Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman - E-Book

Leaves of Grass E-Book

Walt Whitman

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Beschreibung

Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892).Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death. Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", and in later editions, Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd".In certain particulars Walt Whitman's book, "Leaves of Grass,"- stands by itself and is the most peculiar and noteworthy monument amid the work of American literature.In a large and growing circle of readers and critics, it is regarded as the most original book, the most decisively individual, the most sublimely personal creation in American literary art. 

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Leaves of Grass

 

by Walt Whitman

 

Come, said my soul,

Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)

That should I after return,

Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,

There to some group of mates the chants resuming,

(Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)

Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on,

Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now

Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

 

Walt Whitman

 

CONTENTS

 

BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS

One's-Self I Sing

As I Ponder'd in Silence

In Cabin'd Ships at Sea

To Foreign Lands

To a Historian

To Thee Old Cause

Eidolons

For Him I Sing

When I Read the Book

Beginning My Studies

Beginners

To the States

On Journeys Through the States

To a Certain Cantatrice

Me Imperturbe

Savantism

The Ship Starting

I Hear America Singing

What Place Is Besieged?

Still Though the One I Sing

Shut Not Your Doors

Poets to Come

To You

Thou Reader

 

BOOK II.

 

BOOK III.

 

BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM

From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

I Sing the Body Electric

A Woman Waits for Me

Spontaneous Me

One Hour to Madness and Joy

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals

We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd

O Hymen! O Hymenee!

I Am He That Aches with Love

Native Moments

Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City

I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ

Facing West from California's Shores

As Adam Early in the Morning

 

BOOK V. CALAMUS

Scented Herbage of My Breast

Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand

For You, O Democracy

These I Singing in Spring

Not Heaving from My Ribb'd Breast Only

Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

The Base of All Metaphysics

Recorders Ages Hence

When I Heard at the Close of the Day

Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?

Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone

Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes

Trickle Drops

City of Orgies

Behold This Swarthy Face

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

To a Stranger

This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful

I Hear It Was Charged Against Me

The Prairie-Grass Dividing

When I Peruse the Conquer'd Fame

We Two Boys Together Clinging

A Promise to California

Here the Frailest Leaves of Me

No Labor-Saving Machine

A Glimpse

A Leaf for Hand in Hand

Earth, My Likeness

I Dream'd in a Dream

What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?

To the East and to the West

Sometimes with One I Love

To a Western Boy

Fast Anchor'd Eternal O Love!

Among the Multitude

O You Whom I Often and Silently Come

That Shadow My Likeness

Full of Life Now

 

BOOK VI.

BOOK VII.

BOOK VIII.

BOOK IX.

BOOK X.

BOOK XI.

BOOK XII.

BOOK XIII.

BOOK XIV.

BOOK XV.

 

BOOK XVI.

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night

 

BOOK XVII. BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

To You

France [the 18th Year of these States

Myself and Mine

Year of Meteors [1859-60

With Antecedents

 

BOOK XVIII

 

BOOK XIX. SEA-DRIFT

As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life

Tears

To the Man-of-War-Bird

Aboard at a Ship's Helm

On the Beach at Night

The World below the Brine

On the Beach at Night Alone

Song for All Seas, All Ships

Patroling Barnegat

After the Sea-Ship

 

BOOK XX. BY THE ROADSIDE

Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]

A Hand-Mirror

Gods

Germs

Thoughts

Perfections

O Me! O Life!

To a President

I Sit and Look Out

To Rich Givers

The Dalliance of the Eagles

Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]

A Farm Picture

A Child's Amaze

The Runner

Beautiful Women

Mother and Babe

Thought

Visor'd

Thought

Gliding O'er all

Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour

Thought

To Old Age

Locations and Times

Offerings

To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]

 

BOOK XXI. DRUM-TAPS

Eighteen Sixty-One

Beat! Beat! Drums!

