-forte . . . . the stove and cookpans,
1493
The house you live in . . . . the rent . . . . the other tenants . . . . the deposite in the
                    savings-bank . . . . the trade at the grocery,
1494
The pay on Saturday night . . . . the going home, and the purchases;
1495
In them the heft of the heaviest . . . . in them far more than you estimated, and far
                    less also,
1496
In them, not yourself . . . . you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of estima-
                    tion,
1497
In them your themes and hints and provokers . . if not, the whole earth has no
                    themes or hints or provokers, and never had.

1498
I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile . . . . I do not advise you to stop,
1499
I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,
1500
But I say that none lead to greater or sadder or happier than those lead to.

1501
Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last,
1502
In things best known to you finding the best or as good as the best,


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64 Leaves of Grass.

1503
In folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest and strongest and lovingest,
1504
Happiness not in another place, but this place . . not for another hour, but this hour,
1505
Man in the first you see or touch . . . . always in your friend or brother or nighest
                    neighbor . . . . Woman in your mother or lover or wife,
1506
And all else thus far known giving place to men and women.

1507
When the psalm sings instead of the singer,
1508
When the script preaches instead of the preacher,
1509
When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting
                    desk,
1510
When the sacred vessels or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate
                    as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their
                    overalls,
1511
When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince,
1512
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter,
1513
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions,
1514
I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and
                    women.



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"Leaves of Grass" [3]
("To Think of Time")

Leaves of Grass.



  ⎯⎯⎯  

1515
TO think of time . . . . to think through the retrospection,
1516
To think of today . . and the ages continued henceforward.

1517
Have you guessed you yourself would not continue? Have you dreaded those
                    earth-beetles?
1518
Have you feared the future would be nothing to you?

1519
Is today nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?
1520
If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.

1521
To think that the sun rose in the east . . . . that men and women were flexible and
                    real and alive . . . . that every thing was real and alive;
1522
To think that you and I did not see feel think nor bear our part,
1523
To think that we are now here and bear our part.

1524
Not a day passes . . not a minute or second without an accouchement;
1525
Not a day passes . . not a minute or second without a corpse.

1526
When the dull nights are over, and the dull days also,
1527
When the soreness of lying so much in bed is over,
1528
When the physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look for an
                    answer,
1529
When the children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters have
                    been sent for,
1530
When medicines stand unused on the shelf, and the camphor-smell has pervaded the
                    rooms,
1531
When the faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,
1532
When the twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,
1533
When the breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,
1534
Then the corpse-limbs stretch on the bed, and the living look upon them,
1535
They are palpable as the living are palpable.



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66 Leaves of Grass.

1536
The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,
1537
But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously on the corpse.

1538
To think that the rivers will come to flow, and the snow fall, and fruits ripen . . and
                    act upon others as upon us now . . . . yet not act upon us;
1539
To think of all these wonders of city and country . . and others taking great interest
                    in them . . and we taking small interest in them.

1540
To think how eager we are in building our houses,
1541
To think others shall be just as eager . . and we quite indifferent.

1542
I see one building the house that serves him a few years  . . . . or seventy or eighty
                    years at most;
1543
I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.

1544
Slowmoving and black lines creep over the whole earth . . . . they never cease . . . .
                    they are the burial lines,
1545
He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be
                    buried.

1546
Cold dash of waves at the ferrywharf,
1547
Posh and ice in the river . . . . half-frozen mud in the streets,
1548
A gray discouraged sky overhead . . . . the short last daylight of December,
1549
A hearse and stages . . . . other vehicles give place,
1550
The funeral of an old stagedriver . . . . the cortege mostly drivers.

1551
Rapid the trot to the cemetery,
1552
Duly rattles the deathbell . . . . the gate is passed . . . . the grave is halted at . . . .
                    the living alight . . . . the hearse uncloses,
1553
The coffin is lowered and settled . . . . the whip is laid on the coffin,
1554
The earth is swiftly shovelled in . . . . a minute . . no one moves or speaks . . . . it is
                    done,
1555
He is decently put away . . . . is there anything more?

1556
He was a goodfellow,
1557
Freemouthed, quicktempered, not badlooking, able to take his own part,
1558
Witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend,
1559
Fond of women, . . played some . . eat hearty and drank hearty,
1560
Had known what it was to be flush . . grew lowspirited toward the last . . sickened
                     . . was helped by a contribution,
1561
Died aged forty-one years . . and that was his funeral.

1562
Thumb extended or finger uplifted,
1563
Apron, cape, gloves, strap . . . . wetweather clothes . . . . whip carefully chosen . . . .
                    boss, spotter, starter, and hostler,


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Leaves of Grass. 67

1564
Somebody loafing on you, or you loafing on somebody . . . . headway . . . . man
                    before and man behind,
1565
Good day's work or bad day's work . . . . pet stock or mean stock . . . . first out or
                    last out . . . . turning in at night,
1566
To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers . . and he there takes
                    no interest in them.

1567
The markets, the government, the workingman's wages . . . . to think what account
                    they are through our nights and days;
1568
To think that other workingmen will make just as great account of them . . yet we
                    make little or no account.

1569
The vulgar and the refined . . . . what you call sin and what you call goodness . . to
                    think how wide a difference;
1570
To think the difference will still continue to others, yet we lie beyond the difference.

1571
To think how much pleasure there is!
1572
Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? Have you pleasure from poems?
1573
Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomina-
                    tion and election? or with your wife and family?
1574
Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful ma-
                    ternal cares?

1575
These also flow onward to others . . . . you and I flow onward;
1576
But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.

1577
Your farm and profits and crops . . . . to think how engrossed you are;
1578
To think there will still be farms and profits and crops . . yet for you of what avail?

1579
What will be will be well—for what is is well,
1580
To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.

1581
The sky continues beautiful . . . . the pleasure of men with women shall never be
                    sated . . nor the pleasure of women with men . . nor the pleasure from poems;
1582
The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses—they
                    are not phantasms . . they have weight and form and location;
1583
The farms and profits and crops . . the markets and wages and government . . they
                    also are not phantasms;
1584
The difference between sin and goodness is no apparition;
1585
The earth is not an echo . . . . man and his life and all the things of his life are well-
                    considered.

1586
You are not thrown to the winds . . you gather certainly and safely around yourself,
1587
Yourself! Yourself! Yourself forever and ever!


