by Walt Whitman
lure,46
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture ....
the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsayed .... The sense of what is
real .... the thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of daytime and the doubts of nighttime ... 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 .... the goods
in the windows,
Vehicles .. teams .. the tiered wharves, and the huge crossing at
the ferries;
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset .... the river
between,
Shadows .. aureola and mist.. 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 slacktowed astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves and quickbroken crests and
slapping;
The strata of colored clouds .... the long bar of maroontint
away solitary by itself .... the spread of purity it lies
motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying seacrow, the fragrance of saltmarsh
and shoremud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and
who now goes and will always go forth every day,
And these become of him or her that peruses them now.
[Who Learns My Lesson Complete]
WHO learns my lesson complete?
Boss and journeyman and apprentice? .... churchman and
atheist?
The stupid and the wise thinker .... parents and offspring ....
merchant and clerk and 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 little matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
exactly in its orbit forever 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 decillions of years,
Nor planned 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 how I was not palpable once but am now .... and was born
on the last day of May 1819 .... and passed from a babe in
the creeping trance of three summers and three winters to
articulate and walk .... are all equally wonderful.
And that I grew six feet high .... and that I have become a man
thirty-six years old in 185547 .... and that I am here anyhow—
are all 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.
Come I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself
that is not just as wonderful,
And I should like to hear the name of anything between
Sunday morning and Saturday night that is not just as
wonderful.
[Great Are the Myths]
GREAT are the myths .... I too delight in them,
Great are Adam and Eve .... I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,
inventors, rulers, warriors and priests.
Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft .... where you sail
I sail,
Yours is the muscle of life or death .... yours is the perfect
science .... in you I have absolute faith.
Great is today, and beautiful,
It is good to live in this age .... there never was any better.
Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of
democracy,
Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,
Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.
Great are yourself and myself,
We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest
or any,
What the best and worst did we could do,
What they felt .. do not we feel it in ourselves?
What they wished .. do we not wish the same?
Great is youth, and equally great is old age .... great are the day
and night;
Great is wealth and great is poverty .... great is expression and
great is silence.
Youth large lusty and loving .... youth full of grace and force and
fascination,
Do you know that old age may come after you with equal grace
and force and fascination?
Day fullblown and splendid .... day of the immense sun, and
action and ambition and laughter,
The night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep and
restoring darkness.
Wealth with the flush hand and fine clothes and
hospitality:
But then the soul’s wealth—which is candor and knowledge and
pride and enfolding love:
Who goes for men and women showing poverty richer than
wealth?
Expression of speech .. in what is written or said forget not that
silence is also expressive,
That anguish as hot as the hottest and contempt as cold as the
coldest may be without words,
That the true adoration is likewise without words and without
kneeling.
Great is the greatest nation .. the nation of clusters of equal
nations.
Great is the earth, and the way it became what it is,
Do you imagine it is stopped at this? .... and the increase
abandoned?
Understand then that it goes as far onward from this as this is
from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases.
Great is the quality of truth in man,
; The quality of truth in man supports itself through all
changes,
It is inevitably in the man .... He and it are in love, and never
leave each other.
The truth in man is no dictum .... it is vital as eyesight,
If there be any soul there is truth .... if there be man or woman
there is truth .... If there be physical or moral there is
truth,
If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth .... if there be
things at all upon the earth there is truth.
O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press
the whole way toward you,
Sound your voice! I scale mountains. or dive in the sea
after you.
Great is language .... it is the mightiest of the sciences,
It is the fulness and color and form and diversity of the earth ....
and of men and women .... and of all qualities and
processes;
It is greater than wealth .... it is greater than buildings or ships or
religions or paintings or music.
Great is the English speech .... What speech is so great as the
English?
Great is the English brood .... What brood has so vast a destiny
as the English?
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the
new rule,
The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love and
justice and equality that are in the soul rule.
Great is the law .... Great are the old few landmarks of the law ....
they are the same in all times and shall not be disturbed.
Great are marriage, commerce, newspapers, books, freetrade,
railroads, steamers, international mails and telegraphs and
exchanges.
Great is Justice;
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws .... it is in the soul,
It cannot be varied by statutes any more than love or pride or the
attraction of gravity can,
It is immutable .. it does not depend on majorities .... majorities
or what not come at last before the same passionless and
exact tribunal.
For justice are the grand natural lawyers and perfect judges .... it
is in their souls,
It is well assorted .... they have not studied for nothing .... the
great includes the less,
They rule on the highest grounds .... they oversee all eras and
states and administrations,
The perfect judge fears nothing .... he could go front to front
before God,
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back .... life and death
shall stand back .... heaven and hell shall stand back.
Great is goodness;
I do not know what it is any more than I know what health is ....
but I know it is great.
Great is wickedness .... I find I often admire it just as much as I
admire goodness:
Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a paradox.
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal
overthrow of things is great,
And there is another paradox.
Great is life .. and real and mystical .. wherever and whoever,
Great is death .... Sure as life holds all parts together, death
holds all parts together;
Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death
is great as life.
