Leaves of Grass

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 . Leaves of Grass
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library
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12.

1. To oratists -- to male or female,
Vocalism, breath, measure, concentration, determina-
tion, and the divine power to use words.

2. Are you eligible?
Are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long trial?
from vigorous practice? from physique?

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Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?
Remembering inland America, the high plateaus,
     stretching long?
Remembering Kanada -- Remembering what edges
     the vast round edge of the Mexican Sea?
Come duly to the divine power to use words?

3. For only at last, after many years -- after chastity,
     friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness,
After treading ground and breasting river and lake,
After a loosened throat -- after absorbing eras, tem-
     peraments, races -- after knowledge, freedom,
     crimes,
After complete faith -- after clarifyings, elevations,
     and removing obstructions,
After these, and more, it is just possible there comes
     to a man, a woman, the divine power to use
     words.

4. Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten
     all -- None refuse, all attend,
Armies, ships, antiquities, the dead, libraries, paint-
     ings, machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain,
     theft, murder, aspiration, form in close ranks,
They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently
     through the mouth of that man, or that woman.

5. O now I see arise orators fit for inland America,
And I see it is as slow to become an orator as to
     become a man,
And I see that power is folded in a great vocalism.

6. Of a great vocalism, when you hear it, the merciless
     light shall pour, and the storm rage around,

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Every flash shall be a revelation, an insult,
The glaring flame turned on depths, on heights, on
suns, on stars,
On the interior and exterior of man or woman,
On the laws of Nature -- on passive materials,
On what you called death -- and what to you there-
fore was death,
As far as there can be death.