STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was
born,
Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands -- lover of populous pave-
ments;
Dweller in Mannahatta, city of ships, my city -- or on
southern savannas;
Or a soldier camp'd, or carrying my knapsack and gun
-- or a miner in California;
Or rude in my home in Dakotah's woods, my diet
meat, my drink from the spring;
Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep
recess,
Far from the clank of crowds, intervals passing, rapt
and happy;
Aware of the fresh free giver, the flowing Missouri --
aware of mighty Niagara;
Aware of the buffalo herds, grazing the plains -- the
hirsute and strong-breasted bull;
Of earths, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced --
stars, rain, snow, my amaze;
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the
mountain hawk's,
And heard at dusk the unrival'd one, the hermit
thrush from the swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New
World.
2
2
Victory, union, faith, identity, time,
Yourself, the present and future lands, the indissolu-
ble compacts, riches, mystery,
Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.
3
This, then, is life;
Here is what has come to the surface after so many
throes and convulsions.
4
How curious! how real!
Under foot the divine soil -- over head the sun.
5
See, revolving, the globe;
The ancestor-continents, away, group'd together;
The present and future continents, north and south,
with the isthmus between.
6
See, vast, trackless spaces;
As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill;
Countless masses debouch upon them;
They are now cover'd with the foremost people, arts,
institutions, known.
7
See, projected, through time,
For me, an audience interminable.
8
With firm and regular step they wend -- they never
stop,
Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions;
One generation playing its part, and passing on,
Another generation playing its part, and passing on in
its turn,
With faces turn'd sideways or backward towards me,
to listen,
With eyes retrospective towards me.
3
9
Americanos! Conquerors! marches humanitarian;
Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!
For you a programme of chants.
10
Chants of the prairies;
Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to
the Mexican sea;
Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and
Minnesota;
Chants going forth from the centre, from Kansas, and
thence, equi-distant,
Shooting in pulses of fire, ceaseless, to vivify all.
4
11
In the Year 80 of The States,
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this
soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here, from parents the same,
and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
12
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
(Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but
never forgotten,)
I harbor, for good or bad -- I permit to speak, at every
hazard,
Nature now without check, with original energy.
5
13
Take my leaves, America! take them South, and
take them North!
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your
own offspring;
Surround them, East and West! for they would sur-
round you;
And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for
they connect lovingly with you.
14
I conn'd old times;
I sat studying at the feet of the great masters:
Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might re-
turn and study me!
15
In the name of These States, shall I scorn the
antique?
Why these are the children of the antique, to jus-
tify it.
6
16
Dead poets, philosophs, priests,
Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,
Language-shapers, on other shores,
Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or
desolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you
have left, wafted hither :
I have perused it -- own it is admirable, (moving
awhile among it;)
Think nothing can ever be greater -- nothing can ever
deserve more than it deserves;
Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismiss-
ing it,
I stand in my place, with my own day, here
17
Here lands female and male;
Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world -- here
the flame of materials;
Here Spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avow'd,
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;
The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,
Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul.
7
18
The SOUL!
Forever and forever -- longer than soil is brown and
solid -- longer than water ebbs and flows.
19
I will make the poems of materials, for I think they
are to be the most spiritual poems;
And I will make the poems of my body and of mor-
tality,
For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems
of my Soul, and of immortality.
20
I will make a song for These States, that no one
State may under any circumstances be sub-
jected to another State;
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by
day and by night between all The States, and
between any two of them;
And I will make a song for the ears of the President,
full of weapons with menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces :
And a song make I, of the One form'd out of all;
The fang'd and glittering One whose head is over all;
Resolute, warlike One, including and over all;
(However high the head of any else, that head is over
all.)
21
I will acknowledge contemporary lands;
I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and sa-
lute courteously every city large and small;
And employments! I will put in my poems, that with
you is heroism, upon land and sea -- And I will
report all heroism from an American point of
view;
And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in
me -- for I am determin'd to tell you with cour-
ageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.
22
I will sing the song of companionship;
I will show what alone must finally compact These;
I believe These are to found their own ideal of
manly love, indicating it in me;
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires
that were threatening to consume me;
I will lift what has too long kept down those smoul-
dering fires;
I will give them complete abandonment;
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of
love;
(For who but I should understand love, with all its
sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
8
23
I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races;
I advance from the people en-masse in their own
spirit;
Here is what sings unrestricted faith.
24
Omnes! Omnes! let others ignore what they may;
I make the poem of evil also -- I commemorate that
part also;
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation
is -- And I say there is in fact no evil,
(Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to
the land, or to me, as anything else.)
25
I too, following many, and follow'd by many, inau-
gurate a Religion -- I too go to the wars;
(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries
thereof, the winner's pealing shouts;
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar
above every thing.)
26
Each is not for its own sake;
I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are
for Religion's sake.
27
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough
None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough;
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and
how certain the future is.
28
I say that the real and permanent grandeur of
These States must be their religion;
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;
(Nor character, nor life worthy the name, without Re-
ligion;
Nor land, nor man or woman, without Religion.)
9
29
What are you doing, young man?
Are you so earnest -- so given up to literature, science,
art, amours?
These ostensible realities, politics, points?
Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?
30
It is well -- Against such I say not a word -- I am
their poet also;
But behold! such swiftly subside -- burnt up for Re-
ligion's sake;
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame,
the essential life of the earth,
Any more than such are to Religion.
10
31
What do you seek, so pensive and silent?
What do you need, Camerado?
Dear son! do you think it is love?
32
Listen, dear son -- listen, America, daughter or son!
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to ex-
cess -- and yet it satisfies -- it is great;
But there is something else very great -- it makes the
whole coincide;
It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous
hands, sweeps and provides for all.
11
33
Know you! to drop in the earth the germs of a
greater Religion,
The following chants, each for its kind, I sing.
34
My comrade!
For you, to share with me, two greatnesses -- and a
third one, rising inclusive and more resplen-
dent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy -- and the
greatness of Religion.
35
Melange mine own! the unseen and the seen;
Mysterious ocean where the streams empty;
Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering
around me;
Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us, in
the air, that we know not of;
Contact daily and hourly that will not release me;
These selecting -- these, in hints, demanded of me.
36
Not he, with a daily kiss, onward from childhood
kissing me,
Has winded and twisted around me that which holds
me to him,
Any more than I am held to the heavens, to the spir-
itual world,
And to the identities of the Gods, my lovers, faithful
and true,
After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.
37
O such themes! Equalities!
O amazement of things! O divine average!
O warblings under the sun -- usher'd, as now, or at
noon, or setting!
O strain, musical, flowing through ages -- now reach-
ing hither,
I take to your reckless and composite chords -- I add
to them, and cheerfully pass them forward.
12
38
As I have walk'd in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird
on her nest in the briers, hatching her brood.
39
I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his
throat, and joyfully singing.
40
And while I paused, it came to me that what he
really sang for was not there only,
Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back
by the echoes;
But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,
A charge transmitted, and gift occult, for those being
born.
13
41
Democracy!
Near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself
and joyfully singing.
42
Ma femme!
For the brood beyond us and of us,
For those who belong here, and those to come,
I, exultant, to be ready for them, will now shake out
carols stronger and haughtier than have ever
yet been heard upon earth.