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68 Leaves of Grass.

1588
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father—it is to
                    identify you,
1589
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
1590
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you,
1591
You are thenceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.

1592
The threads that were spun are gathered . . . . the weft crosses the warp . . . .
                    the pattern is systematic.

1593
The preparations have every one been justified;
1594
The orchestra have tuned their instruments sufficiently . . . . the baton has given the
                    signal.

1595
The guest that was coming . . . . he waited long for reasons . . . . he is now housed,
1596
He is one of those who are beautiful and happy . . . . he is one of those that to look
                    upon and be with is enough.

1597
The law of the past cannot be eluded,
1598
The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,
1599
The law of the living cannot be eluded . . . . it is eternal,
1600
The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,
1601
The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
1602
The law of drunkards and informers and mean persons cannot be eluded.

1603
Slowmoving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
1604
Northerner goes carried and southerner goes carried . . . . and they on the Atlantic
                    side and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all through the Mississippi
                    country . . . . and all over the earth.

1605
The great masters and kosmos are well as they go . . . . the heroes and good-doers
                    are well,
1606
The known leaders and inventors and the rich owners and pious and distinguished
                    may be well,
1607
But there is more account than that . . . . there is strict account of all.

1608
The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
1609
The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
1610
The common people of Europe are not nothing . . . . the American aborigines are
                    not nothing,
1611
A zambo or a foreheadless Crowfoot or a Camanche is not nothing,
1612
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing . . . . the murderer or mean
                    person is not nothing,
1613
The perpetual succession of shallow people are not nothing as they go,
1614
The prostitute is not nothing . . . . the mocker of religion is not nothing as he goes.

1615
I shall go with the rest . . . . we have satisfaction:


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Leaves of Grass. 69

1616
I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much . . . . nor the law of us
                    changed;
1617
I have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law,
1618
And that murderers and drunkards and liars shall be under the present and past law;
1619
For I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough.

1620
And I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed . . . . and that there
                    is no life without satisfaction;
1621
What is the earth? what are body and soul without satisfaction?

1622
I shall go with the rest,
1623
We cannot be stopped at a given point . . . . that is no satisfaction;
1624
To show us a good thing or a few good things for a space of time—that is no satis-
                    faction;
1625
We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time.

1626
If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung;
1627
If maggots and rats ended us, then suspicion and treachery and death.

1628
Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death I should die now,
1629
Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?

1630
Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
1631
Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
1632
The whole universe indicates that it is good,
1633
The past and the present indicate that it is good.

1634
How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my soul!
1635
How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!
1636
What is called good is perfect, and what is called sin is just as perfect;
1637
The vegetables and minerals are all perfect . . and the imponderable fluids are
                    perfect;
1638
Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and surely they will yet
                    pass on.

1639
O my soul! if I realize you I have satisfaction,
1640
Animals and vegetables! if I realize you I have satisfaction,
1641
Laws of the earth and air! if I realize you I have satisfaction.

1642
I cannot define my satisfaction . . yet it is so,
1643
I cannot define my life . . yet it is so.

1644
I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!
1645
The trees have, rooted in the ground . . . . the weeds of the sea have . . . . the
                    animals.



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70 Leaves of Grass.

1646
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
1647
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering
                    is for it,
1648
And all preparation is for it . . and identity is for it . . and life and death are for it.




"Leaves of Grass" [4]
("The Sleepers")

Leaves of Grass.



  ⎯⎯⎯  

1649
I WANDER all night in my vision,
1650
Stepping with light feet . . . . swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
1651
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers;
1652
Wandering and confused . . . . lost to myself . . . . ill-assorted . . . . contradictory,
1653
Pausing and gazing and bending and stopping.

1654
How solemn they look there, stretched and still;
1655
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.

1656
The wretched features of ennuyees, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of
                    drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
1657
The gashed bodies on battlefields, the insane in their strong-doored rooms, the
                    sacred idiots,
1658
The newborn emerging from gates and the dying emerging from gates,
1659
The night pervades them and enfolds them.

1660
The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the
                    wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
1661
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
1662
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
1663
And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapped.

1664
The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
1665
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison . . . . the runaway son sleeps,


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Leaves of Grass. 71

1666
The murderer that is to be hung next day . . . . how does he sleep?
1667
And the murdered person . . . . how does he sleep?

1668
The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
1669
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps;
1670
The head of the moneymaker that plotted all day sleeps,
1671
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions sleep.

1672
I stand with drooping eyes by the worstsuffering and restless,
1673
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them;
1674
The restless sink in their beds . . . . they fitfully sleep.

1675
The earth recedes from me into the night,
1676
I saw that it was beautiful . . . . and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.

1677
I go from bedside to bedside . . . . I sleep close with the other sleepers, each
                    in turn;
1678
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
1679
And I become the other dreamers.

1680
I am a dance . . . . Play up there! the fit is whirling me fast.

1681
I am the everlaughing . . . . it is new moon and twilight,
1682
I see the hiding of douceurs . . . . I see nimble ghosts whichever way I look,
1683
Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it is neither ground or
                    sea.

1684
Well do they do their jobs, those journeymen divine,
1685
Only from me can they hide nothing and would not if they could;
1686
I reckon I am their boss, and they make me a pet besides,
1687
And surround me, and lead me and run ahead when I walk,
1688
And lift their cunning covers and signify me with stretched arms, and resume the
                    way;
1689
Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards with mirthshouting music and wild-
                    flapping pennants of joy.

1690
I am the actor and the actress . . . . the voter . . the politician,
1691
The emigrant and the exile . . the criminal that stood in the box,
1692
He who has been famous, and he who shall be famous after today,
1693
The stammerer . . . . the wellformed person . . the wasted or feeble person.

1694
I am she who adorned herself and folded her hair expectantly,
1695
My truant lover has come and it is dark.

1696
Double yourself and receive me darkness,
1697
Receive me and my lover too . . . . he will not let me go without him.



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72 Leaves of Grass.

1698
I roll myself upon you as upon a bed . . . . I resign myself to the dusk.

1699
He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
1700
He rises with me silently from the bed.

1701
Darkness you are gentler than my lover . . . . his flesh was sweaty and panting,
1702
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

1703
My hands are spread forth . . I pass them in all directions,
1704
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.

1705
Be careful, darkness . . . . already, what was it touched me?
1706
I thought my lover had gone . . . . else darkness and he are one,
1707
I hear the heart-beat . . . . I follow . . I fade away.

