github.com/scottcagno/storage@v1.8.0/pkg/filesystem/ww.txt (about) 1 1 2 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 3 And what I assume you shall assume, 4 For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 5 6 I loafe and invite my soul, 7 I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. 8 9 My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, 10 Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, 11 I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, 12 Hoping to cease not till death. 13 14 Creeds and schools in abeyance, 15 Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, 16 I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, 17 Nature without check with original energy. 18 19 2 20 Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, 21 I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, 22 The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 23 24 The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, 25 It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, 26 I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, 27 I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 28 29 The smoke of my own breath, 30 Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, 31 My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, 32 The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, 33 The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind, 34 A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, 35 The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, 36 The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, 37 The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. 38 39 Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? 40 Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? 41 Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 42 43 Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, 44 You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) 45 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, 46 You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, 47 You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. 48 49 3 50 I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, 51 But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. 52 53 There was never any more inception than there is now, 54 Nor any more youth or age than there is now, 55 And will never be any more perfection than there is now, 56 Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. 57 58 Urge and urge and urge, 59 Always the procreant urge of the world. 60 61 Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, 62 Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life. 63 64 To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so. 65 66 Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, 67 Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, 68 I and this mystery here we stand. 69 70 Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. 71 72 Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, 73 Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn. 74 75 Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age, 76 Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself. 77 78 Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, 79 Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest. 80 81 I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing; 82 As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread, 83 Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty, 84 Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes, 85 That they turn from gazing after and down the road, 86 And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent, 87 Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead? 88 89 4 90 Trippers and askers surround me, 91 People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, 92 The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new, 93 My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, 94 The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, 95 The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations, 96 Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events; 97 These come to me days and nights and go from me again, 98 But they are not the Me myself. 99 100 Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, 101 Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, 102 Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, 103 Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, 104 Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. 105 106 Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, 107 I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait. 108 109 5 110 I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, 111 And you must not be abased to the other. 112 113 Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, 114 Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, 115 Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice. 116 117 I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, 118 How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me, 119 And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, 120 And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet. 121 122 Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, 123 And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, 124 And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, 125 And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, 126 And that a kelson of the creation is love, 127 And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, 128 And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, 129 And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed. 130 131 6 132 A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 133 How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. 134 135 I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. 136 137 Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, 138 A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, 139 Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? 140 141 Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. 142 143 Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 144 And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, 145 Growing among black folks as among white, 146 Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. 147 148 And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. 149 150 Tenderly will I use you curling grass, 151 It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, 152 It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, 153 It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps, 154 And here you are the mothers’ laps. 155 156 This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, 157 Darker than the colorless beards of old men, 158 Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. 159 160 O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, 161 And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. 162 163 I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, 164 And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. 165 166 What do you think has become of the young and old men? 167 And what do you think has become of the women and children? 168 169 They are alive and well somewhere, 170 The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 171 And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, 172 And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. 173 174 All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, 175 And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 176 177 7 178 Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? 179 I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. 180 181 I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots, 182 And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good, 183 The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. 184 185 I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth, 186 I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, 187 (They do not know how immortal, but I know.) 188 189 Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female, 190 For me those that have been boys and that love women, 191 For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted, 192 For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers, 193 For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears, 194 For me children and the begetters of children. 195 196 Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded, 197 I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no, 198 And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away. 199 200 8 201 The little one sleeps in its cradle, 202 I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. 203 204 The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, 205 I peeringly view them from the top. 206 207 The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, 208 I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen. 209 210 The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders, 211 The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor, 212 The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls, 213 The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs, 214 The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, 215 The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, 216 The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd, 217 The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, 218 What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in fits, 219 What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, 220 What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrain’d by decorum, 221 Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips, 222 I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I depart. 