Leaves of Grass quotes

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?

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 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.

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.

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, 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 …

… 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.

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 everything,

A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

… 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

… 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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 …

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.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble, They rise together, they slowly circle around.

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.

… 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.

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 listening close, Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.

… 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-hen and she with her half-spread wings, I see in them and myself the same old law.

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,

They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

… out-doors, 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.

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.

… meat, A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest, A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons, Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion, A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,

Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

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.

I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.

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!

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.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close,

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

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.

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

I know I am deathless,

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass, I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

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.)

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.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,

I laugh at what you call dissolution,

And I know the amplitude of time.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,

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.

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.

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! Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom’d earth!

Smile, for your lover comes.

Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love! O unspeakable passionate love.

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.

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

There is no better than it and now.

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

There is no better than it and now.

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.

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.

Endless unfolding of words of ages! And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.

I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism first and last imbuing.

Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!

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 unknown seas, This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is …

Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!

Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,

I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.

… 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.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

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

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

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.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

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

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever 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.

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.

To behold the day-break! The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, The air tastes good to my palate.

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?

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?

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 toward you.

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.

Is this then a touch?

… 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 one and all shall delight us, and we them.

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 …

… 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 depress’d head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call anything back again when I desire it.

… vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to …

… and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

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

… I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side, (I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.)

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

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

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,

When I give I give myself.

You there, impotent, loose in the knees, Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you, Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets, I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare, And anything I …

… bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers, I take my place among you as much as among any, The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same, And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same.

I do not know what is untried and afterward,

But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation, (What have I to do with lamentation?)

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms, The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.

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

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,

I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,

I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,

You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,

Now I wash the gum from your eyes,

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

I am the teacher of athletes, He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right, Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp …

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,

And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man …

… show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe,

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

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

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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

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

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

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

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

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

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

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

… vales of Kashmere, From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero, From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands, Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d, Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?)

As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

Therefore release me and depart on your way.

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades.

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible, Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me, Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;

Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, You express me better than I can express myself, You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,

I think I could stop here myself and do miracles, I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me, I think whoever I see must be happy.

I inhale great draughts of space, The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,

I did not know I held so much goodness.

I am larger, better than I thought,

I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me, I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you, I will recruit for myself and you as I go, I will scatter myself among men and women …

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,

It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room, (Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men, Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom, Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,

Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Here is the test of wisdom,

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,

Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, Is the certainty of the reality and …

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old, From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments, Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!

Traveling with me you find what never tires.

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!

Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires, The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d, I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

The earth never tires, The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d, I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,

However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,

We convince by our presence.)

Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes, These are the days that must happen to you:

… and hiding it goes, Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors, In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly, Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,

Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,

Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers, Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself, Speaking of anything else but never of itself.

Have the past struggles succeeded? What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature? Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,

He going with me must go well arm’d, He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.

Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d! Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher! Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within …

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,

I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,

I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night or …

He is the Answerer, What can be answer’d he answers, and what cannot be answer’d he shows how it cannot be answer’d.

A man is a summons and challenge,

(It is vain to skulk—do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you hear the ironical echoes?)

… words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark, The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things and the human race, He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race.

The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,

The singers are welcom’d, understood, appear often enough, but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems, the Answerer, (Not every century nor every five centuries has contain’d such a day, for all its names.)

All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please,

The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty;

The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

The words of the true poems give you more than poems, They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and everything else, They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,

They do not seek beauty, they are sought,

Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.

O the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,

I will have thousands of globes and all time.

O the engineer’s joys! to go with a locomotive! To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the laughing locomotive! To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.

O the joy of a manly self-hood!

To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,

To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.

… I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable,

And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

For not life’s joys alone I sing, repeating—the joy of death!

O to sail to sea in a ship! To leave this steady unendurable land, To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses, To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, To sail and sail and sail!

O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!

To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!

… invigorates life invigorates death, And the dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,

And nothing endures but personal qualities.

What do you think endures? Do you think a great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?

… dead advance as much as the living advance, And the future is no more uncertain than the present, For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man, And nothing endures but personal qualities.

What do you think endures?

Do you think a great city endures? Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best built steamships? Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?

Away! these are not to be cherish’d for themselves, They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them, The show passes, all does well enough of course, All does very well till one flash of defiance.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,

If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands, Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, There the great city stands.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man’s or woman’s look!

