University of Virginia Library

1  WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of      dreams,
I fear those supposed realities are to melt from under      your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade,      manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes,      dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs — out of commerce,      shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the      house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating,      drinking, suffering, dying.
2  Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you,      that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none      better than you.
3  O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have      chanted nothing but you.
4  I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of      you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you — you have not done      justice to yourself;
None but have found you imperfect — I only find no      imperfection in you;
None but would subordinate you — I only am he who      will never consent to subordinate you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner,      better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in      yourself.
5  Painters have painted their swarming groups, and      the centre figure of all;
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nim-     bus of gold-color'd light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head with-     out its nimbus of gold-color'd light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and      woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.
6  O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about      you!
You have not known what you are — you have slum-     ber'd upon yourself all your life;
Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of      the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return      in mockeries, what is their return?)
7  The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night,      the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from      others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you      from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure com-     plexion, if these balk others, they do not balk      me,
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness,      greed, premature death, all these I part aside.
8   There is no endowment in man or woman that is      not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as      good is in you;
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in      you;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure      waits for you.
9  As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give      the like carefully to you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner      than I sing the songs of the glory of you.
10  Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame compared      to you;
These immense meadows — these interminable rivers —      you are immense and interminable as they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature,      throes of apparent dissolution — you are he or      she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature,      elements, pain, passion, dissolution.
11  The hopples fall from your ankles — you find an un-     failing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by      the rest, whatever you are promulges itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are pro-     vided, nothing is scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui,      what you are picks it way.