223 224 9 225 The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready, 226 The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon, 227 The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged, 228 The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow. 229 230 I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load, 231 I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other, 232 I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy, 233 And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps. 234 235 10 236 Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, 237 Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee, 238 In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, 239 Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game, 240 Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my side. 241 242 The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, 243 244 My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck. 245 246 The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, 247 I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time; 248 You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle. 249 250 I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl, 251 Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, 252 On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand, 253 She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet. 254 255 The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside, 256 I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile, 257 Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak, 258 And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, 259 And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet, 260 And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes, 261 And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness, 262 And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles; 263 He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north, 264 I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner. 265 266 11 267 Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, 268 Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; 269 Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome. 270 271 She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, 272 She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window. 273 274 Which of the young men does she like the best? 275 Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her. 276 277 Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, 278 You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room. 279 280 Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, 281 The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. 282 283 The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair, 284 Little streams pass’d all over their bodies. 285 286 An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies, 287 It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. 288 289 The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, 290 They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, 291 They do not think whom they souse with spray. 292 293 12 294 The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market, 295 I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down. 296 297 Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil, 298 Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in the fire. 299 300 From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements, 301 The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms, 302 Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure, 303 They do not hasten, each man hits in his place. 304 305 13 306 The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain, 307 The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece, 308 His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band, 309 His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead, 310 The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs. 311 312 I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there, 313 I go with the team also. 314 315 In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing, 316 To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing, 317 Absorbing all to myself and for this song. 318 319 Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? 320 It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life. 321 322 My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble, 323 They rise together, they slowly circle around. 324 325 I believe in those wing’d purposes, 326 And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me, 327 And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional, 328 And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else, 329 And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me, 330 And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me. 331 332 14 333 The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night, 334 Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation, 335 The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close, 336 Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky. 337 338 The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, 339 The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, 340 The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings, 341 I see in them and myself the same old law. 342 343 The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections, 344 They scorn the best I can do to relate them. 345 346 I am enamour’d of growing out-doors, 347 Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, 348 Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses, 349 I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. 350 351 What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, 352 Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, 353 Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, 354 Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, 355 Scattering it freely forever. 356 357 15 358 The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, 359 The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, 360 The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner, 361 The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm, 362 The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready, 363 364 The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, 365 The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar, 366 The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, 367 The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye, 368 The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case, 369 (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bed-room;) 370 The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, 371 He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript; 372 The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table, 373 What is removed drops horribly in a pail; 374 The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, 375 The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass, 376 The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him;) 377 The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race, 378 The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, 379 Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; 380 The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, 381 As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle, 382 The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, 383 The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to the musical rain, 384 The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron, 385 The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale, 386 The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways, 387 As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers, 388 The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots, 389 The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child, 390 The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill, 391 The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold, 392 The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread, 393 The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, 394 The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions, 395 The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!) 396 The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray, 397 The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent;) 398 The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly, 399 The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips, 400 The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, 401 The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other, 402 (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;) 403 The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries, 404 On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms, 405 The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold, 406 The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle, 407 As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change, 408 The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar, 409 In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers; 410 Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather’d, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!) 411 Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground; 412 Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface, 413 The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe, 414 Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees, 415 Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas, 416 Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw, 417 418 Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them, 419 In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day’s sport, 420 The city sleeps and the country sleeps, 421 The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, 422 The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; 423 And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, 424 And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, 425 And of these one and all I weave the song of myself. 