1708
O hotcheeked and blushing! O foolish hectic!
1709
O for pity's sake, no one must see me now! . . . . my clothes were stolen while I
                    was abed,
1710
Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?

1711
Pier that I saw dimly last night when I looked from the windows,
1712
Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you and stay . . . . I will not chafe
                    you;
1713
I feel ashamed to go naked about the world,
1714
And am curious to know where my feet stand . . . . and what is this flooding
                    me, childhood or manhood . . . . and the hunger that crosses the bridge
                    between.

1715
The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,
1716
Laps life-swelling yolks . . . . laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just ripened:
1717
The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,
1718
And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the best liquor
                    afterward.

1719
I descend my western course . . . . my sinews are flaccid,
1720
Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.

1721
It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman's,
1722
I sit low in a strawbottom chair and carefully darn my grandson's stockings.

1723
It is I too . . . . the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,
1724
I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.

1725
A shroud I see—and I am the shroud . . . . I wrap a body and lie in the coffin;
1726
It is dark here underground . . . . it is not evil or pain here . . . . it is blank here, for
                    reasons.



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Leaves of Grass. 73

1727
It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy;
1728
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

1729
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,
1730
His brown hair lies close and even to his head . . . . he strikes out with courageous
                    arms . . . . he urges himself with his legs.

1731
I see his white body . . . . I see his undaunted eyes;
1732
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him headforemost on the rocks.

1733
What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
1734
Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?

1735
Steady and long he struggles;
1736
He is baffled and banged and bruised . . . . he holds out while his strength holds out,
1737
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood . . . . they bear him away . . . . they
                    roll him and swing him and turn him:
1738
His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies . . . . it is continually bruised on
                    rocks,
1739
Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.

1740
I turn but do not extricate myself;
1741
Confused . . . . a pastreading . . . . another, but with darkness yet.

1742
The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind . . . . the wreck-guns sound,
1743
The tempest lulls and the moon comes floundering through the drifts.

1744
I look where the ship helplessly heads end on . . . . I hear the burst as she strikes . . 
                    I hear the howls of dismay  . . . . they grow fainter and fainter.

1745
I cannot aid with my wringing fingers;
1746
I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze upon me.

1747
I search with the crowd . . . . not one of the company is washed to us alive;
1748
In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.

1749
Now of the old war-days . . the defeat at Brooklyn;
1750
Washington stands inside the lines . . he stands on the entrenched hills amid a crowd
                    of officers,
1751
His face is cold and damp . . . . he cannot repress the weeping drops . . . . he lifts
                    the glass perpetually to his eyes . . . . the color is blanched from his cheeks,
1752
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents.

1753
The same at last and at last when peace is declared,
1754
He stands in the room of the old tavern . . . . the wellbeloved soldiers all pass
                    through,


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74 Leaves of Grass.

1755
The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,
1756
The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on the cheek,
1757
He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another . . . . he shakes hands and bids
                    goodbye to the army.

1758
Now I tell what my mother told me today as we sat at dinner together,
1759
Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on the old home-
                    stead.

1760
A red squaw came one breakfasttime to the old homestead,
1761
On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rushbottoming chairs;
1762
Her hair straight shiny coarse black and profuse halfenveloped her face,
1763
Her step was free and elastic . . . . her voice sounded exquisitely as she spoke.

1764
My mother looked in delight and amazement at the stranger,
1765
She looked at the beauty of her tallborne face and full and pliant limbs,
1766
The more she looked upon her she loved her,
1767
Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity;
1768
She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace  . . . . she cooked food for
                    her,
1769
She had no work to give her but she gave her remembrance and fondness.

1770
The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the afternoon she
                    went away;
1771
O my mother was loth to have her go away,
1772
All the week she thought of her . . . . she watched for her many a month,
1773
She remembered her many a winter and many a summer,
1774
But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.

1775
Now Lucifer was not dead . . . . or if he was I am his sorrowful terrible heir;
1776
I have been wronged . . . . I am oppressed . . . . I hate him that oppresses me,
1777
I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.

1778
Damn him! how he does defile me,
1779
How he informs against my brother and sister and takes pay for their blood,
1780
How he laughs when I look down the bend after the steamboat that carries away my
                    woman.

1781
Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale's bulk . . . . it seems mine,
1782
Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, my tap is death.

1783
A show of the summer softness . . . . a contact of something unseen . . . . an amour
                    of the light and air;
1784
I am jealous and overwhelmed with friendliness,
1785
And will go gallivant with the light and the air myself,
1786
And have an unseen something to be in contact with them also.



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Leaves of Grass. 75

1787
O love and summer! you are in the dreams and in me,
1788
Autumn and winter are in the dreams . . . . the farmer goes with his thrift,
1789
The droves and crops increase . . . . the barns are wellfilled.

1790
Elements merge in the night . . . . ships make tacks in the dreams . . . . the sailor
                    sails . . . . the exile returns home,
1791
The fugitive returns unharmed . . . . the immigrant is back beyond months and years;
1792
The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood, with the wellknown
                    neighbors and faces,
1793
They warmly welcome him . . . . he is barefoot again . . . . he forgets he is welloff;
1794
The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welchman voyage home . . 
                    and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home;
1795
To every port of England and France and Spain enter wellfilled ships;
1796
The Swiss foots it toward his hills . . . . the Prussian goes his way, and the
                    Hungarian his way, and the Pole goes his way,
1797
The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.

1798
The homeward bound and the outward bound,
1799
The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyee, the onanist, the female that loves unre-
                    quited, the moneymaker,
1800
The actor and actress . . those through with their parts and those waiting to
                    commence,
1801
The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee that is chosen
                    and the nominee that has failed,
1802
The great already known, and the great anytime after to day,
1803
The stammerer, the sick, the perfectformed, the homely,
1804
The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced him, the fluent
                    lawyers, the jury, the audience,
1805
The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red squaw,
1806
The consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that is wronged,
1807
The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,
1808
I swear they are averaged now . . . . one is no better than the other,
1809
The night and sleep have likened them and restored them.

1810
I swear they are all beautiful,
1811
Every one that sleeps is beautiful . . . . every thing in the dim night is beautiful,
1812
The wildest and bloodiest is over and all is peace.