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed! How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man’s or woman’s look!

All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;

A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe, When he or she appears materials are overaw’d, The dispute on the soul stops, The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn’d back, or laid away.

Long and long has the grass been growing, Long and long has the rain been falling, Long has the globe been rolling round.

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,

Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and Aeneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings, Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus, Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa’s gate and on Mount Moriah, The …

… the same, changed, journey’d considerable,) Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for herself, striding through the confusion, By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d, Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers, Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay,

She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware!

But hold—don’t I forget my manners? To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant for?) to thee Columbia; In liberty’s name welcome immortal! clasp hands, And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.

There is something that comes to one now and perpetually, It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed, it eludes discussion and print,

It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,

It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you, It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them.

We consider bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine, I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still, It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,

Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you.

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are, The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him, The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for …

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,

The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him,

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them, The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you, Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.

… my scholars dear, Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you, Sculpture and monuments and anything inscribed anywhere are tallied in you, The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,

If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?

The most renown’d poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums.

The most renown’d poems would be ashes, orations and plays would be vacuums.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,

(Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?)

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds out of your friends’ mouths? No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,

(In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

… The soul’s realization and determination still inheriting, The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing, No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking, Swift, glad, content, unbereav’d, nothing losing, Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,

The divine ship sails the divine sea.

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

… are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, For none more than you are the present and the past, For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality;

No one can acquire for another—not one, Not one can grow for another—not one.

… the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail, The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress not to the audience, And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own.

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete,

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete,

The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth, There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth, No politics, song, religion, behavior, or whatnot, is of account, unless it compare …

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,

Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?

Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter,

The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and restoring darkness.

Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states, Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,

Only the good is universal.

Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air.

… now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true soul and body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,

I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear,

I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb, I should have made my way straight to you long ago, I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

… I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,

I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all, From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light, But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light, From my hand from the brain …

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon yourself all your life,

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, What you have done returns already in mockeries, (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?)

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you,

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you, I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you, These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they, These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or …

I give nothing as duties, What others give as duties I give as living impulses, (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions,

Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions, Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections?

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do,

I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself, I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me, I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

… world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies, as I myself do, I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot expound myself, I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,

I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

After me, vista! O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long, I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower, Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—lo! even here one equally transient and strange! As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this chant,

What am I myself but one of your meteors?

With antecedents, With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past ages, With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am, With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome, With the Celt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the …

As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,) I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,

I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.

(Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past? Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.)

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot, Down from the shower’d halo, Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and …

Soothe! soothe! soothe! Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,

But my love soothes not me, not me.

Low hangs the moon, it rose late, It is lagging—O I think it is heavy with love, with love.

Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,) Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me? For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, now I have heard you,

Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,

And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.

Whereto answering, the sea, Delaying not, hurrying not, Whisper’d me through the night, and very plainly before daybreak,

Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,

And again death, death, death, death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous’d child’s heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, …

I too Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been wash’d on your shores,

I too am but a trail of drift and debris,

I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island.

Kiss me my father, Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love, Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy.

Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,)

Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother, Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you or gather from you.

Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)

Something there is more immortal even than the stars,

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, …

The 72nd and 73rd Years of These States

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,

Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats of kings.

They live in other young men O kings! They live in brothers again ready to defy you, They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.

Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,

Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

… the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

… measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls.

… where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,

As souls only understand souls.

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,

As souls only understand souls.

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages, You have not learn’d of Nature—of the politics of Nature you have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, You have not seen that only such as they are for these States, And that …

… learn’d of Nature—of the politics of Nature you have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality, You have not seen that only such as they are for these States, And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these States.

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate, I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of …

… By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s voice, Low on the ground and high in the air, On the ground where father and child stand, In the upward air where their eyes turn, Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.

Words! book-words! what are you?

Words no more, for hearken and see, My song is there in the open air, and I must sing, With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

That and here my General’s first battle, No women looking on nor sunshine to bask in, it did not conclude with applause,

Nobody clapp’d hands here then.

But in darkness in mist on the ground under a chill rain, Wearied that night we lay foil’d and sullen, While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord off against us encamp’d, Quite within hearing, feasting, clinking wineglasses together over their victory.

… that, vigil of night and battle-field dim, Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d, I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier well in his blanket,

And buried him where he fell.