426 427 16 428 I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, 429 Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, 430 Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, 431 Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine, 432 One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same, 433 A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live, 434 A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, 435 A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian, 436 A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye; 437 At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland, 438 At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking, 439 At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch, 440 Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving their big proportions,) 441 Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat, 442 A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest, 443 A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons, 444 Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion, 445 A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker, 446 Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. 447 448 I resist any thing better than my own diversity, 449 Breathe the air but leave plenty after me, 450 And am not stuck up, and am in my place. 451 452 (The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place, 453 The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place, 454 The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.) 455 456 17 457 These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, 458 If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing, 459 If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, 460 If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. 461 462 This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, 463 This the common air that bathes the globe. 464 465 18 466 With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, 467 I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons. 468 469 Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? 470 I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. 471 472 I beat and pound for the dead, 473 I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. 474 475 Vivas to those who have fail’d! 476 And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! 477 And to those themselves who sank in the sea! 478 And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes! 479 And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known! 480 481 19 482 This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger, 483 It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all, 484 I will not have a single person slighted or left away, 485 The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited, 486 The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited; 487 There shall be no difference between them and the rest. 488 489 This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair, 490 This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, 491 This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, 492 This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again. 493 494 Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? 495 Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has. 496 497 Do you take it I would astonish? 498 Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods? 499 Do I astonish more than they? 500 501 This hour I tell things in confidence, 502 I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. 503 504 20 505 Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; 506 How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? 507 508 What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you? 509 510 All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, 511 Else it were time lost listening to me. 512 513 I do not snivel that snivel the world over, 514 That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth. 515 516 Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth-remov’d, 517 I wear my hat as I please indoors or out. 518 519 Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious? 520 521 Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close, 522 I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. 523 524 In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, 525 And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. 526 527 I know I am solid and sound, 528 To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, 529 All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. 530 531 I know I am deathless, 532 I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass, 533 I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. 534 535 I know I am august, 536 I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, 537 I see that the elementary laws never apologize, 538 (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.) 539 540 I exist as I am, that is enough, 541 If no other in the world be aware I sit content, 542 And if each and all be aware I sit content. 543 544 One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself, 545 And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years, 546 I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. 547 548 My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, 549 I laugh at what you call dissolution, 550 And I know the amplitude of time. 551 552 21 553 I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, 554 The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me, 555 The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue. 556 557 I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, 558 And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, 559 And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. 560 561 I chant the chant of dilation or pride, 562 We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, 563 I show that size is only development. 564 565 Have you outstript the rest? are you the President? 566 It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on. 567 568 I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, 569 I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. 570 571 Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night! 572 Night of south winds—night of the large few stars! 573 Still nodding night—mad naked summer night. 574 575 Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth! 576 Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 577 Earth of departed sunset—earth of the mountains misty-topt! 578 Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! 579 Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! 580 Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! 581 Far-swooping elbow’d earth—rich apple-blossom’d earth! 582 Smile, for your lover comes. 583 584 Prodigal, you have given me love—therefore I to you give love! 585 O unspeakable passionate love. 586 587 22 588 You sea! I resign myself to you also—I guess what you mean, 589 I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, 590 I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, 591 We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, 592 Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, 593 Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you. 594 595 Sea of stretch’d ground-swells, 596 Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 597 Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell’d yet always-ready graves, 598 Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, 599 I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases. 600 601 Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and conciliation, 602 Extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others’ arms. 603 604 I am he attesting sympathy, 605 (Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?) 606 607 I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. 608 609 What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? 610 Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, 611 My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejecter’s gait, 612 I moisten the roots of all that has grown. 613 614 Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy? 615 Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work’d over and rectified? 616 617 I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance, 618 Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine, 619 Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start. 620 621 This minute that comes to me over the past decillions, 622 There is no better than it and now. 623 624 What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder, 625 The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel. 626 627 23 628 Endless unfolding of words of ages! 629 And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse. 630 631 A word of the faith that never balks, 632 Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. 633 634 It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, 635 That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. 636 637 I accept Reality and dare not question it, 638 Materialism first and last imbuing. 639 640 Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration! 641 Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac, 642 This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches, 643 These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. 644 This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. 645 646 Gentlemen, to you the first honors always! 647 Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, 648 I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. 649 650 Less the reminders of properties told my words, 651 And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, 652 And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, 653 And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire. 654 655 24 656 Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, 657 Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, 658 No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, 659 No more modest than immodest. 660 661 Unscrew the locks from the doors! 662 Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! 663 664 Whoever degrades another degrades me, 665 And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. 666 667 Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. 668 669 I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, 670 By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. 671 672 Through me many long dumb voices, 673 Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, 674 Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, 675 Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, 676 And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff, 677 And of the rights of them the others are down upon, 678 Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, 679 Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung. 680 681 Through me forbidden voices, 682 Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil, 683 Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d. 684 685 I do not press my fingers across my mouth, 686 I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, 687 Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. 