43
I will make the songs of passion, to give them their
way,
And your songs, outlaw'd offenders -- for I scan you
with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the
>same as any.
44
I will make the true poem of riches,
To earn for the body and the mind, whatever adheres,
and goes forward, and is not dropt by death.
45
I will effuse egotism, and show it underlying all --
and I will be the bard of personality;
And I will show of male and female that either is but
the equal of the other;
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the
present -- and can be none in the future;
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody, it
may be turn'd to beautiful results -- and I will
show that nothing can happen more beautiful
than death;
And I will thread a thread through my poems that
time and events are compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect
miracles, each as profound as any.
46
I will not make poems with reference to parts;
But I will make leaves, poems, poemets, songs, says,
thoughts, with reference to ensemble:
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with
reference to all days;
And I will not make a poem, nor the least part of a
poem, but has reference to the Soul;
(Because, having look'd at the objects of the universe,
I find there is no one, nor any particle of one,
but has reference to the Soul.)
14
47
Was somebody asking to see the Soul?
See! your own shape and countenance -- persons, sub-
stances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the
rocks and sands. All hold spiritual joys, and afterwards loosen them:
How can the real body ever die, and be buried?
49
Of your real body, and any man's or woman's real
body,
Item for item, it will elude the hands of the corpse-
cleaners, and pass to fitting spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of
birth to the moment of death.
50
Not the types set up by the printer return their im-
pression, the meaning, the main concern,
Any more than a man's substance and life, or a wo-
man's substance and life, return in the body
and the Soul,
Indifferently before death and after death.
51
Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the
main concern -- and includes and is the Soul;
Whoever you are! how superb and how divine is your
body, or any part of it.
15
52
Whoever you are! to you endless announcements.
53
Daughter of the lands, did you wait for your poet?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and in-
dicative hand?
54
Toward the male of The States, and toward the
female of The States,
Live words -- words to the lands.
55
O the lands! interlink'd, food-yielding lands!
Land of coal and iron! Land of gold! Lands of
cotton, sugar, rice!
Land of wheat, beef, pork! Land of wool and hemp!
Land of the apple and grape!
Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the
world! Land of those sweet-air'd interminable
plateaus!
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of
adobie!
Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and
where the southwest Colorado winds!
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Dela-
ware!
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land
of Vermont and Connecticut!
Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen's land!
Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passion-
ate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers!
the bony-limb'd!
The great women's land! the feminine! the ex-
perienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters!
Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd!
the diverse! the compact!
The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Caro-
linian!
O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations!
O I at any rate include you all with perfect love!
I cannot be discharged from you! not from one, any
sooner than another!
O Death! O for all that, I am yet of you, unseen, this
hour, with irrepressible love,
Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer
ripples, on Paumanok's sands,
Crossing the prairies -- dwelling again in Chicago --
dwelling in every town,
Observing shows, births, improvements, structures,
arts,
Listening to the orators and the oratresses in public
halls,
Of and through The States, as during life -- each man
and woman my neighbor,
The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I
as near to him and her,
The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me -- and
I yet with any of them;
Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river -- yet in
my house of adobie,
Yet returning eastward -- yet in the Sea-Side State, or
in Maryland,
Yet Kanadian, cheerily braving the winter -- the snow
and ice welcome to me,
Yet a true son either of Maine, or of the Granite State,
or of the Narragansett Bay State, or of the
Empire State;
Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same -- yet
welcoming every new brother;
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones, from
the hour they unite with the old ones;
Coming among the new ones myself, to be their com-
panion and equal -- coming personally to you
now;
Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with
me.
16
56
With me, with firm holding -- yet haste, haste on.
57
For your life, adhere to me;
Of all the men of the earth, I only can unloose you
and toughen you;
I may have to be persuaded many times before I
consent to give myself to you -- but what of
that?
Must not Nature be persuaded many times?
58
No dainty dolce affettuoso I;
Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have
arrived,
To be wrestled with as I pass, for the solid prizes of
the universe;
For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.
17
59
On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft -- Still the Future of
The States I harbinge, glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of
the red aborigines.
60
The red aborigines!
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds,
calls as of birds and animals in the woods,
syllabled to us for names;
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez,
Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-
Walla;
Leaving such to The States, they melt, they depart,
charging the water and the land with names.
18
61
O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and
audacious;
A world primal again -- Vistas of glory, incessant and
branching;
A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander
far, with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new in-
ventions and arts.
62
These! my voice announcing -- I will sleep no more,
but arise;
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I
feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing un-
precedented waves and storms.
19
63
See! steamers steaming through my poems!
See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and
landing;
See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's
hut, the flat-boat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the
rude fence, and the backwoods village;
See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the
other the Eastern Sea, how they advance and
retreat upon my poems, as upon their own
shores;
See, pastures and forests in my poems -- See, animals,
wild and tame -- See, beyond the Kanzas, count-
less herds of buffalo, feeding on short curly
grass;
See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with
paved streets, with iron and stone edifices,
ceaseless vehicles, and commerce;
See, the manypress -- See,
the electric telegraph, stretching across the
Continent, from the Western Sea to Man-
hattan;
See, through Atlantica's depths, pulses American,
Europe reaching -- pulses of Europe, duly re-
turn'd;
See, the strong and quick locomotive, as it departs,
panting, blowing the steam-whistle;
See, ploughmen, ploughing farms -- See, miners, dig-
ging mines -- See, the numberless factories;
See, mechanics, busy at their benches, with tools --
See from among them, superior judges, philo-
sophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in working
dresses;
See, lounging through the shops and fields of The
States, me, well-beloved, close-held by day and
night;
Hear the loud echoes of my songs there! Read the
hints come at last.
20
64
O Camerado close!
O you and me at last -- and us two only.
65
O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
O something extatic and undemonstrable! O music
wild!
O now I triumph -- and you shall also;
O hand in hand -- O wholesome pleasure -- O one more
desirer and lover!
O to haste, firm holding -- to haste, haste on, with me.
WALT WHITMAN.
This poem is a part of Leaves of Grass
This poem is an instance of "Song of Myself"
The most immediate predecessor of this poem is the manuscript titled "Walt Whitman"
1
1
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to
you.
2
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of sum-
mer grass.
3
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes -- the shelves
are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall
not let it.
4
The atmosphere is not a perfume -- it has no taste of
the distillation -- it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever -- I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undis-
guised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
5
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread,
crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my
heart, the passing of blood and air through my
lungs;
-24-
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the
shore, and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in
the barn;
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice, words
loos'd to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around
of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple
boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or
along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full noon trill, the song of
me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
6
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you
reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of
poems?
7
Stop this day and night with me, and you shall pos-
sess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun --
(there are millions of suns left;)
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;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from your-
self.
8
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk
of the beginning and the end.
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
9
There was never any more inception than there is
now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
-25-
And will never be any more perfection than there
is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
10
Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the procreant urge of the world.
11
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance -- always
substance and increase, always sex;
Always a knit of identity -- always distinction -- always
a breed of life.
12
To elaborate is no avail -- learn'd and unlearn'd feel
13
that it is so. Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights,
well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery, here we stand.
14
Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is
all that is not my Soul.