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown, A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness, Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating, Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building, …

Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory; Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself,

Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

As toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods, To the music of rustling leaves kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,) I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;

Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could I understand,) The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose—yet this sign left, On a tablet scrawl’d and nail’d on the tree by the grave,

Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.

Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering, Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life, Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded street, Comes before me the unknown soldier’s grave, comes …

I onward go, I stop, With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you,

Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.

On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)

… me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire, Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the world a rural domestic life, Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears only,

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!

These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and rack’d by the war-strife,) These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city, Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking …

People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants, Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now, The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded,) Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!

Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

The last sunbeam Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath, On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking, Down a new-made double grave.

(

Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?

Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.)

Look down fair moon and bathe this scene, Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen, purple, On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide, Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world;

Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world;

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near, Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,

O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,

Nor the bayonet stab what you really are; The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best, Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill, Nor the bayonet stab O friend.

I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul, O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend, Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;

The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,

Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill, Nor the bayonet stab O friend.

As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume,

I know I am restless and make others so,

I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death, For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them, I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me, I …

As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open air I resume, I know I am restless and make others so,

I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,

For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them, I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me, I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule, …

… what I said to you and the open air I resume, I know I am restless and make others so, I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death, For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them,

I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been had all accepted me,

I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule, And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me, And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me; Dear camerado!

What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works, And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,

For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.

Lo, Victress on the peaks, Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world, (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,) Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all, Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee, Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness …

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.

… on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there, Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,

And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.

Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving …

And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.

Come lovely and soothing death,

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.

… myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,

The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

All is eligible to all, All is for individuals, all is for you, No condition is prohibited, not God’s or any.

All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.

Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

All comes by the body, only health puts you rapport with the universe.

Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

Piety and conformity to them that like, Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like, I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!

I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet,

Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?

Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

after death you shall be superb, Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power;

How dare you place anything before a man?

Fall behind me States! A man before all—myself, typical, before all.

I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth, Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.

I will not be outfaced by irrational things,

I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me, I will make cities and civilizations defer to me, This is what I have learnt from America—it is the amount, and it I teach again.

… of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,

It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, …

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,

It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,

It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts …

… its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

Courage yet, my brother or my sister!

Keep on—Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;

When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,

It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of …

Not one word or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of the onanist, Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning, betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution, But has results beyond death as really as before death.

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.

No specification is necessary, all that a male or female does, that is vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her, In the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it forever.

… those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more, And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)

Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day …

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.

What am I after all but a child, pleas’d with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over;

I stand apart to hear—it never tires me.

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

It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second,

I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor plann’d and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house.

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

Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;

I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother’s womb is equally wonderful, And pass’d from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk—all this is …

O sun and moon and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter! Passage to you!

Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!

Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?

Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

O my brave soul! O farther farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?

O farther, farther, farther sail!

If all came but to ashes of dung, If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum! for we are betray’d, Then indeed suspicion of death.

Do you suspect death? if I were to suspect death I should die now,

Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suited toward annihilation?

… lines give way, substances mock and elude me, Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d soul, eludes not, One’s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that out of all is sure, Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?

When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear, But now the chorus I hear and am elated, A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear, A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over …

A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

… soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

O living always, always dying!

O the burials of me past and present, O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever; O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)

As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing, Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting, I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;

(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

Pensive and faltering, The words the Dead I write, For living are the Dead, (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition, I the spectre.)

Women and men in wisdom innocence and health—all joy! Riotous laughing bacchanals fill’d with joy! War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged—nothing but joy left! The ocean fill’d with joy—the atmosphere all joy! Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!

Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!

Joy! joy! all over joy!

The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood! To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak—to walk—to seize something by the hand! To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color’d flesh! To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large!

To be this incredible God I am!

To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I love.

Camerado, this is no book, Who touches this touches a man, (Is it night? are we here together alone?)

It is I you hold and who holds you,

I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.

Enough O deed impromptu and secret, Enough O gliding present—enough O summ’d-up past.

Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,

I give it especially to you, do not forget me, I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile, I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me, An unknown sphere more …

Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through the fight;

But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.

This latent mine—these unlaunch’d voices—passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, Within the pallid slivers …

After the dazzle of day is gone,

Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;

After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band, Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

(More than eighty-three degrees north—about a good day’s steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water—Greely the explorer heard the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.)

Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,

I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird—let me too welcome chilling drifts, E’en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d, Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay—(cold, cold, O cold!)