1813
Peace is always beautiful,
1814
The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.

1815
The myth of heaven indicates the soul;
1816
The soul is always beautiful . . . . it appears more or it appears less . . . . it comes or
                    lags behind,


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76 Leaves of Grass.

1817
It comes from its embowered garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the
                    world;
1818
Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and clean the womb
                    cohering,
1819
The head wellgrown and proportioned and plumb, and the bowels and joints
                    proportioned and plumb.

1820
The soul is always beautiful,
1821
The universe is duly in order . . . . every thing is in its place,
1822
What is arrived is in its place, and what waits is in its place;
1823
The twisted skull waits . . . . the watery or rotten blood waits,
1824
The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of the drunkard
                    waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,
1825
The sleepers that lived and died wait . . . . the far advanced are to go on in their
                    turns, and the far behind are to go on in their turns,
1826
The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite . . . . they unite
                    now.

1827
The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
1828
They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie un-
                    clothed;
1829
The Asiatic and African are hand in hand . . . . the European and American are
                    hand in hand,
1830
Learned and unlearned are hand in hand . . and male and female are hand in hand;
1831
The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover . . . . they press close
                    without lust . . . . his lips press her neck,
1832
The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love . . . .
                    and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love,
1833
The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,
1834
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man . . . . friend is inarmed by
                    friend,
1835
The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar . . . . the wronged
                    is made right,
1836
The call of the slave is one with the master's call . .  and the master salutes the slave,
1837
The felon steps forth from the prison . . . . the insane becomes sane . . . . the suffer-
                    ing of sick persons is relieved,
1838
The sweatings and fevers stop . . the throat that was unsound is sound . . the lungs
                    of the consumptive are resumed . . the poor distressed head is free,
1839
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,
1840
Stiflings and passages open . . . . the paralysed become supple,
1841
The swelled and convulsed and congested awake to themselves in condition,
1842
They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night and awake.

1843
I too pass from the night;
1844
I stay awhile away O night, but I return to you again and love you;


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Leaves of Grass. 77

1845
Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
1846
I am not afraid . . . . I have been well brought forward by you;
1847
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long:
1848
I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you . . . . but I
                    know I came well and shall go well.

1849
I will stop only a time with the night . . . . and rise betimes.

1850
I will duly pass the day O my mother and duly return to you;
1851
Not you will yield forth the dawn again more surely than you will yield forth me
                    again,
1852
Not the womb yields the babe in its time more surely than I shall be yielded from
                    you in my time.




"Leaves of Grass" [5]
("I Sing the Body Electric")

Leaves of Grass.



  ⎯⎯⎯  

1853
THE bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them,
1854
They will not let me off nor I them till I go with them and respond to them
                    and love them.

1855
Was it dreamed whether those who corrupted their own live bodies could conceal
                    themselves?
1856
And whether those who defiled the living were as bad as they who defiled the
                    dead?

1857
The expression of the body of man or woman balks account,
1858
The male is perfect and that of the female is perfect.

1859
The expression of a wellmade man appears not only in his face,
1860
It is in his limbs and joints also . . . . it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
1861
It is in his walk . . the carriage of his neck . . the flex of his waist and knees . . . .
                    dress does not hide him,


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78 Leaves of Grass.

1862
The strong sweet supple quality he has strikes through the cotton and flannel;
1863
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem . .  perhaps more,
1864
You linger to see his back and the back of his neck and shoulderside.

1865
The sprawl and fulness of babes . . . . the bosoms and heads of women . . . . the
                    folds of their dress . . . . their style as we pass in the street . . . . the contour of
                    their shape downwards;
1866
The swimmer naked in the swimmingbath . . seen as he swims through the salt
                    transparent greenshine, or lies on his back and rolls silently with the heave of
                    the water;
1867
Framers bare-armed framing a house . . hoisting the beams in their places . . or
                    using the mallet and mortising-chisel,
1868
The bending forward and backward of rowers in rowboats . . . . the horseman in his
                    saddle;
1869
Girls and mothers and housekeepers in all their exquisite offices,
1870
The group of laborers seated at noontime with their open dinnerkettles, and their
                    wives waiting,
1871
The female soothing a child . . . . the farmer's daughter in the garden or cowyard,
1872
The woodman rapidly swinging his axe in the woods . . . . the young fellow hoeing
                    corn . . . . the sleighdriver guiding his six horses through the crowd,
1873
The wrestle of wrestlers . . two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, goodnatured,
                    nativeborn, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
1874
The coats vests and caps thrown down . . the embrace of love and resistance,
1875
The upperhold and underhold—the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
1876
The march of firemen in their own costumes—the play of the masculine muscle
                    through cleansetting trowsers and waistbands,
1877
The slow return from the fire . . . . the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again—
                    the listening on the alert,
1878
The natural perfect and varied attitudes . . . . the bent head, the curved neck, the
                    counting:
1879
Suchlike I love . . . . I loosen myself and pass freely . . . . and am at the mother's
                    breast with the little child,
1880
And swim with the swimmer, and wrestle with wrestlers, and march in line with the
                    firemen, and pause and listen and count.

1881
I knew a man . . . . he was a common farmer . . . . he was the father of five sons . . . 
                    and in them were the fathers of sons . . . and in them were the fathers of sons.

1882
This man was of wonderful vigor and calmness and beauty of person;
1883
The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow
                    and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,
1884
These I used to go and visit him to see . . . . He was wise also,
1885
He was six feet tall . . . . he was over eighty years old  . . . . his sons were massive
                    clean bearded tanfaced and handsome,


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Leaves of Grass. 79

1886
They and his daughters loved him . . . all who saw him loved him . . . they did not
                    love him by allowance . . .  they loved him with personal love;
1887
He drank water only . . . . the blood showed like scarlet through the clear brown
                    skin of his face;
1888
He was a frequent gunner and fisher . . . he sailed his boat himself . . . he had a fine
                    one presented to him by a shipjoiner . . . . he had fowling-pieces, presented to
                    him by men that loved him;
1889
When he went with his five sons and many grandsons to hunt or fish you would pick
                    him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
1890
You would wish long and long to be with him . . . . you would wish to sit by him in
                    the boat that you and he might touch each other.

1891
I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
1892
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
1893
To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough,
1894
To pass among them . . to touch any one . . . . to rest my arm ever so lightly round
                    his or her neck for a moment . . . . what is this then?
1895
I do not ask any more delight . . . . I swim in it as in a sea.