15
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by
the seen,
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its
turn.
16
Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst,
age vexes age;
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things,
while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and
admire myself.
17
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of
any man hearty and clean;
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and
none shall be less familiar than the rest.
-26-
18
I am satisfied -- I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my
side through the night, and withdraws at the
peep of the day, with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels, swell-
ing the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and
scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents
of two, and which is ahead?
19
Trippers and askers surround me;
People I meet -- the effect upon me of my early life, or
the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies,
authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman
I love,
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-
doing, or loss or lack of money, or depressions
or exaltations;
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of
doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights, and go from me
again,
But they are not the Me myself.
20
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I
am;
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle,
unitary;
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpa-
ble certain rest,
-27-
Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come
next;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and won-
dering at it.
21
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated
through fog with linguists and contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments -- I witness and wait.
22
I believe in you, my Soul -- the other I am must
not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.
23
Loafe with me on the grass -- loose the stop from
your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want -- not custom or
lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
24
I mind how once we lay, such a transparent sum-
mer morning;
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently
turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged
your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you
held my feet.
25
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and
knowledge that pass all the argument of the
earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my
own;
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of
my own;
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,
and the women my sisters and lovers;
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
-28-
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;
And mossy scabs of the worm-fence, and heap'd stones,
elder, mullen and pokeweed.
26
A child said,And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to
you.
2
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of sum-
mer grass.
3
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes -- the shelves
are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall
not let it.
4
The atmosphere is not a perfume -- it has no taste of
the distillation -- it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever -- I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undis-
guised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
2
5
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread,
crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my
heart, the passing of blood and air through my
lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the
shore, and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in
the barn;
The sound of the belch'd words of my voice, words
loos'd to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around
of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple
boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or
along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full noon trill, the song of
me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
6
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you
reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of
poems?
7
Stop this day and night with me, and you shall pos-
sess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun --
(there are millions of suns left;)
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;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from your-
self.
3
8
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk
of the beginning and the end.
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
9
There was never any more inception than there is
now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there
is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
10
Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the procreant urge of the world.
11
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance -- always
substance and increase, always sex;
Always a knit of identity -- always distinction -- always
a breed of life.
12
To elaborate is no avail -- learn'd and unlearn'd feel
13
that it is so. Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights,
well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery, here we stand.
14
Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is
all that is not my Soul.
15
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by
the seen,
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its
turn.
16
Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst,
age vexes age;
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things,
while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and
admire myself.
17
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of
any man hearty and clean;
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and
none shall be less familiar than the rest.
18
I am satisfied -- I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my
side through the night, and withdraws at the
peep of the day, with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover'd with white towels, swell-
ing the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and
scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents
of two, and which is ahead?
4
19
Trippers and askers surround me;
People I meet -- the effect upon me of my early life, or
the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies,
authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman
I love,
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-
doing, or loss or lack of money, or depressions
or exaltations;
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of
doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights, and go from me
again,
But they are not the Me myself.
20
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I
am;
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle,
unitary;
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpa-
ble certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come
next;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and won-
dering at it.
21
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated
through fog with linguists and contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments -- I witness and wait.
5
22
I believe in you, my Soul -- the other I am must
not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.
23
Loafe with me on the grass -- loose the stop from
your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want -- not custom or
lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
24
I mind how once we lay, such a transparent sum-
mer morning;
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently
turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged
your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you
held my feet.
25
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and
knowledge that pass all the argument of the
earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my
own;
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of
my own;
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,
and the women my sisters and lovers;
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;
And mossy scabs of the worm-fence, and heap'd stones,
elder, mullen and pokeweed.
6
26
A child said,
What is the grass? fetching it to me with
full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what
it is, any more than he.
27
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of
hopeful green stuff woven.
28
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say,full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what
it is, any more than he.
27
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of
hopeful green stuff woven.
28
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say,
Whose?
29
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced
babe of the vegetation.
30
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and
narrow zones.
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them
the same, I receive them the same.
31
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves.
32
Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young
men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved
them.
-29-
It may be you are from old people, and from women,
and from offspring taken soon out of their
mothers' laps;
And here you are the mothers' laps.
33
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads
of old mothers;
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of
mouths.
34
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of
mouths for nothing.
35
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead
young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the
offspring taken soon out of their laps.
36
What do you think has become of the young and
old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
children?
37
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does
not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
38
All goes onward and outward -- nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed,
and luckier.
-30-
39
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to
die, and I know it.
40
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new
wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my-
hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every
one good;
The earth good, and the stars good, and their
adjuncts all good.
41
I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth;
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as
immortal and fathomless as myself;
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
42
Every kind for itself and its own -- for me mine, male
and female;
For me those that have been boys, and that love
women;
For me the man that is proud, and feels how it stings
to be slighted;
For me the sweetheart and the old maid -- for me
mothers, and the mothers of mothers;
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed
tears;
For me children, and the begetters of children.
43
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor
discarded;
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether
or no;
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and
cannot be shaken away.
-31-
44
The little one sleeps in its cradle;
I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently
brush away flies with my hand.
45
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up
the bushy hill;
I peeringly view them from the top.
46
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the
bedroom;
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair -- I note
where the pistol has fallen.
47
The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of
boot-soles, talk of the promenaders;
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating
thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the
granite floor;
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of
snow-balls;
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd
mobs;
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside,
borne to the hospital;
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows
and fall;
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star,
quickly working his passage to the centre of
the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many
echoes;
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall
sun-struck, or in fits;
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who
hurry home and give birth to babes;
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here
-- what howls restrain'd by decorum,
-32-
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made,
acceptances, rejections with convex lips;
I mind them or the show or resonance of them -- I
come, and I depart.
48
The big doors of the country-barn stand open and
ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-
drawn wagon;
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green in-
tertinged;
The armfuls are packt to the sagging mow.
49
I am there -- I help -- I came stretcht atop of the
load;
I felt its soft jolts -- one leg reclined on the other;
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and
timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of
wisps.
50
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt,
Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee;
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the
night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh kill'd game;
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves, with my dog and
gun by my side.
51
The Yankee clipper is under her three sky-sails --
she cuts the sparkle and scud;
My eyes settle the land -- I bend at her prow, or shout
joyously from the deck.
52
The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt
for me;
-33-
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots, and went and
had a good time:
You should have been with us that day round the
chowder-kettle.
53
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in
the far-west -- the bride was a red girl;
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and
dumbly smoking -- they had moccasins to their
feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper -- he was drest mostly
in skins -- his luxuriant beard and curls pro-
tected his neck -- he held his bride by the hand;
She had long eye-lashes -- her head was bare -- her
coarse straight locks descended upon her volup-
tuous limbs and reach'd to her feet.
54
The runaway slave came to my house and stopt out-
side;
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood-
pile;
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him
limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and
assured him,
And brought water, and fill'd a tub for his sweated
body and bruis'd feet,
And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and
gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and
his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his
neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated
and pass'd north;
(I had him sit next me at table -- my fire-lock lean'd
in the corner.)
-34-
55
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore;
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly:
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lone-
some.
56
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank;
She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds
of the window.