688 689 I believe in the flesh and the appetites, 690 Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. 691 692 Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from, 693 The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, 694 This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. 695 696 If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it, 697 Translucent mould of me it shall be you! 698 Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you! 699 Firm masculine colter it shall be you! 700 Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you! 701 You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life! 702 Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you! 703 My brain it shall be your occult convolutions! 704 Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you! 705 Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you! 706 Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you! 707 Sun so generous it shall be you! 708 Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you! 709 You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you! 710 Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! 711 Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! 712 Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever touch’d, it shall be you. 713 714 I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, 715 Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy, 716 I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish, 717 Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again. 718 719 That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be, 720 A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. 721 722 To behold the day-break! 723 The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows, 724 The air tastes good to my palate. 725 726 Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding, 727 Scooting obliquely high and low. 728 729 Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs, 730 Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven. 731 732 The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction, 733 The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head, 734 The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master! 735 736 25 737 Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, 738 If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. 739 740 We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, 741 We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak. 742 743 My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, 744 With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. 745 746 Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, 747 It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, 748 Walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then? 749 750 Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, 751 Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded? 752 Waiting in gloom, protected by frost, 753 The dirt receding before my prophetical screams, 754 I underlying causes to balance them at last, 755 My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, 756 Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.) 757 758 My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, 759 Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me, 760 I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. 761 762 Writing and talk do not prove me, 763 I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face, 764 With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic. 765 766 26 767 Now I will do nothing but listen, 768 To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it. 769 770 I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals, 771 I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, 772 I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, 773 Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, 774 Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals, 775 The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, 776 The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence, 777 The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters, 778 The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color’d lights, 779 The steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, 780 The slow march play’d at the head of the association marching two and two, 781 (They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.) 782 783 I hear the violoncello, (’tis the young man’s heart’s complaint,) 784 I hear the key’d cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, 785 It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast. 786 787 I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, 788 Ah this indeed is music—this suits me. 789 790 A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me, 791 The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. 792 793 I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?) 794 The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, 795 It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them, 796 It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves, 797 I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, 798 Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, 799 800 At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, 801 And that we call Being. 802 803 27 804 To be in any form, what is that? 805 (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,) 806 If nothing lay more develop’d the quahaug in its callous shell were enough. 807 808 Mine is no callous shell, 809 I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop, 810 They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. 811 812 I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, 813 To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand. 814 815 28 816 Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, 817 Flames and ether making a rush for my veins, 818 Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, 819 My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself, 820 On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, 821 Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, 822 Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, 823 Depriving me of my best as for a purpose, 824 Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, 825 Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields, 826 Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, 827 They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me, 828 No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger, 829 Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while, 830 Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me. 831 832 The sentries desert every other part of me, 833 They have left me helpless to a red marauder, 834 They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. 835 836 I am given up by traitors, 837 I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor, 838 I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there. 839 840 You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat, 841 Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me. 842 843 29 844 Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d touch! 845 Did it make you ache so, leaving me? 846 847 Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan, 848 Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward. 849 850 Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital, 851 Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden. 852 853 30 854 All truths wait in all things, 855 They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, 856 They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, 857 The insignificant is as big to me as any, 858 (What is less or more than a touch?) 859 860 Logic and sermons never convince, 861 The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. 862 863 (Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, 864 Only what nobody denies is so.) 865 866 A minute and a drop of me settle my brain, 867 I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps, 868 And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman, 869 And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other, 870 And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific, 871 And until one and all shall delight us, and we them. 872 873 31 874 I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, 875 And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, 876 And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest, 877 And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, 878 And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, 879 And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, 880 And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. 881 882 I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, 883 And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over, 884 And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, 885 But call any thing back again when I desire it. 886 887 In vain the speeding or shyness, 888 In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, 889 In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones, 890 In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, 891 In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, 892 In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, 893 In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, 894 In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, 895 In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador, 896 I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. 897 898 32 899 I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, 900 I stand and look at them long and long. 901 902 They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 903 They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 904 They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, 905 Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, 906 Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, 907 Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. 