1896
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them and in
                    the contact and odor of them that pleases the soul well,
1897
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

1898
This is the female form,
1899
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
1900
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
1901
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor . . . . all falls
                    aside but myself and it,
1902
Books, art, religion, time . . the visible and solid earth . . the atmosphere and the
                    fringed clouds . . what was expected of heaven or feared of hell are now
                    consumed,
1903
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it . . the response likewise ungovern-
                    able,
1904
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands—all diffused . . . . mine too
                    diffused,
1905
Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb . . . . loveflesh swelling and
                    deliciously aching,
1906
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous . . . . quivering jelly of love . . . white-
                    blow and delirious juice,
1907
Bridegroom-night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
1908
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
1909
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweetfleshed day.

1910
This is the nucleus . . . after the child is born of woman the man is born of woman,
1911
This is the bath of birth . . . this is the merge of small and large and the outlet again.



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80 Leaves of Grass.

1912
Be not ashamed women . . your privilege encloses the rest . . it is the exit of the rest,
1913
You are the gates of the body and you are the gates of the soul.

1914
The female contains all qualities and tempers them . . . . she is in her place . . . .
                    she moves with perfect balance,
1915
She is all things duly veiled . . . . she is both passive and active . . . . she is to con-
                    ceive daughters as well as sons and sons as well as daughters.

1916
As I see my soul reflected in nature . . . . as I see through a mist one with inexpress-
                    ible completeness and beauty . . . . see the bent head and arms folded over the
                    breast . . . . the female I see,
1917
I see the bearer of the great fruit which is immortality  . . . . the good thereof is
                    not tasted by roues, and never can be.

1918
The male is not less the soul, nor more . . . . he too is in his place,
1919
He too is all qualities . . . . he is action and power . . . . the flush of the known
                    universe is in him,
1920
Scorn becomes him well and appetite and defiance become him well,
1921
The fiercest largest passions . . bliss that is utmost and sorrow that is utmost be-
                    come him well . . . . pride is for him,
1922
The fullspread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul;
1923
Knowledge becomes him . . . . he likes it always . . . . he brings everything to the
                    test of himself,
1924
Whatever the survey . . whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes soundings at last
                    only here,
1925
Where else does he strike soundings except here?

1926
The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred . . . . it is no matter who,
1927
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dullfaced immigrants just landed on the wharf?

1928
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the welloff  . . . . just as much as
                    you,
1929
Each has his or her place in the procession.

1930
All is a procession,
1931
The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.

1932
Do you know so much that you call the slave or the dullface ignorant?
1933
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight . . . and he or she has no
                    right to a sight?
1934
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffused float, and the soil is
                    on the surface and water runs and vegetation sprouts for you . . and not for
                    him and her?

1935
A slave at auction!
1936
I help the auctioneer . . . . the sloven does not half know his business.



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Leaves of Grass. 81

1937
Gentlemen look on this curious creature,
1938
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for him,
1939
For him the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
1940
For him the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled.

1941
In that head the allbaffling brain,
1942
In it and below it the making of the attributes of heroes.

1943
Examine these limbs, red black or white . . . . they are very cunning in tendon and
                    nerve;
1944
They shall be stript that you may see them.

1945
Exquisite senses, lifelit eyes, pluck, volition,
1946
Flakes of breastmuscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, goodsized arms
                    and legs,
1947
And wonders within there yet.

1948
Within there runs his blood . . . . the same old blood . . the same red running blood;
1949
There swells and jets his heart . . . . There all passions and desires . . all reachings
                    and aspirations:
1950
Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in parlors and
                    lecture-rooms?

1951
This is not only one man . . . . he is the father of those who shall be fathers in their
                    turns,
1952
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
1953
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

1954
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the
                    centuries?
1955
Who might you find you have come from yourself if you could trace back through
                    the centuries?

1956
A woman at auction,
1957
She too is not only herself . . . . she is the teeming mother of mothers,
1958
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

1959
Her daughters or their daughters' daughters . . who knows who shall mate with
                    them?
1960
Who knows through the centuries what heroes may come from them?

1961
In them and of them natal love . . . . in them the divine mystery . . . . the same old
                    beautiful mystery.

1962
Have you ever loved a woman?


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82 Leaves of Grass.

1963
Your mother . . . . is she living? . . . . Have you been much with her? and has she
                    been much with you?
1964
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all
                    over the earth?

1965
If life and the soul are sacred the human body is sacred;
1966
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
1967
And in man or woman a clean strong firmfibred body is beautiful as the most
                    beautiful face.

1968
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted
                    her own live body?
1969
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

1970
Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed,
1971
Who degrades or defiles the body of the dead is not more cursed.




"Leaves of Grass" [6]
("Faces")

Leaves of Grass.



  ⎯⎯⎯  

1972
SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country byroad here then are
                    faces,
1973
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
1974
The spiritual prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,
1975
The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges
                    broad at the backtop,
1976
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows . . . . the shaved blanched
                    faces of orthodox citizens,
1977
The pure extravagant yearning questioning artist's face,
1978
The welcome ugly face of some beautiful soul . . . . the handsome detested or
                    despised face,
1979
The sacred faces of infants . . . . the illuminated face of the mother of many children,


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Leaves of Grass. 83

1980
The face of an amour . . . . the face of veneration,
1981
The face as of a dream . . . . the face of an immobile rock,
1982
The face withdrawn of its good and bad . . a castrated face,
1983
A wild hawk . . his wings clipped by the clipper,
1984
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

1985
Sauntering the pavement or crossing the ceaseless ferry, here then are faces;
1986
I see them and complain not and am content with all.

1987
Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finale?

1988
This now is too lamentable a face for a man;
1989
Some abject louse asking leave to be . . cringing for it,
1990
Some milknosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

1991
This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage;
1992
Snakes nest in that mouth . . I hear the sibilant threat.

1993
This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
1994
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

1995
This is a face of bitter herbs . . . . this an emetic . . . . they need no label,
1996
And more of the drugshelf . . laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's lard.

1997
This face is an epilepsy advertising and doing business . . . . its wordless tongue
                    gives out the unearthly cry,
1998
Its veins down the neck distend . . . . its eyes roll till they show nothing but their
                    whites,
1999
Its teeth grit . . the palms of the hands are cut by the turned-in nails,
2000
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well.