Not summer’s zones alone—not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone, But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the cumulus of years,

These with gay heart I also sing.

What hurrying human tides, or day or night! What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters! What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee! What curious questioning glances—glints of love! Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!

Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration! Thou portal—thou arena—thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups! (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, façades, tell their inimitable tales; Thy windows rich, and huge hotels—thy side-walks wide;) Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!

Thou, like the parti-colored world itself⁠—like infinite, teeming, mocking life!

Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!

(Could but thy flagstones, curbs, façades, tell their inimitable tales; Thy windows rich, and huge hotels—thy side-walks wide;) Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet! Thou, like the parti-colored world itself—like infinite, teeming, mocking life!

Thou visor’d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!

To get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Emerson;

To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt—to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,

Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

Far back, related on my mother’s side, Old Salt Kossabone, I’ll tell you how he died: (Had been a sailor all his life—was nearly 90—lived with his married grandchild, Jenny;

(From a talk I had lately with a German spiritualist)

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,

No birth, identity, form—no object of the world, Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.

Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,

The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;

The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns, With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Yonnondio! Yonnondio!—unlimn’d they disappear; To-day gives place, and fades—the cities, farms, factories fade; A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment, Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.

Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;

(Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies—and fresh again;) Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new; Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause; Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;

Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man; (Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies—and fresh again;) Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new; Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the loud applause;

Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;

Struggling to-day the same—battling the same.

My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend, (Now buried in an English grave—and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,) Ended our talk—“The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern learning, intuitions deep, “Of all Geologies—Histories—of all Astronomy—of Evolution, Metaphysics all, “

Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely bettering,

“Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is duly over,) “The world, the race, the soul—in space and time the universes, “All bound as is befitting each—all surely going somewhere.”

(From the 1867 edition “L. of G.”)

Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest⁠—namely, One’s-Self⁠—a simple, separate person.

That, for the use of the New World, I sing. Man’s physiology complete, 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.

Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,) Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck, Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars;

Enough that they’ve survived at all⁠—long life’s unflinching ones!

Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all—in that alone, True conquerors o’er all the rest.

Enough that they’ve survived at all—long life’s unflinching ones! Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all—in that alone,

True conquerors o’er all the rest.

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;

As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

That coursing on, whate’er men’s speculations,

Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies, Amid the bawling presentations new and old, The round earth’s silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

That coursing on, whate’er men’s speculations, Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies, Amid the bawling presentations new and old,

The round earth’s silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go, For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life, For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,) For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same, For …

That coursing on, whate’er men’s speculations, Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies, Amid the bawling presentations new and old, The round earth’s silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

Thanks in old age⁠—thanks ere I go,

For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life, For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,) For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same, For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands, …

As soldier from an ended war return’d—As traveler out of myriads, to the long procession retrospective, Thanks—joyful thanks!—a soldier’s, traveler’s thanks.

The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,

Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled. By each successive age insoluble, pass’d on, To ours to-day—and we pass on the same.

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:

I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,

Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form’d, altogether changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe, And all that in them without me were seeds only, …

… war-days, To the sights and scenes—to forming the line of battle, To the scouts ahead reconnoitering, To the cannons, the grim artillery, To the galloping aids, carrying orders, To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense, The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;

Away with your life of peace!⁠—your joys of peace! Give me my old wild battle-life again!

”

Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?

Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you?

or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, The earth’s whole amplitude and Nature’s multiform power consign’d for once to colors; The light, the general air possess’d by them—colors till now unknown, No limit, confine—not the Western sky alone—the high meridian—North, South, all,

Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.

Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a new-comer chatting: He shipp’d as green-hand boy, and sail’d away, (took some sudden, vehement notion;)

You tokens diminute and lorn—(not now the flush of May, or July clover-bloom—no grain of August now;) You pallid banner-staves—you pennants valueless—you overstay’d of time, Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest, The faithfulest—hardiest—last.

Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like eagles’ talons,)

But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some summer—bursting forth, To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade—to nourishing fruit, Apples and grapes—the stalwart limbs of trees emerging—the fresh, free, open air, And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.

… E’en at the exit-door turning—charges superfluous calling back—e’en as he descends the steps, Something to eke out a minute additional—shadows of nightfall deepening, Farewells, messages lessening—dimmer the forthgoer’s visage and form, Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness—loth, O so loth to depart!