908 909 So they show their relations to me and I accept them, 910 They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession. 911 912 I wonder where they get those tokens, 913 Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them? 914 915 Myself moving forward then and now and forever, 916 Gathering and showing more always and with velocity, 917 Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them, 918 Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers, 919 Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms. 920 921 A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses, 922 Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, 923 Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, 924 Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving. 925 926 His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him, 927 His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return. 928 929 I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion, 930 Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them? 931 Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you. 932 933 33 934 Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess’d at, 935 What I guess’d when I loaf’d on the grass, 936 What I guess’d while I lay alone in my bed, 937 And again as I walk’d the beach under the paling stars of the morning. 938 939 My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, 940 I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, 941 I am afoot with my vision. 942 943 By the city’s quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumbermen, 944 Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed, 945 Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests, 946 Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase, 947 Scorch’d ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river, 948 Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter, 949 Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish, 950 Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou, 951 Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail; 952 Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower’d cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field, 953 Over the sharp-peak’d farm house, with its scallop’d scum and slender shoots from the gutters, 954 Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav’d corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax, 955 Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest, 956 Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; 957 Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs, 958 Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush, 959 Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot, 960 Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great gold-bug drops through the dark, 961 Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow, 962 Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides, 963 Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters; 964 Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders, 965 Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs, 966 Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it myself and looking composedly down,) 967 Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand, 968 Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it, 969 Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke, 970 Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water, 971 Where the half-burn’d brig is riding on unknown currents, 972 Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below; 973 Where the dense-starr’d flag is borne at the head of the regiments, 974 Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island, 975 Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance, 976 Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside, 977 Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball, 978 At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter, 979 At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw, 980 At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find, 981 At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings; 982 Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps, 983 Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter’d, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel, 984 Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen, 985 Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks, 986 Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie, 987 Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near, 988 Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding, 989 Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh, 990 Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds, 991 Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out, 992 Where burial coaches enter the arch’d gates of a cemetery, 993 Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees, 994 Where the yellow-crown’d heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs, 995 Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon, 996 Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well, 997 Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves, 998 Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs, 999 Through the gymnasium, through the curtain’d saloon, through the office or public hall; 1000 Pleas’d with the native and pleas’d with the foreign, pleas’d with the new and old, 1001 Pleas’d with the homely woman as well as the handsome, 1002 Pleas’d with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously, 1003 Pleas’d with the tune of the choir of the whitewash’d church, 1004 Pleas’d with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, impress’d seriously at the camp-meeting; 1005 Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass, 1006 Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn’d up to the clouds, or down a lane or along the beach, 1007 My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle; 1008 Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy, (behind me he rides at the drape of the day,) 1009 Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the moccasin print, 1010 By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient, 1011 Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle; 1012 Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure, 1013 Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any, 1014 Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him, 1015 Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while, 1016 Walking the old hills of Judæa with the beautiful gentle God by my side, 1017 Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, 1018 Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles, 1019 Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest, 1020 Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly, 1021 Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, 1022 Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, 1023 I tread day and night such roads. 1024 1025 I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, 1026 And look at quintillions ripen’d and look at quintillions green. 1027 1028 I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, 1029 My course runs below the soundings of plummets. 1030 1031 I help myself to material and immaterial, 1032 No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me. 1033 1034 I anchor my ship for a little while only, 1035 My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. 1036 1037 I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue. 1038 1039 I ascend to the foretruck, 1040 I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest, 1041 We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough, 1042 Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty, 1043 The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions, 1044 The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them, 1045 We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged, 1046 We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution, 1047 Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city, 1048 The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe. 1049 1050 I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires, 1051 I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself, 1052 I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips. 1053 1054 My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs, 1055 They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d. 1056 1057 I understand the large hearts of heroes, 1058 The courage of present times and all times, 1059 How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm, 1060 How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, 1061 And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you; 1062 How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and would not give it up, 1063 How he saved the drifting company at last, 1064 How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves, 1065 How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men; 1066 All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, 1067 I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there. 1068 1069 The disdain and calmness of martyrs, 1070 The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on, 1071 The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover’d with sweat, 1072 The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets, 1073 All these I feel or am. 1074 1075 I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, 1076 Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, 1077 I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my skin, 1078 I fall on the weeds and stones, 1079 The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, 1080 Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks. 1081 1082 Agonies are one of my changes of garments, 1083 I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, 1084 My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. 