Back Aa

Leaves of Grass

<h2> Warble for Lilac-Time </h2> Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,) Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,) Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air, Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes, Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings, The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor, Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above, All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running, The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making, The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted, With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset, Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate, The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts, For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it? Thou, soul, unloosen'd—the restlessness after I know not what; Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away! O if one could but fly like a bird! O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship! To glide with thee O soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters; Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew, The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves, Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence, Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere, To grace the bush I love—to sing with the birds, A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence. <h2> Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870] </h2> 1 What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire? The life thou lived'st we know not, But that thou walk'dst thy years in barter, 'mid the haunts of brokers, Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory. 2 Silent, my soul, With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder'd, Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes. While through the interior vistas, Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,) Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes, Spiritual projections. In one, among the city streets a laborer's home appear'd, After his day's work done, cleanly, sweet-air'd, the gaslight burning, The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove. In one, the sacred parturition scene, A happy painless mother birth'd a perfect child. In one, at a bounteous morning meal, Sat peaceful parents with contented sons. In one, by twos and threes, young people, Hundreds concentring, walk'd the paths and streets and roads, Toward a tall-domed school. In one a trio beautiful, Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter's daughter, sat, Chatting and sewing. In one, along a suite of noble rooms, 'Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes, Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old, Reading, conversing. All, all the shows of laboring life, City and country, women's, men's and children's, Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy, Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room, Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college, The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught, The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father'd and mother'd, The hungry fed, the houseless housed; (The intentions perfect and divine, The workings, details, haply human.) 3 O thou within this tomb, From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver, Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth, Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides. Nor by your streams alone, you rivers, By you, your banks Connecticut, By you and all your teeming life old Thames, By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you Patapsco, You Hudson, you endless Mississippi—nor you alone, But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory. <h2> Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait] </h2> 1 Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask, These lights and shades, this drama of the whole, This common curtain of the face contain'd in me for me, in you for you, in each for each, (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—0 heaven! The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!) This glaze of God's serenest purest sky, This film of Satan's seething pit, This heart's geography's map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea; Out from the convolutions of this globe, This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars, This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe, Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;) These burin'd eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time, To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate, To you whoe'er you are—a look. 2 A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war, Of youth long sped and middle age declining, (As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second, Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,) Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn, As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open'd window, Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet, To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine, Then travel travel on. <h2> Vocalism </h2> 1 Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine power to speak words; Are you full-lung'd and limber-lipp'd from long trial? from vigorous practice? from physique? Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they? Come duly to the divine power to speak words? For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship, procreation, prudence, and nakedness, After treading ground and breasting river and lake, After a loosen'd throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races, after knowledge, freedom, crimes, After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing obstructions, After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man, woman, the divine power to speak words; Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all—none refuse, all attend, Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities, hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in close ranks, They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the mouth of that man or that woman. 2 O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices? Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe. All waits for the right voices; Where is the practis'd and perfect organ? where is the develop'd soul? For I see every word utter'd thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms. I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering forever ready in all words. <h2> To Him That Was Crucified </h2> My spirit to yours dear brother, Do not mind because many sounding your name do not understand you, I do not sound your name, but I understand you, I specify you with joy O my comrade to salute you, and to salute those who are with you, before and since, and those to come also, That we all labor together transmitting the same charge and succession, We few equals indifferent of lands, indifferent of times, We, enclosers of all continents, all castes, allowers of all theologies, Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men, We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but reject not the disputers nor any thing that is asserted, We hear the bawling and din, we are reach'd at by divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every side, They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my comrade, Yet we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over, journeying up and down till we make our ineffaceable mark upon time and the diverse eras, Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and women of races, ages to come, may prove brethren and lovers as we are. <h2> You Felons on Trial in Courts </h2> You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain'd and handcuff'd with iron, Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison? Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain'd with iron, or my ankles with iron? You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms, Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself? O culpable! I acknowledge—I expose! (O admirers, praise not me—compliment not me—you make me wince, I see what you do not—I know what you do not.) Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch'd and choked, Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell's tides continually run, Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me, I walk with delinquents with passionate love, I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself, And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself? <h2> Laws for Creations </h2> Laws for creations, For strong artists and leaders, for fresh broods of teachers and perfect literats for America, For noble savans and coming musicians. All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world, There shall be no subject too pronounced—all works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections. What do you suppose creation is? What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior? What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself? And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean? And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws? <h2> To a Common Prostitute </h2> Be composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me, And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come. Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me. <h2> I Was Looking a Long While </h2> I was looking a long while for Intentions, For a clew to the history of the past for myself, and for these chants—and now I have found it, It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject,) It is no more in the legends than in all else, It is in the present—it is this earth to-day, It is in Democracy—(the purport and aim of all the past,) It is the life of one man or one woman to-day—the average man of to-day, It is in languages, social customs, literatures, arts, It is in the broad show of artificial things, ships, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, All for the modern—all for the average man of to-day. <h2> Thought </h2> Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; (To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls, So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked, And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots, And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more, And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.) <h2> Miracles </h2> Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. To me the sea is a continual miracle, The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there? <h2> Sparkles from the Wheel </h2> Where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on the livelong day, Withdrawn I join a group of children watching, I pause aside with them. By the curb toward the edge of the flagging, A knife-grinder works at his wheel sharpening a great knife, Bending over he carefully holds it to the stone, by foot and knee, With measur'd tread he turns rapidly, as he presses with light but firm hand, Forth issue then in copious golden jets, Sparkles from the wheel. The scene and all its belongings, how they seize and affect me, The sad sharp-chinn'd old man with worn clothes and broad shoulder-band of leather, Myself effusing and fluid, a phantom curiously floating, now here absorb'd and arrested, The group, (an unminded point set in a vast surrounding,) The attentive, quiet children, the loud, proud, restive