2001
This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
2002
And this is some murderer's knife with a halfpulled scabbard.

2003
This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
2004
An unceasing deathbell tolls there.

2005
Those are really men! . . . . the bosses and tufts of the great round globe!

2006
Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creased and cadaverous
                    march?
2007
Well then you cannot trick me.

2008
I see your rounded never-erased flow,
2009
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.



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84 Leaves of Grass.

2010
Splay and twist as you like . . . . poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,
2011
You'll be unmuzzled . . . . you certainly will.

2012
I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum,
2013
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;
2014
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
2015
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;
2016
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
2017
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every inch as good as
                    myself.

2018
The Lord advances and yet advances:
2019
Always the shadow in front . . . . always the reached hand bringing up the laggards.

2020
Out of this face emerge banners and horses . . . . O superb! . . . . I see what is
                    coming,
2021
I see the high pioneercaps . . . . I see the staves of runners clearing the way,
2022
I hear victorious drums.

2023
This face is a lifeboat;
2024
This is the face commanding and bearded . . . . it asks no odds of the rest;
2025
This face is flavored fruit ready for eating;
2026
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

2027
These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
2028
They show their descent from the Master himself.

2029
Off the word I have spoken I except not one . . . . red white or black, all are deific,
2030
In each house is the ovum . . . . it comes forth after a thousand years.

2031
Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,
2032
Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me;
2033
I read the promise and patiently wait.

2034
This is a fullgrown lily's face,
2035
She speaks to the limber-hip'd man near the garden pickets,
2036
Come here, she blushingly cries . . . . Come nigh to me limber-hip'd man and give me
                    your finger and thumb,
2037
Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
2038
Fill me with albescent honey . . . . bend down to me,
2039
Rub to me with your chafing beard . . rub to my breast and shoulders.

2040
The old face of the mother of many children:
2041
Whist! I am fully content.



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Leaves of Grass. 85

2042
Lulled and late is the smoke of the Sabbath morning,
2043
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
2044
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wildcherry and the catbrier under them.

2045
I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
2046
I heard what the run of poets were saying so long,
2047
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.

2048
Behold a woman!
2049
She looks out from her quaker cap . . . . her face is clearer and more beautiful than
                    the sky.

2050
She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
2051
The sun just shines on her old white head.

2052
Her ample gown is of creamhued linen,
2053
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with the distaff and
                    the wheel.

2054
The melodious character of the earth!
2055
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go!
2056
The justified mother of men!




[Untitled] [1]
("Song of the Answerer")
2057
A YOUNG man came to me with a message from his brother,
2058
How should the young man know the whether and when of his brother?
2059
Tell him to send me the signs.

2060
And I stood before the young man face to face, and took his right hand in my left
                    hand and his left hand in my right hand,
2061
And I answered for his brother and for men . . . . and I answered for the poet, and
                    sent these signs.

2062
Him all wait for . . . . him all yield up to . . . . his word is decisive and final,
2063
Him they accept . . . . in him lave . . . . in him perceive themselves as amid light,
2064
Him they immerse, and he immerses them.

2065
Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people and animals,
2066
The profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean,


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86 Leaves of Grass.

2067
All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy,
2068
The best farms. . . . . others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps,
2069
The noblest and costliest cities . . . . others grading and building, and he domiciles
                    there;
2070
Nothing for any one but what is for him . . . . near and far are for him,
2071
The ships in the offing . . . . the perpetual shows and marches on land are for him if
                    they are for any body.

2072
He puts things in their attitudes,
2073
He puts today out of himself with plasticity and love,
2074
He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associ-
                    ations employment and politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward,
                    nor assume to command them.

2075
He is the answerer,
2076
What can be answered he answers, and what cannot be answered he shows how it
                    cannot be answered.

2077
A man is a summons and challenge,
2078
It is vain to skulk . . . . Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the
                    ironical echoes?

2079
Books friendships philosophers priests action pleasure pride beat up and down
                    seeking to give satisfaction;
2080
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.

2081
Whichever the sex . . . whatever the season or place he may go freshly and gently
                    and safely by day or by night,
2082
He has the passkey of hearts . . . . to him the response of the prying of hands on the
                    knobs.

2083
His welcome is universal . . . . the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal
                    than he is,
2084
The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.

2085
Every existence has its idiom . . . . every thing has an idiom and tongue;
2086
He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men . . and any man
                    translates . . and any man translates himself also:
2087
One part does not counteract another part . . . . He is the joiner . . he sees how they
                    join.

2088
He says indifferently and alike, How are you friend? to the President at his levee,
2089
And he says Good day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugarfield;
2090
And both understand him and know that his speech is right.

2091
He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,


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Leaves of Grass. 87

2092
He walks among the Congress . . . . and one representative says to another, Here is
                    our equal appearing and new.

2093
Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
2094
And the soldiers suppose him to be a captain . . . . and the sailors that he has
                    followed the sea,
2095
And the authors take him for an author . . . . and the artists for an artist,
2096
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them;
2097
No matter what the work is, that he is one to follow it or has followed it,
2098
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.

2099
The English believe he comes of their English stock,
2100
A Jew to the Jew he seems . . . . a Russ to the Russ . . . . usual and near . . 
                    removed from none.

2101
Whoever he looks at in the traveler's coffeehouse claims him,
2102
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is
                    sure . . . . and the island Cuban is sure.

2103
The engineer, the deckhand on the great lakes or on the Mississippi or St Law-
                    rence or Sacramento or Hudson or Delaware claims him.

2104
The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
2105
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways
                    of him . . . . he strangely transmutes them,
2106
They are not vile any more . . . . they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.

2107
You think it would be good to be the writer of melodious verses,
2108
Well it would be good to be the writer of melodious verses;
2109
But what are verses beyond the flowing character you could have? . . . . or
                    beyond beautiful manners and behaviour?
2110
Or beyond one manly or affectionate deed of an apprenticeboy? . . or old woman? . . 
                    or man that has been in prison or is likely to be in prison?




[Untitled] [2]
("Europe, the 72d and 73d Years of These States")
    Related Manuscripts
  • No manuscripts found
2111
SUDDENLY out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
2112
Like lightning Europe le'pt forth . . . . half startled at itself,
2113
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags . . . . Its hands tight to the throats of kings.

2114
O hope and faith! O aching close of lives! O many a sickened heart!
2115
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.



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88 Leaves of Grass.