1085 1086 I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken, 1087 Tumbling walls buried me in their debris, 1088 Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, 1089 I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels, 1090 They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth. 1091 1092 I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, 1093 Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy, 1094 White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps, 1095 The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. 1096 1097 Distant and dead resuscitate, 1098 They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself. 1099 1100 I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment, 1101 I am there again. 1102 1103 Again the long roll of the drummers, 1104 Again the attacking cannon, mortars, 1105 Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive. 1106 1107 I take part, I see and hear the whole, 1108 The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim’d shots, 1109 The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip, 1110 Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs, 1111 The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion, 1112 The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. 1113 1114 Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand, 1115 He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments. 1116 1117 34 1118 Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth, 1119 (I tell not the fall of Alamo, 1120 Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, 1121 The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,) 1122 ’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men. 1123 1124 Retreating they had form’d in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks, 1125 Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy’s, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance, 1126 Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone, 1127 They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing and seal, gave up their arms and march’d back prisoners of war. 1128 1129 They were the glory of the race of rangers, 1130 Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship, 1131 Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate, 1132 Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters, 1133 Not a single one over thirty years of age. 1134 1135 The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer, 1136 The work commenced about five o’clock and was over by eight. 1137 1138 None obey’d the command to kneel, 1139 Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight, 1140 A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together, 1141 The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there, 1142 Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away, 1143 These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the blunts of muskets, 1144 A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more came to release him, 1145 The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood. 1146 1147 At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies; 1148 That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men. 1149 1150 35 1151 Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? 1152 Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? 1153 List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me. 1154 1155 Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,) 1156 His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; 1157 Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us. 1158 1159 We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch’d, 1160 My captain lash’d fast with his own hands. 1161 1162 We had receiv’d some eighteen pound shots under the water, 1163 On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. 1164 1165 Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark, 1166 Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported, 1167 The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. 1168 1169 The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels, 1170 They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. 1171 1172 Our frigate takes fire, 1173 The other asks if we demand quarter? 1174 If our colors are struck and the fighting done? 1175 1176 Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain, 1177 We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting. 1178 1179 Only three guns are in use, 1180 One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s mainmast, 1181 Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. 1182 1183 The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top, 1184 They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. 1185 1186 Not a moment’s cease, 1187 The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine. 1188 1189 One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. 1190 1191 Serene stands the little captain, 1192 He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, 1193 His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns. 1194 1195 Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us. 1196 1197 36 1198 Stretch’d and still lies the midnight, 1199 Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness, 1200 Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer’d, 1201 The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet, 1202 Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin, 1203 The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl’d whiskers, 1204 The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below, 1205 The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty, 1206 Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars, 1207 Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves, 1208 Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent, 1209 A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, 1210 Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, 1211 The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, 1212 Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan, 1213 These so, these irretrievable. 1214 1215 37 1216 You laggards there on guard! look to your arms! 1217 In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d! 1218 Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering, 1219 See myself in prison shaped like another man, 1220 And feel the dull unintermitted pain. 1221 1222 For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, 1223 It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night. 1224 1225 Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side, 1226 (I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.) 1227 1228 Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced. 1229 1230 Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp, 1231 My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat. 1232 1233 Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them, 1234 I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg. 1235 1236 38 1237 Enough! enough! enough! 1238 Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back! 1239 Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping, 1240 I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake. 1241 1242 That I could forget the mockers and insults! 1243 That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers! 1244 That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. 1245 1246 I remember now, 1247 I resume the overstaid fraction, 1248 The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves, 1249 Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me. 1250 1251 I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average unending procession, 1252 Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines, 1253 Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth, 1254 The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years. 1255 1256 Eleves, I salute you! come forward! 1257 Continue your annotations, continue your questionings. 1258 1259 39 1260 The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? 1261 Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it? 1262 1263 Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian? 1264 Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California? 1265 The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea? 1266 1267 Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him, 1268 They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. 1269 1270 Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d head, laughter, and naiveté, 1271 Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations, 1272 They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers, 1273 They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes. 1274 1275 40 1276 Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over! 1277 You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also. 1278 1279 Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands, 1280 Say, old top-knot, what do you want? 1281 1282 Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot, 1283 And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot, 1284 And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days. 1285 1286 Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity, 1287 When I give I give myself. 1288 1289 You there, impotent, loose in the knees, 1290 Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you, 1291 Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets, 1292 I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare, 1293 And any thing I have I bestow. 1294 1295 I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me, 1296 You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you. 1297 1298 To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean, 1299 On his right cheek I put the family kiss, 1300 And in my soul I swear I never will deny him. 1301 1302 On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes. 1303 (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.) 1304 1305 To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door. 1306 Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed, 1307 Let the physician and the priest go home. 1308 1309 I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will, 1310 O despairer, here is my neck, 1311 By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me. 1312 1313 I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up, 1314 Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force, 1315 Lovers of me, bafflers of graves. 