Garrulous to the very last.

… mainly unknown—Will the America of the future—will this vast rich Union ever realize what itself cost, back there after all?—those hecatombs of battle-deaths—Those times of which, O far-off reader, this whole book is indeed finally but a reminiscent memorial from thence by me to you?

Heave the anchor short!

Raise main-sail and jib—steer forth, O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters, (I will not call it our concluding voyage, But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)

Heave the anchor short! Raise main-sail and jib—steer forth, O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters,

(I will not call it our concluding voyage,

But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)

Heave the anchor short! Raise main-sail and jib—steer forth, O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters, (I will not call it our concluding voyage,

But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)

Depart, depart from solid earth—no more returning to these shores, Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending, Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation, Sail out for good, eidólon yacht of me!

Depart, depart from solid earth—no more returning to these shores, Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending, Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,

Sail out for good, eidólon yacht of me!

And whence and why come you?

After surmounting three-score and ten, With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of ’63 and ’4,

As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply after battle,

To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here, with vital voice, Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.

… parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of me, the war of ’63 and ’4, As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply after battle, To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here, with vital voice,

Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.

A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages: (Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul, That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities.)

A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages: (Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul, That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities.)

Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,

Let it remain back there on its nail suspended, With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch’d, and the white now gray and ashy, One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend; But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?

No, while memories subtly play—the past vivid as ever; For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee, Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever: So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,

It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion, The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done; Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!

For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee, Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever: So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach, It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.

The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,

The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done; Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!

The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion, The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;

Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!

From east and west across the horizon’s edge, Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us: But we’ll make race a-time upon the seas—a battle-contest yet! bear lively there! (Our joys of strife and derring-do to the last!)

After a long, long course, hundreds of years, denials, Accumulations, rous’d love and joy and thought, Hopes, wishes, aspirations, ponderings, victories, myriads of readers, Coating, compassing, covering—after ages’ and ages’ encrustations,

Then only may these songs reach fruition.

Add to your show, before you close it, France, With all the rest, visible, concrete, temples, towers, goods, machines and ores, Our sentiment wafted from many million heart-throbs, ethereal but solid, (We grand-sons and great-grand-sons do not forget your grand-sires,) From fifty Nations and nebulous …

… winter too, Sunshine upon the mountains—many a distant strain From cheery railroad train—from nearer field, barn, house, The whispering air—even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn, Children’s and women’s tones—rhythm of many a farmer and of flail, An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest,

Think not we give out yet,

Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

… a distant strain From cheery railroad train—from nearer field, barn, house, The whispering air—even the mute crops, garner’d apples, corn, Children’s and women’s tones—rhythm of many a farmer and of flail, An old man’s garrulous lips among the rest, Think not we give out yet,

Forth from these snowy hairs we keep up yet the lilt.

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame, Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes—of the countless buried unknown soldiers, Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s—the unreturn’d, The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill’d trenches Of gather’d dead …

When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; —

Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand;

And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them.

… face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands, Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt—then lying down, resting a moment, Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all, Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle,)

Fix’d his look on wife and little children⁠—the last:

(And here a line in memory of his name and death.)

… thee, The fair, the strong, the good, the capable, The household wreck’d, the husband and the wife, the engulf’d forger in his forge, The corpses in the whelming waters and the mud, The gather’d thousands to their funeral mounds, and thousands never found or gather’d.

Then after burying, mourning the dead,

(Faithful to them found or unfound, forgetting not, bearing the past, here new musing,) A day—a passing moment or an hour—America itself bends low, Silent, resign’d, submissive.

War, death, cataclysm like this, America, Take deep to thy proud prosperous heart.

E’en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime,

The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love, From West and East, from South and North and over sea, Its hot-spurr’d hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought and lesson yet.

E’en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime,

The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love,

From West and East, from South and North and over sea, Its hot-spurr’d hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought and lesson yet.

And from within a thought and lesson yet.

Thou ever-darting Globe! through Space and Air!

Thou waters that encompass us! Thou that in all the life and death of us, in action or in sleep! Thou laws invisible that permeate them and all, Thou that in all, and over all, and through and under all, incessant! Thou! thou!

“Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,

Allah is all, all, all⁠—is immanent in every life and object,

May-be at many and many-a-more removes—yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.

“

It is the central urge in every atom,

(Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant, Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.”

