 | Leaves of grass (1872) |  |
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Leaves of Grass.
There was a Child went Forth.
1
There was a child went forth every day;And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.
2
The early lilacs became part of this child,And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and and red clover, and the song of the phœbe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.
3
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road;
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And the school-mistress that pass'd on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass'd—and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls—and the barefoot negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.
4
His own parents,He that had father'd him, and she that had conceiv'd him in her womb, and birth'd him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that;
They gave him afterward every day—they became part of him.
5
The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;The mother with mild words—clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay'd—the sense of what is real—the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time—the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks, what are they?
The streets themselves, and the facades of houses, and goods in the windows,
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The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat slack-tow'd astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroontint, away solitary by itself—the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.
Longings for Home.
O magnet-South! O glistening, perfumed South! My South!O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me!
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was born—the grains, plants, rivers;
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery sands, or through swamps;
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine;
O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my Soul to haunt their banks again;
Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes—I float on the Okeechobee—I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings, or dense forests;
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Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia—I coast up the Carolinas,
I see where the live-oak is growing—I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto;
I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland;
O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!
The cactus, guarded with thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers;
The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss,
The piney odor and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, (Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his conceal'd hut;)
O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassible swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake;
The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon—singing through the moon-lit night,
The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;
A Tennessee corn-field—the tall, graceful, long-leav'd corn—slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels—with beautiful ears, each well-sheath'd in its husk;
An Arkansas prairie—a sleeping lake, or still bayou;
O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—I can stand them not—I will depart;
O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!
O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!
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Think of the Soul.
1
Think of the Soul;I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.
2
Think of loving and being loved;I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you.
3
Think of the past;I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times.
4
The race is never separated—nor man nor woman escapes;All is inextricable—things, spirits, Nature, nations, you too—from precedents you come.
5
Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers precede them;)Recall the sages, poets, saviors, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons—brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas'd persons.
6
Think of the time when you were not yet born;Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will be dying.
7
Think of spiritual results,Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results.
8
Think of manhood, and you to be a man;Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
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9
Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?
You Felons on Trial in Courts.
1
You felons on trial in courts;You convicts in prison-cells—you sentenced assassins, chain'd and hand-cuff'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?
2
You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms,Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself?
3
O culpable!I acknowledge—I exposé!
(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you make me wince,
I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)
4
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?
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To a Common Prostitute.
1
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.
2
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.
3
Till then, I salute you with a significant look, that you do not forget me.I was Looking a Long While.
I was looking a long while for a clue 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 average man of to-day.
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To a President.
All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages;You have not learn'd of Nature—of the politics of Nature, you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality;
You have not seen that only such as they are for These States,
And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift off from These States.
TO THE STATES,
To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.
Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid suns! O north, your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet—for I see that These States sleep, for reasons;
(With gathering murk—with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake,
South, north, east, west, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)
| Leaves of grass (1872) | |