2116
And you, paid to defile the People . . . . you liars mark:
2117
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
2118
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms,
2119
Worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages;
2120
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, And broken, and laughed at in the breaking,
2121
Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike of personal revenge . . or
                    the heads of the nobles fall;
2122
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.

2123
But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened rulers come
                    back:
2124
Each comes in state with his train . . . . hangman, priest and tax-gatherer . . . .
                    soldier, lawyer, jailer and sycophant.

2125
Yet behind all, lo, a Shape,
2126
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head front and form in scarlet folds,
2127
Whose face and eyes none may see,
2128
Out of its robes only this . . . . the red robes, lifted by the arm,
2129
One finger pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears.

2130
Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves . . . . bloody corpses of young men:
2131
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily . . . . the bullets of princes are flying . . . .
                    the creatures of power laugh aloud,
2132
And all these things bear fruits . . . . and they are good.

2133
Those corpses of young men,
2134
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets . . . those hearts pierced by the gray lead,
2135
Cold and motionless as they seem . . live elsewhere with unslaughter'd vitality.

2136
They live in other young men, O kings,
2137
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you:
2138
They were purified by death . . . . They were taught and exalted.

2139
Not a grave of the murdered for freedom but grows seed for freedom . . . . in its
                    turn to bear seed,
2140
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

2141
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
2142
But it stalks invisibly over the earth . . whispering counseling cautioning.

2143
Liberty let others despair of you . . . . I never despair of you.

2144
Is the house shut? Is the master away?
2145
Nevertheless be ready . . . . be not weary of watching,
2146
He will soon return . . . . his messengers come anon.



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Leaves of Grass. 89

[Untitled] [3]
("A Boston Ballad")
    Related Manuscripts
  • No manuscripts found
2147
CLEAR the way there Jonathan!
2148
Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!
2149
Way for the federal foot and dragoons . . . . and the phantoms afterward.

2150
I rose this morning early to get betimes in Boston town;
2151
Here's a good place at the corner . . . . I must stand and see the show.

2152
I love to look on the stars and stripes . . . . I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle.

2153
How bright shine the foremost with cutlasses,
2154
Every man holds his revolver . . . . marching stiff through Boston town.

2155
A fog follows . . . . antiques of the same come limping,
2156
Some appear wooden-legged and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

2157
Why this is a show! It has called the dead out of the earth,
2158
The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see;
2159
Uncountable phantoms gather by flank and rear of it,
2160
Cocked hats of mothy mould and crutches made of mist,
2161
Arms in slings and old men leaning on young men's shoulders.

2162
What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums?
2163
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for firelocks,
                    and level them?

2164
If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President's marshal,
2165
If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.

2166
For shame old maniacs! . . . . Bring down those tossed arms, and let your white
                    hair be;
2167
Here gape your smart grandsons . . . . their wives gaze at them from the windows,
2168
See how well-dressed . . . . see how orderly they conduct themselves.

2169
Worse and worse . . . . Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
2170
Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

2171
Retreat then! Pell-mell! . . . . Back to the hills, old limpers!
2172
I do not think you belong here anyhow.

2173
But there is one thing that belongs here . . . . Shall I tell you what it is, gentlemen of
                    Boston?

2174
I will whisper it to the Mayor . . . . he shall send a committee to England,
2175
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, and go with a cart to the royal vault.


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90 Leaves of Grass.

2176
Dig out King George's coffin . . . . unwrap him quick from the graveclothes . . . .
                    box up his bones for a journey:
2177
Find a swift Yankee clipper . . . . here is freight for you blackbellied clipper,
2178
Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! . . . . steer straight toward Boston bay.

2179
Now call the President's marshal again, and bring out the government cannon,
2180
And fetch home the roarers from Congress, and make another procession and guard
                    it with foot and dragoons.

2181
Here is a centrepiece for them:
2182
Look! all orderly citizens . . . . look from the windows women.

2183
The committee open the box and set up the regal ribs and glue those that will not
                    stay,
2184
And clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.

2185
You have got your revenge old buster! . . . . The crown is come to its own and more
                    than its own.

2186
Stick your hands in your pockets Jonathan . . . . you are a made man from this day,
2187
You are mighty cute . . . . and here is one of your bargains.




[Untitled] [4]
("There Was a Child Went Forth")
2188
THERE was a child went forth every day,
2189
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love
                    or dread, that object he became,
2190
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day . . . . or
                    for many years or stretching cycles of years.

2191
The early lilacs became part of this child,
2192
And grass, and white and red morningglories, and white and red clover, and the song
                    of the phœbe-bird,
2193
And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and
                    the cow's calf, and the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-
                    side . . and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there . . and the
                    beautiful curious liquid . . and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads . . 
                    all became part of him.

2194
And the field-sprouts of April and May became part of him  . . . . wintergrain sprouts,
                    and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,
2195
And the appletrees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward . . . . and wood-
                    berries . . and the commonest weeds by the road;


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [page break] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



Leaves of Grass. 91

2196
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the tavern whence he
                    had lately risen,
2197
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school . . and the friendly boys
                    that passed . . and the quarrelsome boys . . and the tidy and freshcheeked girls . . 
                    and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
2198
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.

2199
His own parents . . he that had propelled the fatherstuff at night, and fathered him . . 
                    and she that conceived him in her womb and birthed him . . . . they gave this
                    child more of themselves than that,
2200
They gave him afterward every day . . . . they and of them became part of him.

2201
The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the suppertable,
2202
The mother with mild words . . . . clean her cap and gown  . . . . a wholesome odor
                    falling off her person and clothes as she walks by:
2203
The father, strong, selfsufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust,
2204
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
2205
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture . . . . the yearning and
                    swelling heart,
2206
Affection that will not be gainsayed . . . . The sense of what is real . . . . the thought
                    if after all it should prove unreal,
2207
The doubts of daytime and the doubts of nighttime . . . the curious whether and how,
2208
Whether that which appears so is so . . . . Or is it all flashes and specks?
2209
Men and women crowding fast in the streets . . if they are not flashes and specks
                    what are they?
2210
The streets themselves, and the facades of houses . . . . the goods in the windows,
2211
Vehicles . . teams . . the tiered wharves, and the huge crossing at the ferries;
2212
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset . . . . the river between,
2213
Shadows . . aureola and mist . . light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown,
                    three miles off,
2214
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide . .  the little boat slacktowed
                    astern,
2215
The hurrying tumbling waves and quickbroken crests and slapping;
2216
The strata of colored clouds . . . . the long bar of maroontint away solitary by
                    itself . . . . the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
2217
The horizon's edge, the flying seacrow, the fragrance of saltmarsh and shoremud;
2218
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes and
                    will always go forth every day,
2219
And these become of him or her that peruses them now.