1316 1317 Sleep—I and they keep guard all night, 1318 Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you, 1319 I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself, 1320 And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so. 1321 1322 41 1323 I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs, 1324 And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help. 1325 1326 I heard what was said of the universe, 1327 Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; 1328 It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all? 1329 1330 Magnifying and applying come I, 1331 Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters, 1332 Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah, 1333 Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson, 1334 Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha, 1335 In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved, 1336 With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image, 1337 Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, 1338 Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days, 1339 (They bore mites as for unfledg’d birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,) 1340 Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see, 1341 Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house, 1342 Putting higher claims for him there with his roll’d-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel, 1343 Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, 1344 Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, 1345 Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, 1346 Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; 1347 By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, 1348 Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg’d out at their waists, 1349 The snag-tooth’d hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come, 1350 Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery; 1351 What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then, 1352 The bull and the bug never worshipp’d half enough, 1353 Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream’d, 1354 The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, 1355 The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious; 1356 By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator, 1357 Putting myself here and now to the ambush’d womb of the shadows. 1358 1359 42 1360 A call in the midst of the crowd, 1361 My own voice, orotund sweeping and final. 1362 1363 Come my children, 1364 Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, 1365 Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on the reeds within. 1366 1367 Easily written loose-finger’d chords—I feel the thrum of your climax and close. 1368 1369 My head slues round on my neck, 1370 Music rolls, but not from the organ, 1371 Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine. 1372 1373 Ever the hard unsunk ground, 1374 Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides, 1375 Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real, 1376 Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts, 1377 Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth, 1378 Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life, 1379 Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death. 1380 1381 Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking, 1382 To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, 1383 Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, 1384 Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, 1385 A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming. 1386 1387 This is the city and I am one of the citizens, 1388 Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, 1389 The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate. 1390 1391 The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail’d coats, 1392 I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,) 1393 I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, 1394 What I do and say the same waits for them, 1395 Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them. 1396 1397 I know perfectly well my own egotism, 1398 Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, 1399 And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself. 1400 1401 Not words of routine this song of mine, 1402 But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring; 1403 This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy? 1404 The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms? 1405 The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers? 1406 In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes? 1407 The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way? 1408 The saints and sages in history—but you yourself? 1409 Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain, 1410 And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life? 1411 1412 43 1413 I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, 1414 My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, 1415 Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, 1416 Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years, 1417 Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, 1418 Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis, 1419 Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, 1420 Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist, 1421 Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran, 1422 Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum, 1423 Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine, 1424 To the mass kneeling or the puritan’s prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew, 1425 Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me, 1426 Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land, 1427 Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits. 1428 1429 One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey. 1430 1431 Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded, 1432 Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten’d, atheistical, 1433 I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. 1434 1435 How the flukes splash! 1436 How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood! 1437 1438 Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers, 1439 I take my place among you as much as among any, 1440 The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same, 1441 And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same. 1442 1443 I do not know what is untried and afterward, 1444 But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail. 1445 1446 Each who passes is consider’d, each who stops is consider’d, not a single one can it fail. 1447 1448 It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried, 1449 Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side, 1450 Nor the little child that peep’d in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again, 1451 Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall, 1452 Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder, 1453 Nor the numberless slaughter’d and wreck’d, nor the brutish koboo call’d the ordure of humanity, 1454 Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in, 1455 Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth, 1456 Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, 1457 Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known. 1458 1459 44 1460 It is time to explain myself—let us stand up. 1461 1462 What is known I strip away, 1463 I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. 1464 1465 The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate? 1466 1467 We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, 1468 There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. 1469 1470 Births have brought us richness and variety, 1471 And other births will bring us richness and variety. 1472 1473 I do not call one greater and one smaller, 1474 That which fills its period and place is equal to any. 1475 1476 Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? 1477 I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me, 1478 All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation, 1479 (What have I to do with lamentation?) 1480 1481 I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be. 1482 1483 My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, 1484 On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, 1485 All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount. 1486 1487 Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, 1488 Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there, 1489 I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, 1490 And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. 1491 1492 Long I was hugg’d close—long and long. 1493 1494 Immense have been the preparations for me, 1495 Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me. 1496 1497 Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, 1498 For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, 1499 They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. 1500 1501 Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, 1502 My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. 1503 1504 For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 1505 The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 1506 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 1507 Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. 1508 1509 All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me, 1510 Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. 1511 1512 45 1513 O span of youth! ever-push’d elasticity! 1514 O manhood, balanced, florid and full. 1515 1516 My lovers suffocate me, 1517 Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, 1518 Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, 1519 Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head, 1520 Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush, 1521 Lighting on every moment of my life, 1522 Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses, 1523 Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine. 1524 1525 Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days! 1526 1527 Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself, 1528 And the dark hush promulges as much as any. 1529 1530 I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, 1531 And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. 