57
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
58
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you;
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in
your room.
59
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the
twenty-ninth bather;
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved
them.
60
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it
ran from their long hair;
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
61
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies;
It descended tremblingly from their temples and
ribs.
62
The young men float on their backs -- their white
bellies bulge to the sun -- they do not ask who
seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pen-
dant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
-35-
63
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or
sharpens his knife at the stall in the market;
I loiter, enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and
break-down.
64
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ
the anvil;
Each has his main-sledge -- they are all out -- (there is
a great heat in the fire.)
65
From the cinder-strew'd threshold I follow their
movements;
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their
massive arms;
Overhand the hammers swing -- overhand so slow --
overhand so sure:
They do not hasten -- each man hits in his place.
66
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses
-- the block swags underneath on its tied-over
chain;
The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard --
steady and tall he stands, poised on one leg on
the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and
loosens over his hip-band;
His glance is calm and commanding -- he tosses the
slouch of his hat away from his forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache -- falls
on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.
67
I behold the picturesque giant, and love him -- and I
do not stop there;
I go with the team also.
-36-
68
In me the caresser of life wherever moving -- back-
ward as well as forward slueing;
To niches aside and junior bending.
69
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the
leafy shade! what is that you express in your
eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in
my life.
70
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on
my distant and day-long ramble;
They rise together -- they slowly circle around.
71
I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within
me,
And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown,
intentional,
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is
not something else;
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut,
yet trills pretty well to me;
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of
me.
72
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool
night;
29
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced
babe of the vegetation.
30
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and
narrow zones.
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them
the same, I receive them the same.
31
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of
graves.
32
Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young
men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved
them.
It may be you are from old people, and from women,
and from offspring taken soon out of their
mothers' laps;
And here you are the mothers' laps.
33
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads
of old mothers;
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of
mouths.
34
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of
mouths for nothing.
35
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead
young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the
offspring taken soon out of their laps.
36
What do you think has become of the young and
old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
children?
37
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does
not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
38
All goes onward and outward -- nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed,
and luckier.
7
39
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to
die, and I know it.
40
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new
wash'd babe, and am not contain'd between my-
hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every
one good;
The earth good, and the stars good, and their
adjuncts all good.
41
I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth;
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as
immortal and fathomless as myself;
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)
42
Every kind for itself and its own -- for me mine, male
and female;
For me those that have been boys, and that love
women;
For me the man that is proud, and feels how it stings
to be slighted;
For me the sweetheart and the old maid -- for me
mothers, and the mothers of mothers;
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed
tears;
For me children, and the begetters of children.
43
Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor
discarded;
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether
or no;
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and
cannot be shaken away.
8
44
The little one sleeps in its cradle;
I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently
brush away flies with my hand.
45
The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up
the bushy hill;
I peeringly view them from the top.
46
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the
bedroom;
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair -- I note
where the pistol has fallen.
47
The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of
boot-soles, talk of the promenaders;
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating
thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the
granite floor;
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of
snow-balls;
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd
mobs;
The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside,
borne to the hospital;
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows
and fall;
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star,
quickly working his passage to the centre of
the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many
echoes;
What groans of over-fed or half-starv'd who fall
sun-struck, or in fits;
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who
hurry home and give birth to babes;
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here
-- what howls restrain'd by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made,
acceptances, rejections with convex lips;
I mind them or the show or resonance of them -- I
come, and I depart.
9
48
The big doors of the country-barn stand open and
ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-
drawn wagon;
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green in-
tertinged;
The armfuls are packt to the sagging mow.
49
I am there -- I help -- I came stretcht atop of the
load;
I felt its soft jolts -- one leg reclined on the other;
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and
timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of
wisps.
10
50
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt,
Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee;
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the
night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh kill'd game;
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves, with my dog and
gun by my side.
51
The Yankee clipper is under her three sky-sails --
she cuts the sparkle and scud;
My eyes settle the land -- I bend at her prow, or shout
joyously from the deck.
52
The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt
for me;
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots, and went and
had a good time:
You should have been with us that day round the
chowder-kettle.
53
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in
the far-west -- the bride was a red girl;
Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and
dumbly smoking -- they had moccasins to their
feet, and large thick blankets hanging from their
shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper -- he was drest mostly
in skins -- his luxuriant beard and curls pro-
tected his neck -- he held his bride by the hand;
She had long eye-lashes -- her head was bare -- her
coarse straight locks descended upon her volup-
tuous limbs and reach'd to her feet.
54
The runaway slave came to my house and stopt out-
side;
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood-
pile;
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him
limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and
assured him,
And brought water, and fill'd a tub for his sweated
body and bruis'd feet,
And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and
gave him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and
his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his
neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated
and pass'd north;
(I had him sit next me at table -- my fire-lock lean'd
in the corner.)
11
55
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore;
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly:
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lone-
some.
56
She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank;
She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds
of the window.
57
Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
58
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you;
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in
your room.
59
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the
twenty-ninth bather;
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved
them.
60
The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it
ran from their long hair;
Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.
61
An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies;
It descended tremblingly from their temples and
ribs.
62
The young men float on their backs -- their white
bellies bulge to the sun -- they do not ask who
seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pen-
dant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
12
63
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or
sharpens his knife at the stall in the market;
I loiter, enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and
break-down.
64
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ
the anvil;
Each has his main-sledge -- they are all out -- (there is
a great heat in the fire.)
65
From the cinder-strew'd threshold I follow their
movements;
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their
massive arms;
Overhand the hammers swing -- overhand so slow --
overhand so sure:
They do not hasten -- each man hits in his place.
13
66
The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses
-- the block swags underneath on its tied-over
chain;
The negro that drives the dray of the stone-yard --
steady and tall he stands, poised on one leg on
the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and
loosens over his hip-band;
His glance is calm and commanding -- he tosses the
slouch of his hat away from his forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache -- falls
on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.
67
I behold the picturesque giant, and love him -- and I
do not stop there;
I go with the team also.
68
In me the caresser of life wherever moving -- back-
ward as well as forward slueing;
To niches aside and junior bending.
69
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the
leafy shade! what is that you express in your
eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in
my life.
70
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on
my distant and day-long ramble;
They rise together -- they slowly circle around.
71
I believe in those wing'd purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within
me,
And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown,
intentional,
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is
not something else;
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut,
yet trills pretty well to me;
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of
me.
14
72
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool
night;
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an
invitation;
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen
close;
I find its purpose and place up there toward the
wintry sky.)
73
The sharp hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the
house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
-37-
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkey
spread wings;
I see in them and myself the same old law.
74
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred
affections;
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
75
I am enamour'd of growing outdoors,
Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean
or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders
of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
76
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is
Me;
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns;
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that
will take me;
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will;
Scattering it freely forever.
