Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  perfect;

  The vegetables and minerals are all perfect.. and the

  imponderable fluids are perfect;

  Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and

  surely they will yet pass on.

  O my soul! if I realize you I have satisfaction,

  Animals and vegetables! if I realize you I have satisfaction,

  Laws of the earth and air! if I realize you I have satisfaction.

  I cannot define my satisfaction .. yet it is so,

  I cannot define my life .. yet it is so.

  I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!

  The trees have, rooted in the ground .... the weeds of the sea

  have .... the animals.

  I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!

  That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it,

  and the cohering is for it,

  And all preparation is for it .. and identity is for it .. and life and

  death are for it.

  [The Sleepers]

  I WANDER all night in my vision,

  Stepping with light feet .... swiftly and noiselessly stepping and

  stopping,

  Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers;

  Wandering and confused .... lost to myself .... ill-assorted ....

  contradictory,

  Pausing and gazing and bending and stopping.

  How solemn they look there, stretched and still;

  How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.

  The wretched features of ennuyees, the white features of corpses,

  the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists, xThe gashed bodies on battlefields, the insane in their strong-

  doored rooms, the sacred idiots,

  The newborn emerging from gates and the dying emerging from

  gates,

  The night pervades them and enfolds them.

  The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm

  on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of

  the husband,

  The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,

  The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,

  And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapped.

  The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,

  The prisoner sleeps well in the prison .... the runaway son sleeps,

  The murderer that is to be hung next day .... how does he sleep?

  And the murdered person .... how does he sleep?

  The female that loves unrequited sleeps,

  And the male that loves unrequited sleeps;

  The head of the moneymaker that plotted all day sleeps,

  And the enraged and treacherous dispositions sleep.

  I stand with drooping eyes by the worstsuffering and restless,

  I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them;

  The restless sink in their beds .... they fitfully sleep.

  The earth recedes from me into the night,

  I saw that it was beautiful .... and I see that what is not the earth

  is beautiful.

  I go from bedside to bedside .... I sleep close with the other

  sleepers, each in turn;

  I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,

  And I become the other dreamers.

  I am a dance .... Play up there! the fit is whirling me fast.

  I am the everlaughing .... it is new moon and twilight,

  I see the hiding of douceursy .... I see nimble ghosts whichever

  way I look,

  Cachez and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and where it

  is neither ground or sea.

  Well do they do their jobs, those journeymen divine,

  Only from me can they hide nothing and would not if they

  could;

  I reckon I am their boss, and they make me a pet besides,

  And surround me, and lead me and run ahead when I walk,

  And lift their cunning covers and signify me with stretched arms,

  and resume the way;

  Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards with mirthshouting

  music and wildflapping pennants of joy.

  I am the actor and the actress33 .... the voter .. the politician,

  The emigrant and the exile .. the criminal that stood in the box,

  He who has been famous, and he who shall be famous after today,

  The stammerer .... the wellformed person .. the wasted or

  feeble person.

  I am she who adorned herself and folded her hair expectantly,

  My truant lover has come and it is dark.

  Double yourself and receive me darkness,

  Receive me and my lover too .... he will not let me go with

  out him.

  I roll myself upon you as upon a bed .... I resign myself to the dusk.

  He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,

  He rises with me silently from the bed.

  Darkness you are gentler than my lover .... his flesh was sweaty

  and panting,

  I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

  My hands are spread forth .. I pass them in all directions,

  I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.

  Be careful, darkness .... already, what was it touched me?

  I thought my lover had gone .... else darkness and he are one,

  I hear the heart-beat .... I follow .. I fade away.

  O hotcheeked and blushing! 0 foolish hectic!

  O for pity’s sake, no one must see me now! .... my clothes were

  stolen while I was abed,

  Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?

  Pier that I saw dimly last night when I looked from the windows,

  Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you and

  stay.... I will not chafe you;

  I feel ashamed to go naked about the world,

  And am curious to know where my feet stand . . . . and what is

  this flooding me, childhood or manhood.... and the hunger

  that crosses the bridge between.

  The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,

  Laps life-swelling yolks.... laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just

  ripened:

  The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,

  And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and

  the best liquor afterward.34

  I descend my western course . . . . my sinews are flaccid,

  Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.

  It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman‘s,

  I sit low in a strawbottom chair and carefully darn my grandson’s

  stockings.

  It is I too.... the sleepless widow looking out on the winter

  midnight,

  I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.

  A shroud I see—and I am the shroud.... I wrap a body and lie

  in the coffin;

  It is dark here underground .... it is not evil or pain here .... it

  is blank here, for reasons.

  It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be

  happy;

  Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he

  has enough.

  I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the

  eddies of the sea,35

  His brown hair lies close and even to his head .... he strikes out

  with courageous arms .... he urges himself with his legs.

  I see his white body .... I see his undaunted eyes;

  I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him headforemost

  on the rocks.

&nb
sp; What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?

  Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime

  of his middle age?

  Steady and long he struggles;

  He is baffled and banged and bruised .... he holds out while his

  strength holds out,

  The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood .... they bear him

  away .... they roll him and swing him and turn him:

  His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies .... it is

  continually bruised on rocks,

  Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.

  I turn but do not extricate myself;

  Confused .... a pastreading .... another, but with darkness yet.

  The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind .... the wreck-guns

  sounds,

  The tempest lulls and the moon comes floundering through the

  drifts.