From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird

Song of the Banner at Daybreak

Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps

Virginia—The West

City of Ships

The Centenarian's Story

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

An Army Corps on the March

By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame

Come Up from the Fields Father

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim

As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods

Not the Pilot

Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me

The Wound-Dresser

Long, Too Long America

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

Dirge for Two Veterans

Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice

I Saw Old General at Bay

The Artilleryman's Vision

Ethiopia Saluting the Colors

Not Youth Pertains to Me

Race of Veterans

World Take Good Notice

O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy

Look Down Fair Moon

Reconciliation

How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]

As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado

Delicate Cluster

To a Certain Civilian

Lo, Victress on the Peaks

Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]

Adieu to a Soldier

Turn O Libertad

To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod

 

BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

O Captain! My Captain!

Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865

This Dust Was Once the Man

 

BOOK XXIII.

Reversals

 

BOOK XXIV. AUTUMN RIVULETS

The Return of the Heroes

There Was a Child Went Forth

Old Ireland

The City Dead-House

This Compost

To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire

Unnamed Land

Song of Prudence

The Singer in the Prison

Warble for Lilac-Time

Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]

Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]

Vocalism

To Him That Was Crucified

You Felons on Trial in Courts

Laws for Creations

To a Common Prostitute

I Was Looking a Long While

Thought

Miracles

Sparkles from the Wheel

To a Pupil

Unfolded out of the Folds

What Am I After All

Kosmos

Others May Praise What They Like

Who Learns My Lesson Complete?

Tests

The Torch

O Star of France [1870-71]

The Ox-Tamer

Wandering at Morn

With All Thy Gifts

My Picture-Gallery

The Prairie States

 

BOOK XXV.

BOOK XXVI.

BOOK XXVII.

 

BOOK XXVIII.

Transpositions

 

BOOK XXIX.

 

BOOK XXX. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH

Whispers of Heavenly Death

Chanting the Square Deific

Of Him I Love Day and Night

Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours

As If a Phantom Caress'd Me

Assurances

Quicksand Years

That Music Always Round Me

What Ship Puzzled at Sea

A Noiseless Patient Spider

O Living Always, Always Dying

To One Shortly to Die

Night on the Prairies

Thought

The Last Invocation

As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing

Pensive and Faltering

 

BOOK XXXI.

A Paumanok Picture

 

BOOK XXXII. FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT

Faces

The Mystic Trumpeter

To a Locomotive in Winter

O Magnet-South

Mannahatta

All Is Truth

A Riddle Song

Excelsior

Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats

Thoughts

Mediums

Weave in, My Hardy Life

Spain, 1873-74

By Broad Potomac's Shore

From Far Dakota's Canyons [June 25, 1876]

Old War-Dreams

Thick-Sprinkled Bunting

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

A Clear Midnight

 

BOOK XXXIII. SONGS OF PARTING

Years of the Modern

Ashes of Soldiers

Thoughts

Song at Sunset

As at Thy Portals Also Death

My Legacy

Pensive on Her Dead Gazing

Camps of Green

The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]

As They Draw to a Close

Joy, Shipmate, Joy!

The Untold Want

Portals

These Carols

Now Finale to the Shore

So Long!

 

BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY

Paumanok

From Montauk Point

To Those Who've Fail'd

A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine

The Bravest Soldiers

A Font of Type

As I Sit Writing Here

My Canary Bird

Queries to My Seventieth Year

The Wallabout Martyrs

The First Dandelion

America

Memories

To-Day and Thee

After the Dazzle of Day

Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809

Out of May's Shows Selected

Halcyon Days

Election Day, November, 1884

With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!

Death of General Grant

Red Jacket (From Aloft)

Washington's Monument February, 1885

Of That Blithe Throat of Thine

Broadway

To Get the Final Lilt of Songs

Old Salt Kossabone

The Dead Tenor

Continuities

Yonnondio

Life

"Going Somewhere"

Small the Theme of My Chant

True Conquerors

The United States to Old World Critics

The Calming Thought of All

Thanks in Old Age

Life and Death

The Voice of the Rain

Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here

While Not the Past Forgetting

The Dying Veteran

Stronger Lessons

A Prairie Sunset

Twenty Years

Orange Buds by Mail from Florida

Twilight

You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me

Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone

The Dead Emperor

As the Greek's Signal Flame

The Dismantled Ship

Now Precedent Songs, Farewell

An Evening Lull

Old Age's Lambent Peaks

After the Supper and Talk

 

BOOKXXXV. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

Lingering Last Drops

Good-Bye My Fancy

On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!