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92 Leaves of Grass.

[Untitled] [5]
("Who Learns My Lesson Complete")
2220
WHO learns my lesson complete?
2221
Boss and journeyman and apprentice? . . . . churchman and atheist?
2222
The stupid and the wise thinker . . . . parents and offspring . . . . merchant and clerk
                    and porter and customer  . . . . editor, author, artist and schoolboy?

2223
Draw nigh and commence,
2224
It is no lesson . . . . it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
2225
And that to another . . . . and every one to another still.

2226
The great laws take and effuse without argument,
2227
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
2228
I love them quits and quits . . . . I do not halt and make salaams.

2229
I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things,
2230
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.

2231
I cannot say to any person what I hear . . . . I cannot say it to myself . . . . it is
                    very wonderful.

2232
It is no little matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit
                    forever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second;
2233
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten decillions
                    of years,
2234
Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and builds a house.

2235
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
2236
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
2237
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me or any one else.

2238
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal,
2239
I know it is wonderful . . . . but my eyesight is equally wonderful . . . . and how I was
                    conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,
2240
And how I was not palpable once but am now . . . . and was born on the last day of
                    May 1819 . . . . and passed from a babe in the creeping trance of three summers
                    and three winters to articulate and walk . . . . are all equally wonderful.

2241
And that I grew six feet high . . . . and that I have become a man thirty-six years old
                    in 1855 . . . . and that I am here anyhow—are all equally wonderful;
2242
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever
                    seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as
                    wonderful:
2243
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
2244
And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true is just as
                    wonderful,


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Leaves of Grass. 93

2245
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth is equally wonderful,
2246
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful.

2247
Come I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that is not just as
                    wonderful,
2248
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and
                    Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.




[Untitled] [6]
("Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night")
2249
GREAT are the myths . . . . I too delight in them,
2250
Great are Adam and Eve . . . . I too look back and accept them;
2251
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
                    warriors and priests.

2252
Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
2253
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft . . . . where you sail I sail,
2254
Yours is the muscle of life or death . . . . yours is the perfect science . . . . in you I
                    have absolute faith.

2255
Great is today, and beautiful,
2256
It is good to live in this age . . . . there never was any better.

2257
Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of democracy,
2258
Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,
2259
Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.

2260
Great are yourself and myself,
2261
We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest or any,
2262
What the best and worst did we could do,
2263
What they felt . . do not we feel it in ourselves?
2264
What they wished . . do we not wish the same?

2265
Great is youth, and equally great is old age . . . . great are the day and night;
2266
Great is wealth and great is poverty . . . . great is expression and great is silence.

2267
Youth large lusty and loving . . . . youth full of grace and force and fascination,
2268
Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace and force and
                    fascination?

2269
Day fullblown and splendid . . . . day of the immense sun, and action and ambition
                    and laughter,
2270
The night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

2271
Wealth with the flush hand and fine clothes and hospitality:


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94 Leaves of Grass.

2272
But then the soul's wealth—which is candor and knowledge and pride and enfolding
                    love:
2273
Who goes for men and women showing poverty richer than wealth?

2274
Expression of speech . . in what is written or said forget not that silence is also
                    expressive,
2275
That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the coldest may be with-
                    out words,
2276
That the true adoration is likewise without words and without kneeling.

2277
Great is the greatest nation . . the nation of clusters of equal nations.

2278
Great is the earth, and the way it became what it is,
2279
Do you imagine it is stopped at this? . . . . and the increase abandoned?
2280
Understand then that it goes as far onward from this as this is from the times when
                    it lay in covering waters and gases.

2281
Great is the quality of truth in man,
2282
The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes,
2283
It is inevitably in the man . . . . He and it are in love, and never leave each other.

2284
The truth in man is no dictum . . . . it is vital as eyesight,
2285
If there be any soul there is truth . . . . if there be man or woman there is truth . . . .
                    If there be physical or moral there is truth,
2286
If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth . . . . if there be things at all upon the
                    earth there is truth.

2287
O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press the whole way
                    toward you,
2288
Sound your voice! I scale mountains or dive in the sea after you.

2289
Great is language . . . . it is the mightiest of the sciences,
2290
It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth . . . . and of men and
                    women . . . . and of all qualities and processes;
2291
It is greater than wealth . . . . it is greater than buildings or ships or religions or
                    paintings or music.

2292
Great is the English speech . . . . What speech is so great as the English?
2293
Great is the English brood . . . . What brood has so vast a destiny as the English?
2294
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule,
2295
The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and justice and equality
                    that are in the soul rule.

2296
Great is the law . . . . Great are the old few landmarks of the law . . . . they are the
                    same in all times and shall not be disturbed.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [page break] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



Leaves of Grass. 95

2297
Great are marriage, commerce, newspapers, books, freetrade, railroads, steamers,
                    international mails and telegraphs and exchanges.

2298
Great is Justice;
2299
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws . . . . it is in the soul,
2300
It cannot be varied by statutes any more than love or pride or the attraction of
                    gravity can,
2301
It is immutable . . it does not depend on majorities . . . . majorities or what not come
                    at last before the same passionless and exact tribunal.

2302
For justice are the grand natural lawyers and perfect judges . . . . it is in their souls,
2303
It is well assorted . . . . they have not studied for nothing . . . . the great includes the
                    less,
2304
They rule on the highest grounds . . . . they oversee all eras and states and
                    administrations,

2305
The perfect judge fears nothing . . . . he could go front to front before God,
2306
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back . . . . life and death shall stand back
                     . . . . heaven and hell shall stand back.

2307
Great is goodness;
2308
I do not know what it is any more than I know what health is . . . . but I know it is
                    great.

2309
Great is wickedness . . . . I find I often admire it just as much as I admire good-
                    ness:
2310
Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a paradox.

2311
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is
                    great,
2312
And there is another paradox.

2313
Great is life . . and real and mystical . . wherever and whoever,
2314
Great is death . . . . Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts
                    together;
2315
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is great as life.


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