77
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft;
The carpenter dresses his plank -- the tongue of his
foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp;
The married and unmarried children ride home to
their Thanksgiving dinner;
The pilot seizes the king-pin -- he heaves down with a
strong arm;
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat -- lance and
harpoon are ready;
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious
stretches;
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the
altar;
-38-
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of
the big wheel;
The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-
day loafe, and looks at the oats and rye;
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm'd
case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in
his mother's bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works
at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with
the manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand -- the drunkard.
nods by the bar-room stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves -- the policeman
travels his beat -- the gate-keeper marks who pass;
The young fellow drives the express-wagon -- (I love
him, though I do not know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in
the race;
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young --
some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his
position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the
wharf or levee;
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer
views them from his saddle;
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for
their partners, the dancers bow to each other;
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret, and
harks to the musical rain;
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the
Huron;
The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth, is
offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale;
-39-
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with
half-shut eyes bent side-ways;
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank
is thrown for the shore-going passengers;
The young sister holds out the skein, while the elder
sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and
then for the knots;
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, having a
week ago borne her first child;
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-
machine, or in the factory or mill;
The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber,
her faintness and pains are advancing;
The paving-man leans on his two handed rammer --
the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the note-book
-- the sign-painter is lettering with red and gold;
The canal boy trots on the tow path -- the bookkeeper
counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his
thread;
The conductor beats time for the band, and all the
performers follow him;
The child is baptized -- the convert is making his first
professions;
The regatta is spread on the bay -- the race is begun
-- how the white sails sparkle!
The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that
would stray;
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the pur-
chaser higgling about the odd cent;)
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit
for her daguerreotype;
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand
of the clock moves slowly;
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-
open'd lips;
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on
her tipsy and pimpled neck;
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men
jeer and wink to each other;
-40-
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;)
The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded
by the Great Secretaries;
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly
with twined arms;
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of
halibut in the hold;
The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and
his cattle;
As the fare-collector goes through the train, he gives
notice by the jingling of loose change;
The floor-men are laying the floor -- the tinners are
tinning the roof -- the masons are calling for
mortar;
In single file, each shouldering his hod, pass onward
the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other, the indescribable crowd
is gather'd -- it is the Fourth of Seventh-month
-- (What salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the
mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the
ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by
the hole in the frozen surface;
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter
strikes deep with his axe;
Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-
wood or pekan-trees;
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river,
or through those drain'd by the Tennessee, or
through those of the Arkansaw;
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chatta-
hooche or Altamahaw;
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and
great-grandsons around them;
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and
trappers after their day's sport;
The city sleeps, and the country sleeps;
-41-
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their
time;
The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young
husband sleeps by his wife;
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend
outward to them;
And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am.
78
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the
wise;
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse, and stuff'd with
the stuff that is fine;
One of the great nation, the nation of many nations,
the smallest the same, and the largest the same;
A southerner soon as a northerner -- a planter non-
chalant and hospitable, down by the Oconee I
live;
A Yankee, bound my own way, ready for trade, my
joints the limberest joints on earth, and the
sternest joints on earth;
A Kentuckian, walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my
deer-skin leggings -- a Louisianian or Georgian;
A boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts -- a
Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes, or up in the bush,
or with fishermen off Newfoundland;
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest
and tacking;
At home on the hills of Vermont, or in the woods of
Maine, or the Texan ranch;
Comrade of Californians -- comrade of free north-west-
erners, (loving their big proportions;)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen -- comrade of all who
shake hands and welcome to drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thought-
fullest;
-42-
A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of sea-
sons;
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and re-
ligion;
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician,
priest.
79
I resist anything better than my own diversity;
I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
80
(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place;
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their
place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its
place.)
81
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and
lands -- they are not original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are
nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the rid-
dle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they
are nothing.
82
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is,
and the water is;
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
83
With music strong I come -- with my cornets and
my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only -- I play
great marches for conquer'd and slain persons.
-43-
84
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall -- battles are lost in the same
spirit in which they are won.
85
I beat and pound for the dead;
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gay-
est for them.
86
Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements! and all
overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the
greatest heroes known.
87
This is the meal pleasantly set -- this is the meat for
natural hunger;
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous -- I
make appointments with all;
I will not have a single person slighted or left away;
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited;
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited -- the venerealee is
invited:
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
88
This is the press of a bashful hand -- this is the float
and odor of hair;
This is the touch of my lips to yours -- this is the mur-
mur of yearning;
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own
face;
This is the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet
again.
89
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well, I have -- for the Fourth-month showers have,
and the mica on the side of a rock has.
-44-
90
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? Does the early redstart,
twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
91
This hour I tell things in confidence;
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
92
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
93
What is a man, anyhow? What am I? What are you?
94
All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your
own;
Else it were time lost listening to me.
95
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums, and the ground but wal-
low and filth;
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at
the end but threadbare crape, and tears.
96
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for
invalids -- conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd;
I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.
97
Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and
be ceremonious?
98
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsell'd with doctors, and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat then sticks to my own bones.
-45-
99
In all people I see myself -- none more, and not one
a barley-corn less;
And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.
100
And I know I am solid and sound;
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetu-
ally flow;
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing
means.
101
I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the car-
penter's compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with
a burnt stick at night.
102
I know I am august;
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be
understood;
I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant
my house by, after all.)
103
I exist as I am -- that is enough;
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content;
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
104
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me,
and that is myself;
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten
thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerful-
ness I can wait.
105
My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;
I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time.
-46-
106
I am the poet of the Body;
And I am the poet of the Soul.
107
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains
of hell are with me;
The first I graft and increase upon myself -- the latter
I translate into a new tongue.
108
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man;
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man;
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of
men.
109
I chant the chant of dilation or pride;
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough;
I show that size is only development.
110
Have you outstript the rest? Are you the Presi-
dent?
It is a trifle -- they will more than arrive there, every
one, and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing
night;
I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night.
112
Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, mag-
netic, nourishing night!
Night of south winds! night of the large few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.
113
Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees;
Earth of departed sunset! earth of the mountains,
misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just
tinged with blue!
-47-
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the
river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and
clearer for my sake!
Farblossom'd
earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
114
Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to
you give love!
O unspeakable, passionate love!
115
You sea! I resign myself to you also -- I guess
what you mean;
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers;
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together -- I undress -- hurry me
out of sight of the land;
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse;
Dash me with amorous wet -- I can repay you.
116
Sea of stretch'd ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell'd yet always-
ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you -- I too am of one phase, and of
all phases.
117
Partaker of influx and efflux I -- extoller of hate and
conciliation;
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others'
arms.
118
I am he attesting sympathy;
(Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip
the house that supports them?)
-48-
119
I am not the poet of goodness only -- I do not de-
cline to be the poet of wickedness also.
120
Washes and razors for foofoos -- for me freckles and
a bristling beard.
121
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me -- I
stand indifferent;
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait;
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
122
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging
pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd
over and rectified?
123
I find one side a balance, and the antipodal side a
balance;
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine;
Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and
early start.
124
This minute that comes to me over the past decil-
lions,
There is no better than it and now.
125
What behaved well in the past, or behaves well
to-day, is not such a wonder;
The wonder is, always and always, how there can be
a mean man or an infidel.
126
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern -- the word En-
masse.
127
A word of the faith that never balks;
Here or henceforward, it is all the same to me --
I accept time, absolutely.
-49-
128
It alone is without flaw -- it rounds and completes all;
That mystic, baffling wonder I love, alone completes all.