MY 71st Year

Apparitions

The Pallid Wreath

An Ended Day

Old Age's Ship & Crafty Death's

To the Pending Year

Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher

Long, Long Hence

Bravo, Paris Exposition!

Interpolation Sounds

To the Sun-Set Breeze

Old Chants

A Christmas Greeting

Sounds of the Winter

A Twilight Song

When the Full-Grown Poet Came

Osceola

A Voice from Death

A Persian Lesson

The Commonplace

"The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete"

Mirages

L. of G.'s Purport

The Unexpress'd

Grand Is the Seen

Unseen Buds

Good-Bye My Fancy!

 

 

 

BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS

 

 

One's-Self I Sing

One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

 

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say

the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

 

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

 

 

As I Ponder'd in Silence

As I ponder'd in silence,

Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,

A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,

Terrible in beauty, age, and power,

The genius of poets of old lands,

As to me directing like flame its eyes,

With finger pointing to many immortal songs,

And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?

And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,

The making of perfect soldiers.

 

Be it so, then I answer'd,

I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any,

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance

and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering,

(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the

field the world,

For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers.

 

 

In Cabin'd Ships at Sea

In cabin'd ships at sea,

The boundless blue on every side expanding,

With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,

Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,

Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,

She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under

many a star at night,

By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,

In full rapport at last.

 

Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts,

Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,

The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,

We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,

The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the

briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,

The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,

The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,

And this is ocean's poem.

 

Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,

You not a reminiscence of the land alone,

You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not

whither, yet ever full of faith,

Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!

Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it

here in every leaf;)

Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the

imperious waves,

Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea,

This song for mariners and all their ships.

 

 

To Foreign Lands

I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World,

And to define America, her athletic Democracy,

Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

 

 

To a Historian

You who celebrate bygones,

Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life

that has exhibited itself,

Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates,

rulers and priests,

I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself

in his own rights,

Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself,

(the great pride of man in himself,)

Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,

I project the history of the future.

 

 

To Thee Old Cause

To thee old cause!

Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,

Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,

Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands,

After a strange sad war, great war for thee,

(I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be

really fought, for thee,)

These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.

 

(A war O soldiers not for itself alone,

Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.)

 

Thou orb of many orbs!

Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre!

Around the idea of thee the war revolving,

With all its angry and vehement play of causes,

(With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,)

These recitatives for thee,—my book and the war are one,

Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee,

As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,

Around the idea of thee.

 

 

Eidolons

I met a seer,

Passing the hues and objects of the world,

The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,

To glean eidolons.

 

Put in thy chants said he,

No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,

Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,

That of eidolons.

 

Ever the dim beginning,

Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,

Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)

Eidolons! eidolons!

 

Ever the mutable,

Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,

Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,

Issuing eidolons.

 

Lo, I or you,

Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,

We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,

But really build eidolons.

 

The ostent evanescent,

The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,

Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,

To fashion his eidolon.

 

Of every human life,

(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)

The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,

In its eidolon.

 

The old, old urge,

Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,

From science and the modern still impell'd,

The old, old urge, eidolons.

 

The present now and here,

America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,

Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,

To-day's eidolons.

 

These with the past,

Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,

Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,

Joining eidolons.

 

Densities, growth, facades,

Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,

Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,

Eidolons everlasting.

 

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,

The visible but their womb of birth,

Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,

The mighty earth-eidolon.

 

All space, all time,

(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,

Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)

Fill'd with eidolons only.

 

The noiseless myriads,

The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,

The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,

The true realities, eidolons.

 

Not this the world,

Nor these the universes, they the universes,

Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,

Eidolons, eidolons.

 

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,

Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,

Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,

The entities of entities, eidolons.