“It is the central urge in every atom, (Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,) To return to its divine source and origin, however distant, Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception.”

The commonplace I sing;

How cheap is health! how cheap nobility! Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust;

The commonplace I sing;

How cheap is health! how cheap nobility!

Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust;

How cheap is health! how cheap nobility! Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust; The open air I sing, freedom, toleration, (Take here the mainest lesson—less from books—less from the schools,) The common day and night—the common earth and waters, Your farm—your work, trade, occupation,

The democratic wisdom underneath, like solid ground for all.

(Sunday, ⸺—⸺.—Went this forenoon to church. A college professor, Rev. Dr. ⸻, gave us a fine sermon, during which I caught the above words;

… battles, crowds, bridges, wharves, Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy, (I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,) Show’d to me just aloft to the right in the sky-edge, Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.

Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,)

But add, fuse, complete, extend—and celebrate the immortal and the good.

Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils from their formidable masses (even to expose them,)

But add, fuse, complete, extend⁠—and celebrate the immortal and the good.

Haughty this song, its words and scope, To span vast realms of space and time, Evolution—the cumulative—growths and generations.

Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all—war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task,

I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death: To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years— Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

Begun in ripen’d youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all—war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old age.

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:

To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years— Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death:

To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years⁠—

Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.

After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands,

Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print⁠—something lacking,

(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)

After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print—something lacking,

(Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)

Grand is the seen, the light, to me—grand are the sky and stars, Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;

After the countless songs, or long or short, all tongues, all lands, Still something not yet told in poesy’s voice or print—something lacking, (Who knows? the best yet unexpress’d and lacking.)

Grand is the seen, the light, to me⁠—grand are the sky and stars,

Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;

Grand is the seen, the light, to me—grand are the sky and stars, Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;

But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,

Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far—more lasting thou than they.

of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far—more lasting thou than they.

Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,

Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch, Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn, Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;

Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well, Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch, Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn, Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;

Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,

(On earth and in the sea—the universe—the stars there in the heavens,) Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless, And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

Goodbye my Fancy!

Farewell dear mate, dear love!

I’m going away, I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, So Goodbye my Fancy.

Now for my last—let me look back a moment;

The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me,

Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

Now for my last—let me look back a moment; The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud stopping.

Long have we lived, joy’d, caress’d together;

Delightful!—now separation—Goodbye my Fancy.

May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning—so now finally,

Goodbye⁠—and hail! my Fancy.

I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing,

I have abandon’d myself to flights, broad circles. The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess’d me than the canary or mocking-bird.

I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing, I have abandon’d myself to flights, broad circles. The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess’d me than the canary or mocking-bird. I have not felt to warble and trill, however sweetly,

I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy, volition.

In softness, languor, bloom, and growth, Thine eyes, ears, all thy sense—thy loftiest attribute—all that takes cognizance of beauty, Shall rouse and fill—then shall perceive!

Of heroes, history, grand events, premises, myths, poems,

The few drops known must stand for oceans of the unknown,

On this beautiful and thick peopl’d earth, here and there a little specimen put on record, A little of Greeks and Romans, a few Hebrew canticles, a few death odors as from graves, from Egypt— What are they to the long and copious retrospect of …

… this beautiful and thick peopl’d earth, here and there a little specimen put on record, A little of Greeks and Romans, a few Hebrew canticles, a few death odors as from graves, from Egypt— What are they to the long and copious retrospect of antiquity?

One thought ever at the fore⁠—

That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space, All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination.

One thought ever at the fore— That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space,

All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination.

While behind all, firm and erect as ever, Undismay’d amid the rapids—amid the irresistible and deadly urge, Stands a helmsman, with brow elate and strong hand.

… you honest farms, Your million untold manly healthy lives, or East or West, city or country, Your noiseless mothers, sisters, wives, unconscious of their good, Your mass of homes nor poor nor rich, in visions rise—(even your excellent poverties,) Your self-distilling, never-ceasing virtues, self-denials, graces,

Your endless base of deep integrities within, timid but certain,

Your blessings steadily bestow’d, sure as the light, and still, (Plunging to these as a determin’d diver down the deep hidden waters,) These, these to-day I brood upon—all else refusing, these will I con, To-day to these give audience.