129
I accept reality, and dare not question it;
Materialism first and last imbuing.
130
Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demon-
stration!
Fetch stonecrop, mixt with cedar and branches of
lilac;
This is the lexicographer -- this the chemist -- this
made a grammar of the old cartouches;
These mariners put the ship through dangerous un-
known seas;
This is the geologist -- this works with the scalpel --
and this is a mathematician.
131
Gentlemen! to you the first honors always:
Your facts are useful and real -- and yet they are not
my dwelling;
(I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.)
132
Less the reminders of properties told, my words;
And more the reminders, they, of life untold, and of
freedom and extrication,
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and
favor men and women fully equipt,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives,
and them that plot and conspire.
133
Walt Whitman am I, of mighty Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy and sensual, eating, drinking and
breeding;
No sentimentalist -- no stander above men and women,
or apart from them;
No more modest than immodest.
-50-
134
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
135
Whoever degrades another degrades me;
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
136
Through me the afflatus surging and surging --
through me the current and index.
137
I speak the pass-word primeval -- I give the sign of
democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have
their counterpart of on the same terms.
138
Through me many long dumb voices;
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves;
Voices of prostitutes, and of deform'd persons;
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing, and of thieves
and dwarfs;
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars -- and of
wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon;
Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
139
Through me forbidden voices;
Voices of sexes and lusts -- voices veil'd, and I remove
the veil;
Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur'd.
140
I do not press my fingers across my mouth;
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the
head and heart;
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
141
I believe in the flesh and the appetites;
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part
and tag of me is a miracle.
-51-
142
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy what-
ever I touch or am touch'd from;
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the
creeds.
143
If I worship one thing more than another, it shall
be the spread of my own body, or any part of it.
144
Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.
145
Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you!
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strip-
pings of my life.
146
Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be
you!
My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.
147
Root of wash't sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe!
nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
Mix't tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be
you!
Trickling sap of maple! fibre of manly wheat! it shall
be you!
148
Sun so generous, it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me, it
shall be you!
Broad, muscular fields! branches of live oak! lov-
ing lounger in my winding paths! it shall be
you!
Hands I have taken -- face I have kiss'd -- mortal I
have ever touch'd! it shall be you.
-52-
149
I dote on myself -- there is that lot of me, and all so
luscious;
Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with
joy.
150
O I am wonderful!
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause
of my faintest wish;
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause
of the friendship I take again.
151
That I walk up my stoop! I pause to consider if it
really be;
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than
the metaphysics of books.
152
To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous
shadows;
The air tastes good to my palate.
153
Hefts of the moving world, at innocent gambols
silently rising, freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.
154
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous
prongs;
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
155
The earth by the sky staid with -- the daily close of
their junction;
The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over
my head;
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be
master!
-53-
156
Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise
would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of
me.
157
We also ascend, dazzling and tremendous as the
sun;
We found our own, O my Soul, in the calm and cool
of the day-break.
158
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach;
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and
volumes of worlds.
159
Speech is the twin of my vision -- it is unequal to
measure itself;
It provokes me forever;
It says sarcastically,invitation;
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen
close;
I find its purpose and place up there toward the
wintry sky.)
73
The sharp hoof'd moose of the north, the cat on the
house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkey
spread wings;
I see in them and myself the same old law.
74
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred
affections;
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
75
I am enamour'd of growing outdoors,
Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean
or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, and the wielders
of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
76
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is
Me;
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns;
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that
will take me;
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will;
Scattering it freely forever.
15
77
The pure contralto sings in the organ loft;
The carpenter dresses his plank -- the tongue of his
foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp;
The married and unmarried children ride home to
their Thanksgiving dinner;
The pilot seizes the king-pin -- he heaves down with a
strong arm;
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat -- lance and
harpoon are ready;
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious
stretches;
The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the
altar;
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of
the big wheel;
The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-
day loafe, and looks at the oats and rye;
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm'd
case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in
his mother's bed-room;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works
at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blurr with
the manuscript;
The malform'd limbs are tied to the surgeon's table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand -- the drunkard.
nods by the bar-room stove;
The machinist rolls up his sleeves -- the policeman
travels his beat -- the gate-keeper marks who pass;
The young fellow drives the express-wagon -- (I love
him, though I do not know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in
the race;
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young --
some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his
position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the
wharf or levee;
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer
views them from his saddle;
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for
their partners, the dancers bow to each other;
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret, and
harks to the musical rain;
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the
Huron;
The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemm'd cloth, is
offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale;
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with
half-shut eyes bent side-ways;
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank
is thrown for the shore-going passengers;
The young sister holds out the skein, while the elder
sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and
then for the knots;
The one-year wife is recovering and happy, having a
week ago borne her first child;
The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing-
machine, or in the factory or mill;
The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber,
her faintness and pains are advancing;
The paving-man leans on his two handed rammer --
the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the note-book
-- the sign-painter is lettering with red and gold;
The canal boy trots on the tow path -- the bookkeeper
counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his
thread;
The conductor beats time for the band, and all the
performers follow him;
The child is baptized -- the convert is making his first
professions;
The regatta is spread on the bay -- the race is begun
-- how the white sails sparkle!
The drover, watching his drove, sings out to them that
would stray;
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the pur-
chaser higgling about the odd cent;)
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit
for her daguerreotype;
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand
of the clock moves slowly;
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-
open'd lips;
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on
her tipsy and pimpled neck;
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men
jeer and wink to each other;
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;)
The President, holding a cabinet council, is surrounded
by the Great Secretaries;
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly
with twined arms;
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of
halibut in the hold;
The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and
his cattle;
As the fare-collector goes through the train, he gives
notice by the jingling of loose change;
The floor-men are laying the floor -- the tinners are
tinning the roof -- the masons are calling for
mortar;
In single file, each shouldering his hod, pass onward
the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other, the indescribable crowd
is gather'd -- it is the Fourth of Seventh-month
-- (What salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the
mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the
ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by
the hole in the frozen surface;
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter
strikes deep with his axe;
Flatboatmen make fast, towards dusk, near the cotton-
wood or pekan-trees;
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river,
or through those drain'd by the Tennessee, or
through those of the Arkansaw;
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chatta-
hooche or Altamahaw;
Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and
great-grandsons around them;
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and
trappers after their day's sport;
The city sleeps, and the country sleeps;
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their
time;
The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young
husband sleeps by his wife;
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend
outward to them;
And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am.
16
78
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the
wise;
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse, and stuff'd with
the stuff that is fine;
One of the great nation, the nation of many nations,
the smallest the same, and the largest the same;
A southerner soon as a northerner -- a planter non-
chalant and hospitable, down by the Oconee I
live;
A Yankee, bound my own way, ready for trade, my
joints the limberest joints on earth, and the
sternest joints on earth;
A Kentuckian, walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my
deer-skin leggings -- a Louisianian or Georgian;
A boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts -- a
Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes, or up in the bush,
or with fishermen off Newfoundland;
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest
and tacking;
At home on the hills of Vermont, or in the woods of
Maine, or the Texan ranch;
Comrade of Californians -- comrade of free north-west-
erners, (loving their big proportions;)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen -- comrade of all who
shake hands and welcome to drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thought-
fullest;
A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of sea-
sons;
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and re-
ligion;
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician,
priest.