 

Unfix'd yet fix'd,

Ever shall be, ever have been and are,

Sweeping the present to the infinite future,

Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

 

The prophet and the bard,

Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,

Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,

God and eidolons.

 

And thee my soul,

Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,

Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,

Thy mates, eidolons.

 

Thy body permanent,

The body lurking there within thy body,

The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,

An image, an eidolon.

 

Thy very songs not in thy songs,

No special strains to sing, none for itself,

But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,

A round full-orb'd eidolon.

 

 

For Him I Sing

For him I sing,

I raise the present on the past,

(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)

With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,

To make himself by them the law unto himself.

 

 

When I Read the Book

When I read the book, the biography famous,

And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?

And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?

(As if any man really knew aught of my life,

Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,

Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections

I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

 

 

Beginning My Studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,

The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,

The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,

I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,

But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

 

 

Beginners

How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)

How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,

How they inure to themselves as much as to any—what a paradox

appears their age,

How people respond to them, yet know them not,

How there is something relentless in their fate all times,

How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,

And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same

great purchase.

 

 

To the States

To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist

much, obey little,

Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,

Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever

afterward resumes its liberty.

 

 

On Journeys Through the States

On journeys through the States we start,

(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,

Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)

We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.

 

We have watch'd the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,

And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the

seasons, and effuse as much?

 

We dwell a while in every city and town,

We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the

Mississippi, and the Southern States,

We confer on equal terms with each of the States,

We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,

We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the

body and the soul,

Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,

And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,

And may be just as much as the seasons.

 

 

To a Certain Cantatrice

Here, take this gift,

I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,

One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the

progress and freedom of the race,

Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;

But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any.

 

 

Me Imperturbe

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,

Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,

Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,

Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less

important than I thought,

Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee,

or far north or inland,

A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these

States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as

the trees and animals do.

 

 

Savantism

Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and

nestling close, always obligated,

Thither hours, months, years—thither trades, compacts,

establishments, even the most minute,

Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;

Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant,

As a father to his father going takes his children along with him.

 

 

The Ship Starting

Lo, the unbounded sea,

On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even

her moonsails.

The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately—

below emulous waves press forward,

They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.

 

 

I Hear America Singing

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand

singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as

he stands,

The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning,

or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,

or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young

fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

 

 

What Place Is Besieged?

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?

Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,

And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,

And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

 

 

Still Though the One I Sing

Still though the one I sing,

(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,

I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O

quenchless, indispensable fire!)

 

 

Shut Not Your Doors

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,

For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet

needed most, I bring,

Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,

A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,

But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

 

 

Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me.

 

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

 

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a

casual look upon you and then averts his face,

Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you.

 

 

To You

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why

should you not speak to me?

And why should I not speak to you?

 

 

Thou Reader

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,

Therefore for thee the following chants.

 

 

BOOK II

Starting from Paumanok

1

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 pavements,

Dweller in Mannahatta 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 Dakota'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 earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow,

my amaze,

Having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the

mountain-hawk,

And heard at dawn the unrivall'd one, the hermit thrush from the

swamp-cedars,

Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

 

2

Victory, union, faith, identity, time,

The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,

Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.

This then is life,

Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

 

How curious! how real!

Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

 

See revolving the globe,

The ancestor-continents away group'd together,

The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus

between.

 

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.

 

See, projected through time,

For me an audience interminable.

 

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

Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!

Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!

For you a programme of chants.

 

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 equidistant,

Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.

 

4

Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,

Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-spring,

Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,

And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect

lovingly with you.

 

I conn'd old times,

I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,

Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

 

In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?

Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.

 

5

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 dismissing it,

I stand in my place with my own day here.

 

Here lands female and male,

Here the heir-ship 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.

 

6

The soul,

Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer

than water ebbs and flows.

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 mortality,

For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and

of immortality.

 

I will make a song for these States that no one State may under any

circumstances be subjected 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.)

 

I will acknowledge contemporary lands,

I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute 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.

 

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 smouldering 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?

 

7

I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,

I advance from the people in their own spirit,

Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

 

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 any thing else.)