base of the streets, The low hoarse purr of the whirling stone, the light-press'd blade, Diffusing, dropping, sideways-darting, in tiny showers of gold, Sparkles from the wheel. <h2> To a Pupil </h2> Is reform needed? is it through you? The greater the reform needed, the greater the Personality you need to accomplish it. You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet? Do you not see how it would serve to have such a body and soul that when you enter the crowd an atmosphere of desire and command enters with you, and every one is impress'd with your Personality? O the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, dear friend, if need be give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not till you rivet and publish yourself of your own Personality. <h2> Unfolded out of the Folds </h2> Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded, Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the superbest man of the earth, Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man, Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be form'd of perfect body, Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;) Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love, Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man, Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain come all the folds of the man's brain, duly obedient, Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded, Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy; A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself. <h2> What Am I After All </h2> What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear—it never tires me. To you your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name? <h2> Kosmos </h2> Who includes diversity and is Nature, Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also, Who has not look'd forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing, Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover, Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the aesthetic or intellectual, Who having consider'd the body finds all its organs and parts good, Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories, The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States; Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons, Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. <h2> Others May Praise What They Like </h2> Others may praise what they like; But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing in art or aught else, Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this river, also the western prairie-scent, And exudes it all again. <h2> Who Learns My Lesson Complete? </h2> Who learns my lesson complete? Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer, Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy—draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson—it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another, and every one to another still. The great laws take and effuse without argument, I am of the same style, for I am their friend, I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams. I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things, They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen. I cannot say to any person what I hear—I cannot say it to myself— it is very wonderful. It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or the untruth of a single second, I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor plann'd and built one thing after another as an architect plans and builds a house. I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else. Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful, And pass'd from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters to articulate and walk—all this is equally wonderful. And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful, And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just as wonderful. And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful. <h2> Tests </h2> All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches themselves; For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception. <h2> The Torch </h2> On my Northwest coast in the midst of the night a fishermen's group stands watching, Out on the lake that expands before them, others are spearing salmon, The canoe, a dim shadowy thing, moves across the black water, Bearing a torch ablaze at the prow. <h2> O Star of France [1870-71] </h2> O star of France, The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the gale, a mastless hulk, And 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd crowds, Nor helm nor helmsman. Dim smitten star, Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes, The struggle and the daring, rage divine for liberty, Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthusiast's dreams of brotherhood, Of terror to the tyrant and the priest. Star crucified—by traitors sold, Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic land, Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land. Miserable! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke thee, Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quell'd them all, And left thee sacred. In that amid thy many faults thou ever aimedst highly, In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself however great the price, In that thou surely wakedst weeping from thy drugg'd sleep, In that alone among thy sisters thou, giantess, didst rend the ones that shamed thee, In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear the usual chains, This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet, The spear thrust in thy side. O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long! Bear up O smitten orb! O ship continue on! Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself, Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos, Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons, Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty, Onward beneath the sun following its course, So thee O ship of France! Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication, When lo! reborn, high o'er the European world, (In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours Columbia,) Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star, In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, Shall beam immortal. <h2> The Ox-Tamer </h2> In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region, Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to break them, He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and tame him, He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock chafes up and down the yard, The bullock's head tosses restless high in the air with raging eyes, Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides—how soon this tamer tames him; See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, They all know him, all are affectionate to him; See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)—see you! the bright hides, See, the two with stars on their foreheads—see, the round bodies and broad backs, How straight and square they stand on their legs—what fine sagacious eyes! How straight they watch their tamer—they wish him near them—how they turn to look after him! What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves away from them; Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics, poems, depart—all else departs,) I confess I envy only his fascination—my silent, illiterate friend, Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms, In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region. An Old Man's Thought of School [For the Inauguration of a Public School, Camden, New Jersey, 1874] An old man's thought of school, An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot. Now only do I know you, O fair auroral skies—O morning dew upon the grass! And these I see, these sparkling eyes, These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives, Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships, Soon to sail out over the measureless seas, On the soul's voyage. Only a lot of boys and girls? Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes? Only a public school? Ah more, infinitely more; (As George Fox rais'd his warning cry, "Is it this pile of brick and mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church? Why this is not the church at all—the church is living, ever living souls.") And you America, Cast you the real reckoning for your present? The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil? To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school. <h2> Wandering at Morn </h2> Wandering at morn, Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my thoughts, Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine! Thee coil'd in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay, with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee, This common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch'd feeding its young, The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic, Fail not to certify and cheer my soul. There ponder'd, felt I, If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be turn'd, If vermin so transposed, so used and bless'd may be, Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country; Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you? From these your future song may rise with joyous trills, Destin'd to fill the world. Italian Music in Dakota ["The Seventeenth—the finest Regimental Band I ever heard."] Through the soft evening air enwinding all, Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds, In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes, Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial, (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before, Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here, Not to the city's fresco'd rooms, not to the audience of the opera house, Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home, Sonnambula's innocent love, trios with Norma's anguish, And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;) Ray'd in the limpid yellow slanting sundown, Music, Italian music in Dakota. While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl'd realm, Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses, Acknowledging rapport however far remov'd, (As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,) Listens well pleas'd. <h2> With All Thy Gifts </h2> With all thy gifts America, Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world, Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee—with these and like of these vouchsafed to thee, What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving,) The gift of perfect women fit for thee—what if that gift of gifts thou lackest? The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee? The mothers fit for thee? <h2> My Picture-Gallery </h2> In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix'd house, It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other; Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all memories! Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death; Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself, With finger rais'd he points to the prodigal pictures. <h2> The Prairie States </h2> A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude, Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms, With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one, By all the world contributed—freedom's and law's and thrift's society, The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time's accumulations, To justify the past. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.