79
I resist anything better than my own diversity;
I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
80
(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place;
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their
place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its
place.)
17
81
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and
lands -- they are not original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are
nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the rid-
dle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they
are nothing.
82
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is,
and the water is;
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
18
83
With music strong I come -- with my cornets and
my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only -- I play
great marches for conquer'd and slain persons.
84
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall -- battles are lost in the same
spirit in which they are won.
85
I beat and pound for the dead;
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gay-
est for them.
86
Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements! and all
overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the
greatest heroes known.
19
87
This is the meal pleasantly set -- this is the meat for
natural hunger;
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous -- I
make appointments with all;
I will not have a single person slighted or left away;
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited;
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited -- the venerealee is
invited:
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
88
This is the press of a bashful hand -- this is the float
and odor of hair;
This is the touch of my lips to yours -- this is the mur-
mur of yearning;
This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own
face;
This is the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet
again.
89
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well, I have -- for the Fourth-month showers have,
and the mica on the side of a rock has.
90
Do you take it I would astonish?
Does the daylight astonish? Does the early redstart,
twittering through the woods?
Do I astonish more than they?
91
This hour I tell things in confidence;
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
20
92
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
93
What is a man, anyhow? What am I? What are you?
94
All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your
own;
Else it were time lost listening to me.
95
I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums, and the ground but wal-
low and filth;
That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at
the end but threadbare crape, and tears.
96
Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for
invalids -- conformity goes to the fourth-remov'd;
I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.
97
Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and
be ceremonious?
98
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
counsell'd with doctors, and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat then sticks to my own bones.
99
In all people I see myself -- none more, and not one
a barley-corn less;
And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.
100
And I know I am solid and sound;
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetu-
ally flow;
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing
means.
101
I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the car-
penter's compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with
a burnt stick at night.
102
I know I am august;
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be
understood;
I see that the elementary laws never apologize;
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant
my house by, after all.)
103
I exist as I am -- that is enough;
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content;
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
104
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me,
and that is myself;
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten
thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerful-
ness I can wait.
105
My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;
I laugh at what you call dissolution;
And I know the amplitude of time.
21
106
I am the poet of the Body;
And I am the poet of the Soul.
107
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains
of hell are with me;
The first I graft and increase upon myself -- the latter
I translate into a new tongue.
108
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man;
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man;
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of
men.
109
I chant the chant of dilation or pride;
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough;
I show that size is only development.
110
Have you outstript the rest? Are you the Presi-
dent?
It is a trifle -- they will more than arrive there, every
one, and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing
night;
I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night.
112
Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, mag-
netic, nourishing night!
Night of south winds! night of the large few stars!
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night.
113
Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath'd earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees;
Earth of departed sunset! earth of the mountains,
misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just
tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the
river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and
clearer for my sake!
Farblossom'd
earth!
Smile, for your lover comes!
114
Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to
you give love!
O unspeakable, passionate love!
22
115
You sea! I resign myself to you also -- I guess
what you mean;
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers;
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together -- I undress -- hurry me
out of sight of the land;
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse;
Dash me with amorous wet -- I can repay you.
116
Sea of stretch'd ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell'd yet always-
ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you -- I too am of one phase, and of
all phases.
117
Partaker of influx and efflux I -- extoller of hate and
conciliation;
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others'
arms.
118
I am he attesting sympathy;
(Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip
the house that supports them?)
119
I am not the poet of goodness only -- I do not de-
cline to be the poet of wickedness also.
120
Washes and razors for foofoos -- for me freckles and
a bristling beard.
121
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me -- I
stand indifferent;
My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait;
I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
122
Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging
pregnancy?
Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd
over and rectified?
123
I find one side a balance, and the antipodal side a
balance;
Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine;
Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and
early start.
124
This minute that comes to me over the past decil-
lions,
There is no better than it and now.
125
What behaved well in the past, or behaves well
to-day, is not such a wonder;
The wonder is, always and always, how there can be
a mean man or an infidel.
23
126
Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern -- the word En-
masse.
127
A word of the faith that never balks;
Here or henceforward, it is all the same to me --
I accept time, absolutely.
128
It alone is without flaw -- it rounds and completes all;
That mystic, baffling wonder I love, alone completes all.
129
I accept reality, and dare not question it;
Materialism first and last imbuing.
130
Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demon-
stration!
Fetch stonecrop, mixt with cedar and branches of
lilac;
This is the lexicographer -- this the chemist -- this
made a grammar of the old cartouches;
These mariners put the ship through dangerous un-
known seas;
This is the geologist -- this works with the scalpel --
and this is a mathematician.
131
Gentlemen! to you the first honors always:
Your facts are useful and real -- and yet they are not
my dwelling;
(I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.)
132
Less the reminders of properties told, my words;
And more the reminders, they, of life untold, and of
freedom and extrication,
And make short account of neuters and geldings, and
favor men and women fully equipt,
And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives,
and them that plot and conspire.
24
133
Walt Whitman am I, of mighty Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy and sensual, eating, drinking and
breeding;
No sentimentalist -- no stander above men and women,
or apart from them;
No more modest than immodest.
134
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
135
Whoever degrades another degrades me;
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
136
Through me the afflatus surging and surging --
through me the current and index.
137
I speak the pass-word primeval -- I give the sign of
democracy;
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have
their counterpart of on the same terms.
138
Through me many long dumb voices;
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves;
Voices of prostitutes, and of deform'd persons;
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing, and of thieves
and dwarfs;
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars -- and of
wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon;
Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
139
Through me forbidden voices;
Voices of sexes and lusts -- voices veil'd, and I remove
the veil;
Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigur'd.
140
I do not press my fingers across my mouth;
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the
head and heart;
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
141
I believe in the flesh and the appetites;
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part
and tag of me is a miracle.
142
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy what-
ever I touch or am touch'd from;
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the
creeds.
143
If I worship one thing more than another, it shall
be the spread of my own body, or any part of it.
144
Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.
145
Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you!
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale strip-
pings of my life.
146
Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be
you!
My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions.
147
Root of wash't sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe!
nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
Mix't tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be
you!
Trickling sap of maple! fibre of manly wheat! it shall
be you!
148
Sun so generous, it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me, it
shall be you!
Broad, muscular fields! branches of live oak! lov-
ing lounger in my winding paths! it shall be
you!
Hands I have taken -- face I have kiss'd -- mortal I
have ever touch'd! it shall be you.
149
I dote on myself -- there is that lot of me, and all so
luscious;
Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with
joy.
150
O I am wonderful!
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause
of my faintest wish;
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause
of the friendship I take again.
151
That I walk up my stoop! I pause to consider if it
really be;
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than
the metaphysics of books.
152
To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous
shadows;
The air tastes good to my palate.
153
Hefts of the moving world, at innocent gambols
silently rising, freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.
154
Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous
prongs;
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
155
The earth by the sky staid with -- the daily close of
their junction;
The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over
my head;
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be
master!
25
156
Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise
would kill me,
If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of
me.
157
We also ascend, dazzling and tremendous as the
sun;
We found our own, O my Soul, in the calm and cool
of the day-break.