 

I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, I

descend into the arena,

(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the

winner's pealing shouts,

Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.)

 

Each is not for its own sake,

I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.

 

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.

 

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be

their religion,

Otherwise there is just no real and permanent grandeur;

(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,

Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)

 

8

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?

 

It is well—against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,

But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion'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.

 

9

What do you seek so pensive and silent?

What do you need camerado?

Dear son do you think it is love?

 

Listen dear son—listen America, daughter or son,

It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, 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.

 

10

Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,

The following chants each for its kind I sing.

 

My comrade!

For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising

inclusive and more resplendent,

The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.

 

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.

 

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 and all the spiritual world,

After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

 

O such themes—equalities! O divine average!

Warblings under the sun, usher'd as now, or at noon, or setting,

Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,

I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and

cheerfully pass them forward.

 

11

As I have walk'd in Alabama my morning walk,

I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in

the briers hatching her brood.

 

I have seen the he-bird also,

I have paus'd to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and

joyfully singing.

 

And while I paus'd 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.

 

12

Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and

joyfully singing.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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;

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 sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin'd

to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,

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.

 

I will not make poems with reference to parts,

But I will make poems, songs, 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.

 

13

Was somebody asking to see the soul?

See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, 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?

 

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.

 

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the

meaning, the main concern,

Any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance and

life return in the body and the soul,

Indifferently before death and after death.

 

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!

 

14

Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

 

Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?

Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,

Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.

 

Interlink'd, food-yielding lands!

Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple

and the 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 north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west

Colorado winds!

Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!

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 passionate ones!

The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd!

The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and

the inexperienced sisters!

Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the

compact!

The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!

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 orators and 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 Seaside 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 the

Narragansett Bay State, or 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 companion and equal,

coming personally to you now,

Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

 

15

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.

For your life adhere to me,

(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give

myself really to you, but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

 

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,

Bearded, sun-burnt, 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.

 

16

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.

 

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.

 

17

Expanding and swift, 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 inventions and arts.

 

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 unprecedented waves and storms.

 

18

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 Kaw, countless 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 many-cylinder'd steam printing-press—see, the electric

telegraph stretching across the continent,

See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reaching,

pulses of Europe duly return'd,

See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing

the steam-whistle,

See, ploughmen ploughing farms—see, miners digging mines—see,

the numberless factories,

See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools—see from among them

superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in

working dresses,

See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me

well-belov'd, close-held by day and night,

Hear the loud echoes of my songs there—read the hints come at last.

 

19

O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.

O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!

O something ecstatic 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.

 

 

BOOK III

Song of Myself

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

 

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

 

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-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

 

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 without check with original energy.

 

2

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.

 

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 undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

 

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 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.

 

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?

 

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess 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

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.

 

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.

 

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

 

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.

To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel 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.

 

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

 

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,

Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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 swelling 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 to a cent,

Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?

 

4

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.

 

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 impalpable certain rest,

Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,

Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

 

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

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.

 

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.

 

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer 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.

 

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, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and

poke-weed.

 

6

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.

 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green

stuff woven.

 

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?

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

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, or from offspring taken soon out

of their mothers' laps,

And here you are the mothers' laps.

 

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.

 

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,

And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.

 

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.

 

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

 

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.

 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

 

7

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.

 

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.

 

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.)

 

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 sweet-heart 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.

 

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

The little one sleeps in its cradle,

I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies

with my hand.

 

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,

I peeringly view them from the top.

 

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.

 

The blab of the pave, 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, 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 sunstruck 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

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 intertinged,

The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.

 

I am there, I help, I came stretch'd 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

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.

 

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud,

My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.

 

The boatmen 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.

 

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 protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand,

She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks

descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her feet.

 

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,

I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,

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

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 lonesome.

 

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,

She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

 

Which of the young men does she like the best?

Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

 

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

 

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,

The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

 

The beards of the young men glisten'd with wet, it ran from their long hair,

Little streams pass'd all over their bodies.

 

An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,

It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

 

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 pendant and bending arch,

They do not think whom they souse with spray.

 

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