1532 1533 Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, 1534 Outward and outward and forever outward. 1535 1536 My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels, 1537 He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, 1538 And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them. 1539 1540 There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, 1541 If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run, 1542 We should surely bring up again where we now stand, 1543 And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther. 1544 1545 A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient, 1546 They are but parts, any thing is but a part. 1547 1548 See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, 1549 Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. 1550 1551 My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, 1552 The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms, 1553 The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. 1554 1555 46 1556 I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured. 1557 1558 I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!) 1559 My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods, 1560 No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, 1561 I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 1562 I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange, 1563 But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, 1564 My left hand hooking you round the waist, 1565 My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. 1566 1567 Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, 1568 You must travel it for yourself. 1569 1570 It is not far, it is within reach, 1571 Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, 1572 Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land. 1573 1574 Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth, 1575 Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. 1576 1577 If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip, 1578 And in due time you shall repay the same service to me, 1579 For after we start we never lie by again. 1580 1581 This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven, 1582 And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill’d and satisfied then? 1583 And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond. 1584 1585 You are also asking me questions and I hear you, 1586 I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself. 1587 1588 Sit a while dear son, 1589 Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, 1590 But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence. 1591 1592 Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams, 1593 Now I wash the gum from your eyes, 1594 You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life. 1595 1596 Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, 1597 Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, 1598 To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair. 1599 1600 47 1601 I am the teacher of athletes, 1602 He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own, 1603 He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. 1604 1605 The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right, 1606 Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, 1607 Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, 1608 Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts, 1609 First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull’s eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo, 1610 Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over all latherers, 1611 And those well-tann’d to those that keep out of the sun. 1612 1613 I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me? 1614 I follow you whoever you are from the present hour, 1615 My words itch at your ears till you understand them. 1616 1617 I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat, 1618 (It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you, 1619 Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.) 1620 1621 I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house, 1622 And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air. 1623 1624 If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore, 1625 The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key, 1626 The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words. 1627 1628 No shutter’d room or school can commune with me, 1629 But roughs and little children better than they. 1630 1631 The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well, 1632 The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day, 1633 The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice, 1634 In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen and love them. 1635 1636 The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine, 1637 On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them, 1638 On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me. 1639 1640 My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his blanket, 1641 The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon, 1642 The young mother and old mother comprehend me, 1643 The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are, 1644 They and all would resume what I have told them. 1645 1646 48 1647 I have said that the soul is not more than the body, 1648 And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, 1649 And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is, 1650 And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, 1651 And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, 1652 And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, 1653 And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, 1654 And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe, 1655 And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. 1656 1657 And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, 1658 For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, 1659 (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.) 1660 1661 I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, 1662 Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. 1663 1664 Why should I wish to see God better than this day? 1665 I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, 1666 In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, 1667 I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name, 1668 And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, 1669 Others will punctually come for ever and ever. 1670 1671 49 1672 And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me. 1673 1674 To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes, 1675 I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting, 1676 I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors, 1677 And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape. 1678 1679 And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, 1680 I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, 1681 I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of melons. 1682 1683 And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, 1684 (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.) 1685 1686 I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven, 1687 O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and promotions, 1688 If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing? 1689 1690 Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest, 1691 Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight, 1692 Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck, 1693 Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs. 1694 1695 I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night, 1696 I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected, 1697 And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small. 1698 1699 50 1700 There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me. 1701 1702 Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes, 1703 I sleep—I sleep long. 1704 1705 I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid, 1706 It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. 1707 1708 Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, 1709 To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. 1710 1711 Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters. 1712 1713 Do you see O my brothers and sisters? 1714 It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness. 1715 1716 51 1717 The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them, 1718 And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. 1719 1720 Listener up there! what have you to confide to me? 1721 Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, 1722 (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) 1723 1724 Do I contradict myself? 1725 Very well then I contradict myself, 1726 (I am large, I contain multitudes.) 1727 1728 I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab. 1729 1730 Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper? 1731 Who wishes to walk with me? 1732 1733 Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late? 1734 1735 52 1736 The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. 1737 1738 I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, 1739 I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. 1740 1741 The last scud of day holds back for me, 1742 It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, 1743 It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. 1744 1745 I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, 1746 I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. 1747 1748 I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, 1749 If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. 1750 1751 You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, 1752 But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, 1753 And filter and fibre your blood. 1754 1755 Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, 1756 Missing me one place search another, 1757 I stop somewhere waiting for you.