Leaves of Grass
Including
SANDS AT SEVENTY... ist Annex,
GOOD-BYE MY FANCY... 2d Annex,
A BACKWARD GLANCE O‘ER TRAVEL’D ROADS,
and Portrait from Life.
COME, said my Soul,1
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,
PHILADELPHIA
DAVID MOKAY, PUBLISHER
23 SOUTH NINTH STREET
1891-‘2
“Laughing philosopher”—68 years old, 1887, photo taken by George C. Cox
in New York, New York. Courtesy of the Library of Congress,
Charles E. Feinberg Collection. Saunders #95.
INTRODUCTION
TO “DEATH-BED” EDITION
In the thirty-six years between the First Edition of Leaves of Grass and the so-called “Death-bed” Edition, Whitman’s original collection of twelve poems grew to more than 400 poems. Each of the original twelve appeared in some form in the “Death-bed” Edition. Other poems were created from lines extracted from other works: “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” for example, is comprised of lines 19 through 22 of “[Great Are the Myths].”ad The 1860 poem “States!” was excluded from the final edition of Leaves; instead it formed the basis for “Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice” and “For You, 0 Democracy.” Most of the new poems were inspired by national events as much as by Walt’s personal history. Just as he had prophesied in the 1855 preface, the poet’s spirit “responds to his country’s spirit.” Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was an ever-developing idea, itself a song that evolved as organically as its title suggests, along with the singer and his subject.
For those interested in the complex publication history of Whitman’s poems, the section “Publication Information” at the end of this book provides dates and title changes. Below is a list of editions Whitman published during his lifetime:
1855 (First Edition): Two impressions the same year, the later one with preliminary leaves including three of Whitman’s very positive, anonymous self-reviews.
1856 (Second Edition): A single impression, including Emerson’s congratulatory letter in a promotional section entitled “Leaves-Droppings.”
1860-1861 (Third Edition): Two impressions of the same text, which included special titled groupings of poems (“clusters”) for the first time.
1865 (Drum-Taps): A separate book of poems on the Civil War, not initially part of Leaves of Grass but an important later addition and defining collection.
1865-1866 (Sequel to Drum-Taps): Bound in with Drum-Taps after Lincoln’s death.
1867 (Fourth Edition): Leaves of Grass poems, plus the annexes “Drum-Taps,” “Sequel to Drum-Taps,” and “Songs before Parting.”
1871, 1872, 1876 (Fifth Edition): The Fifth Edition was published in Washington, D.C., in 1871 with ten new poems, and republished again later that year with the separately paginated section Passage to India, also published as a separate volume that year. The 1872 impression contains the annexes “Passage to India” and “After All, Not to Create Only.” The 1876 impression came out in two variants: Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits and Intercalations and Leaves of Grass: Author’s Edition, with Portraits from Life; a companion volume entitled Two Rivulets accompanied both Author’s Editions.
1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1888, 1889, 1891—1892 (Sixth Edition): The 1881 plates were used in all subsequent impressions of Leaves of Grass during Whitman’s lifetime, though each of these editions has some individuating features (such as annexes, covers, or altered poem titles).
Most readers are introduced to the “Death-bed” Edition as “the” Whitman text and are confounded by the book’s actual prior history. Why did Whitman revise Leaves of Grass so frequently? Here was a man who needed to sell his work, without family money, rich friends, or another substantial income; here was a newspaper editor and journalist who was skille
d at (and even enjoyed) the task of editing; here was a poet striving to write a people’s poetry, always ready to respond to new stimuli and revise his definitions. The year before his death, however, Whitman apparently realized that he would have to put his various editions in some preferential order. He thus gave his blessing to the “Death-bed” Edition, published as indicated on the title page in “1891-‘2.” “As there are now several editions of L. of G., different texts and dates, I wish to say that I prefer and recommend this present one,” Whitman notes on the verso of the title page. The “Death-bed” Edition thereby became the staple of Whitman anthologies.
The editors of the authoritative Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems (see “For Further Reading”) note that there is a major problem with accepting Whitman’s pronouncement: The text approved by Whitman was not necessarily the same one that later bore his letter of approval. About a hundred presentation copies of the “approved” edition that were issued were actually the uncorrected 1888 Leaves of Grass poems; later, the corrected 1889 plates were issued with the same green cloth binding used for the uncorrected 1888 plates (for more details, see volume I of the Variorum, pp. xxiv-xxv). To avoid problems and confusion, the current edition is based on the Variorum text, still the definitive example of Whitman’s actual “Death-bed” Leaves of Grass.
There are many benefits to beginning one’s study of Whitman with the 1891-1892 edition. These are, after all, the poems Whitman thought best represented a lifetime of writing. Helpful features not included in some prior editions (such as section numbers) make long poems easier to read and study. Several major “clusters” of poems are maintained, important prose pieces (such as “A Backward Glance o‘er Travel’d Roads”) are included, and two annexes (“Sands at Seventy” and “Good-Bye My Fancy”) are added for the first time. It is a large, impressive collection that resists chronological order and often groups poems by “idea.”