… rich, in visions rise—(even your excellent poverties,) Your self-distilling, never-ceasing virtues, self-denials, graces, Your endless base of deep integrities within, timid but certain, Your blessings steadily bestow’d, sure as the light, and still, (Plunging to these as a determin’d diver down the deep hidden waters,)

These, these to-day I brood upon⁠—all else refusing, these will I con,

To-day to these give audience.

… Now for the day and night themselves—the open air, Now for the fields, the seasons, insects, trees—the rain and snow, Where wild bees flitting hum, Or August mulleins grow, or winter’s snowflakes fall, Or stars in the skies roll round— The silent sun and stars.

Full of wickedness, I⁠—of many a smutch’d deed reminiscent⁠—of worse deeds capable,

Yet I look composedly upon nature, drink day and night the joys of life, and await death with perfect equanimity, Because of my tender and boundless love for him I love and because of his boundless love for me.

Full of wickedness, I—of many a smutch’d deed reminiscent—of worse deeds capable,

Yet I look composedly upon nature, drink day and night the joys of life, and await death with perfect equanimity,

Because of my tender and boundless love for him I love and because of his boundless love for me.

(Cf. Stanza 27, “Song of Myself,”)

To be at all⁠—what is better than that?

I think if there were nothing more developed, the clam in its callous shell in the sand were august enough. I am not in any callous shell;

To be at all—what is better than that? I think if there were nothing more developed, the clam in its callous shell in the sand were august enough.

I am not in any callous shell;

I am cased with supple conductors, all over They take every object by the hand, and lead it within me; They are thousands, each one with his entry to himself; They are always watching with their little eyes, from my head to my feet;

To accompany a picture; by request. “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” from the painting by George Inness.

Nay, do not dream, designer dark,

Thou hast portray’d or hit thy theme entire; I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having glimpses of it, Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too.

Nay, do not dream, designer dark, Thou hast portray’d or hit thy theme entire; I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having glimpses of it, Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too.

For I have seen many wounded soldiers die,

After dread suffering—have seen their lives pass off with smiles; And I have watch’d the death-hours of the old; and seen the infant die; The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors; And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty;

I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having glimpses of it, Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too. For I have seen many wounded soldiers die,

After dread suffering⁠—have seen their lives pass off with smiles;

And I have watch’d the death-hours of the old; and seen the infant die; The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors; And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty;

… with meadows, rippling tides, and trees and flowers and grass, And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God’s beautiful eternal right hand, Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at last of all, Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call’d life,

Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.

Intended for first stanza of “Death’s Valley”

… heard, or of any and all true love, or life’s fairest episodes, or sailors’, soldiers’ trying scenes on land or sea, is the résumé of them, or any of them, long afterwards, looking at the actualities away back past, with all their practical excitations gone.

How the soul loves to float amid such reminiscences!

So here I sit gossiping in the early candlelight of old age—I and my book—casting backward glances over our travel’d road.

How the soul loves to float amid such reminiscences!

So here I sit gossiping in the early candlelight of old age⁠—I and my book⁠—casting backward glances over our travel’d road.

After completing, as it were, the journey—(a varied jaunt of years, with many halts and gaps of intervals—or some lengthen’d ship-voyage, wherein more than once the last hour had apparently arrived, and we seem’d certainly going down—yet reaching port in a sufficient way through all …

… comfort of the whole business (after a small band of the dearest friends and upholders ever vouchsafed to man or cause—doubtless all the more faithful and uncompromising—this little phalanx!—for being so few) is that, unstopp’d and unwarp’d by any influence outside the soul within me,

I have had my say entirely my own way, and put it unerringly on record⁠—the value thereof to be decided by time.

In calculating that decision, William O’Connor and Dr. Bucke are far more peremptory than I am.

S. K., Boston, May 28, 1884)—And that solely for publishing it I have been the object of two or three pretty serious special official buffetings—is all probably no more than I ought to have expected.

I had my choice when I commenc’d.

I bid neither for soft eulogies, big money returns, nor the approbation of existing schools and conventions.

Bucke are far more peremptory than I am. Behind all else that can be said, I consider Leaves of Grass and its theory experimental—as, in the deepest sense, I consider our American republic itself to be, with its theory.

(I think I have at least enough philosophy not to be too absolutely certain of anything, or any results.)

In the second place, the volume is a sortie—whether to prove triumphant, and conquer its field of aim and escape and construction, nothing less than a hundred years from now can fully answer.