  I look where the ship helplessly heads end on .... I hear the burst as she strikes .. I hear the howls of dismay .... they grow fainter and fainter.

  I cannot aid with my wringing fingers;

  I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze

  upon me.

  I search with the crowd .... not one of the company is washed to

  us alive;

  In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in

  a barn.

  Now of the old war-days36 .. the defeat at Brooklyn;

  Washington stands inside the lines .. he stands on the entrenched

  hills amid a crowd of officers,

  His face is cold and damp .... he cannot repress the weeping

  drops .... he lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes .... the

  color is blanched from his cheeks,

  He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by

  their parents.

  The same at last and at last when peace is declared,

  He stands in the room of the old tavern .... the wellbeloved

  soldiers all pass through.

  The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,

  The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on

  the cheek,

  He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another .... he shakes

  hands and bids goodbye to the army.

  Now I tell what my mother told me today as we sat at dinner

  together,37

  Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents

  on the old homestead.

  A red squaw came one breakfastime to the old homestead,

  On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rushbottoming

  chairs;

  Her hair straight shiny coarse black and profuse halfenveloped

  her face,

  Her step was free and elastic .... her voice sounded exquisitely as

  she spoke.

  My mother looked in delight and amazement at the stranger,

  She looked at the beauty of her tallborne face and full and pliant

  limbs,

  The more she looked upon her she loved her,

  Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity;

  She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace .... she

  cooked food for her,

  She had no work to give her but she gave her remembrance and fondness.

  The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of

  the afternoon she went away;

  O my mother was loth to have her go away,

  All the week she thought of her .... she watched for her many a

  month,

  She remembered her many a winter and many a summer,

  But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.

  Now Lucifer was not dead .... or if he was I am his sorrowful

  terrible heir;38

  I have been wronged .... I am oppressed .... I hate him that

  oppresses me,

  I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.

  Damn him! how he does defile me,

  How he informs against my brother and sister and takes pay for

  their blood,

  How he laughs when I look down the bend after the steamboat

  that carries away my woman.

  Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale’s bulk .... it seems

  mine,

  Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, my tap is

  death.

  A show of the summer softness .... a contact of something

  unseen .... an amour of the light and air;

  I am jealous and overwhelmed with friendliness,

  And will go gallivant with the light and the air myself,

  And have an unseen something to be in contact with them

  also.

  O love and summer! you are in the dreams and in me,

  Autumn and winter are in the dreams .... the farmer goes with

  his thrift,

  The droves and crops increase .... the barns are wellfilled.

  Elements merge in the night .... ships make tacks in

  the dreams .... the sailor sails .... the exile returns

  home,

  The fugitive returns unharmed .... the immigrant is back

  beyond months and years;

  The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood,

  with the wellknown neighbors and faces,

  They warmly welcome him .... he is barefoot again .... he

  forgets he is welloff;

  The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and

  Welchman voyage home .. and the native of the

  Mediterranean voyages home;

  To every port of England and France and Spain enter wellfilled

  ships;

  The Swiss foots it toward his hills .... the Prussian goes his way,

  and the Hungarian his way, and the Pole goes his way,

  The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.

  The homeward bound and the outward bound,

  The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyee, the onanist, the female

  that loves unrequited, the moneymaker,

  The actor and actress .. those through with their parts and those

  waiting to commence,

  The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the

  nominee that is chosen and the nominee that has

  failed,

  The great already known, and the great anytime after to day,

  The stammerer, the sick, the perfectformed, the homely,

  The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and

  sentenced him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,

  The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red

  squaw,

  The consumptive, the erysipalite,aa the idiot, he that is wronged,

  The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,

  I swear they are averaged now .... one is no better than the other,

  The night and sleep have likened them and restored them.

  I swear they are all beautiful,

  Every one that sleeps is beautiful .... every thing in the dim

  night is beautiful,

  The wildest and bloodiest is over and all is peace.

  Peace is always beautiful,

  The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.

  The myth of heaven indicates the soul;

  The soul is always beautiful .... it appears more or it appears

  less .... it comes or lags behind,

  It comes from its embowered garden and looks pleasantly on itself

  and encloses the world;

  Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and

  clean the womb cohering,

  The head wellgrown and proportioned and plumb, and the


  bowels and joints proportioned and plumb.

  The soul is always beautiful,

  The universe is duly in order .... every thing is in its place,

  What is arrived is in its place, and what waits is in its place;

  The twisted skull waits .... the watery or rotten blood waits,

  The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child

  of the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits

  long,

  The sleepers that lived and died wait .... the far advanced are to go

  on in their turns, and the far behind are to go on in their turns,

  The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and

  unite .... they unite now.

  The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,

  They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as

  they lie unclothed;

  The Asiatic and African are hand in hand .. the European and

  American are hand in hand,

  Learned and unlearned are hand in hand .. and male and female

  are hand in hand;

  The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover ....

  they press close without lust .... his lips press her neck,

  The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with

  measureless love .... and the son holds the father in his arms

  with measureless love,

  The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the

  daughter,

  The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man .... friend

  is inarmed by friend,

  The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the

  scholar .... the wronged is made right,

  The call of the slave is one with the master’s call .. and the

  master salutes the slave,

  The felon steps forth from the prison .... the insane

  becomes sane .... the suffering of sick persons is relieved,