158
My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach;
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and
volumes of worlds.
159
Speech is the twin of my vision -- it is unequal to
measure itself;
It provokes me forever;
It says sarcastically,
Walt, you contain enough -- why
don't you let it out then?
160
Come now, I will not be tantalized -- you conceive
too much of articulation.
161
Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath
you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost;
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams;
I underlying causes, to balance them at last;
My knowledge my live parts -- it keeping tally with
the meaning of things;
Happiness -- which, whoever hears me, let him or her
set out in search of this day.
162
My final merit I refuse you -- I refuse putting from
me what I really am;
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me;
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking to-
ward you.
-54-
163
Writing and talk do not prove me;
I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in
my face;
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skep-
tic.
164
I think I will do nothing now but listen,
To accrue what I hear into myself -- to let sounds con-
tribute toward me.
165
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat,
gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my
meals;
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human
voice;
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused
or following;
Sounds of the city, and sounds out of the city -- sounds
of the day and night;
Talkative young ones to those that like them -- the
loud laugh of work-people at their meals;
The angry base of disjointed friendship -- the faint
tones of the sick;
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips
pronouncing a death-sentence;
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the
wharves -- the refrain of the anchor-lifters;
The ring of alarm-bells -- the cry of fire -- the whirr of
swift-streaking engines and hose-carts, with
premonitory tinkles, and color'd lights;
The steam-whistle -- the solid roll of the train of ap-
proaching cars;
The slow-march play'd at the head of the association,
marching two and two;
(They go to guard some corpse -- the flag-tops are
draped with black muslin.)
-55-
166
I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's
complaint;)
I hear the key'd cornet -- it glides quickly in through
my ears;
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and
breast.
167
I hear the chorus -- it is a grand opera;
Ah, this indeed is music! This suits me.
168
A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me;
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me
full.
169
I hear the train'd soprano -- (what work, with hers,
is this?)
The orchestra wrenches such ardors from me, I did
not know I possess'd them;
It sails me -- I dab with bare feet -- they are lick'd by
the indolent waves;
I am exposed, cut by bitter and angry hail -- I lose my
breath,
Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throt-
tled in fakes of death;
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call BEING.
170
To be, in any form -- what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come
back thither;)
If nothing lay more develop't, the quahaug in its cal-
lous shell were enough.
171
Mine is no callous shell;
I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass
or stop;
-56-
They seize every object, and lead it harmlessly through
me.
172
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am
happy;
To touch my person to some one else's is about as
much as I can stand.
173
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new
identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help
them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike
what is hardly different from myself;
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare
waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight
and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze
at the edges of me;
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength
or my anger;
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a
while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry
me.
174
The sentries desert every other part of me;
They have left me helpless to a red marauder;
They all come to the headland, to witness and assist
against me.
-57-
175
I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly -- I have lost my wits -- I and nobody else
am the greatest traitor;
I went myself first to the headland -- my own hands
carried me there.
176
You villain touch! what are you doing? My breath
is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.
177
Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheath'd, hooded,
sharp-tooth'd touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
178
Parting, track't by arriving -- perpetual payment of
perpetual loan;
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer after-
ward.
179
Sprouts take and accumulate -- stand by the curb
prolific and vital;
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized, and
golden.
180
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it;
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon;
The insignificant is as big to me as any;
(What is less or more than a touch?)
181
Logic and sermons never convince;
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
182
Only what proves itself to every man and woman
is so;
Only what nobody denies is so.
-58-
183
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and
lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or
woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have
for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson,
until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
184
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-
work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of
sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors
of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all
machinery,
And the cow crunching with depres't head surpasses
any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions
of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look
at the farmer's girl boiling her iron ten-kettle
and baking short-cake.
185160
Come now, I will not be tantalized -- you conceive
too much of articulation.
161
Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath
you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost;
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams;
I underlying causes, to balance them at last;
My knowledge my live parts -- it keeping tally with
the meaning of things;
Happiness -- which, whoever hears me, let him or her
set out in search of this day.
162
My final merit I refuse you -- I refuse putting from
me what I really am;
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me;
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking to-
ward you.
163
Writing and talk do not prove me;
I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in
my face;
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skep-
tic.
26
164
I think I will do nothing now but listen,
To accrue what I hear into myself -- to let sounds con-
tribute toward me.
165
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat,
gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my
meals;
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human
voice;
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused
or following;
Sounds of the city, and sounds out of the city -- sounds
of the day and night;
Talkative young ones to those that like them -- the
loud laugh of work-people at their meals;
The angry base of disjointed friendship -- the faint
tones of the sick;
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips
pronouncing a death-sentence;
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the
wharves -- the refrain of the anchor-lifters;
The ring of alarm-bells -- the cry of fire -- the whirr of
swift-streaking engines and hose-carts, with
premonitory tinkles, and color'd lights;
The steam-whistle -- the solid roll of the train of ap-
proaching cars;
The slow-march play'd at the head of the association,
marching two and two;
(They go to guard some corpse -- the flag-tops are
draped with black muslin.)
166
I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's
complaint;)
I hear the key'd cornet -- it glides quickly in through
my ears;
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and
breast.
167
I hear the chorus -- it is a grand opera;
Ah, this indeed is music! This suits me.
168
A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me;
The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me
full.
169
I hear the train'd soprano -- (what work, with hers,
is this?)
The orchestra wrenches such ardors from me, I did
not know I possess'd them;
It sails me -- I dab with bare feet -- they are lick'd by
the indolent waves;
I am exposed, cut by bitter and angry hail -- I lose my
breath,
Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throt-
tled in fakes of death;
At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
And that we call BEING.
27
170
To be, in any form -- what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come
back thither;)
If nothing lay more develop't, the quahaug in its cal-
lous shell were enough.
171
Mine is no callous shell;
I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass
or stop;
They seize every object, and lead it harmlessly through
me.
172
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am
happy;
To touch my person to some one else's is about as
much as I can stand.
28
173
Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new
identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help
them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike
what is hardly different from myself;
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare
waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight
and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze
at the edges of me;
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength
or my anger;
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a
while,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry
me.
174
The sentries desert every other part of me;
They have left me helpless to a red marauder;
They all come to the headland, to witness and assist
against me.
175
I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly -- I have lost my wits -- I and nobody else
am the greatest traitor;
I went myself first to the headland -- my own hands
carried me there.
176
You villain touch! what are you doing? My breath
is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.
29
177
Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheath'd, hooded,
sharp-tooth'd touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
178
Parting, track't by arriving -- perpetual payment of
perpetual loan;
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer after-
ward.
179
Sprouts take and accumulate -- stand by the curb
prolific and vital;
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized, and
golden.
30
180
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it;
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon;
The insignificant is as big to me as any;
(What is less or more than a touch?)
181
Logic and sermons never convince;
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
182
Only what proves itself to every man and woman
is so;
Only what nobody denies is so.
183
A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and
lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or
woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have
for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson,
until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
31
184
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-
work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of
sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors
of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all
machinery,
And the cow crunching with depres't head surpasses
any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions
of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look
at the farmer's girl boiling her iron ten-kettle
and baking short-cake.
185