Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  POETS TO COME

  Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

  Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

  But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

  before known,

  Arouse! for you must justify me.

  I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

  I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the

  darkness.

  I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a

  casual look upon you and then averts his face,

  Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

  Expecting the main things from you.

  TO YOU

  Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why

  should you not speak to me?

  And why should I not speak to you?

  THOU READER

  Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,

  Therefore for thee the following chants.

  STARTING FROM PAUMANOKai

  —1—

  Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,

  Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,

  After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,

  Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,

  Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner

  in California,

  Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink

  from the spring,

  Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,

  Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,

  Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of

  mighty Niagara,

  Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and

  strong-breasted bull,

  Of earth, rocks, Fifth-monthaj flowers experienced, stars, rain,

  snow, my amaze,

  Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the

  mountain-hawk,

  And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from the

  swamp-cedars,

  Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

  - 2 -

  Victory, union, faith, identity, time,

  The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,

  Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.

  This then is life,

  Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and

  convulsions.

  How curious! how real!

  Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

  See revolving the globe,

  The ancestor-continents away group’d together,

  The present and future continents north and south, with the

  isthmus between.

  See, vast trackless spaces,

  As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,

  Countless masses debouch upon them,

  They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.

  See, projected through time,

  For me an audience interminable.

  With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop,

  Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,

  One generation playing its part and passing on,

  Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,

  With faces turn’d sideways or backward towards me to listen,

  With eyes retrospective towards me.

  —3—

  Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!

  Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!

  For you a programme of chants.

  Chants of the prairies,

  Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican

  sea,

  Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,

  Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence

  equidistant,

  Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.

  —4—

  Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,

  Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own

  offspring,

  Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,

  And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they

  connect lovingly with you.

  I conn’d old times,

  I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,

  Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and

  study me.

  In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?

  Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.

  —5—

  Dead poets, philosophs, priests,

  Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,

  Language-shapers on other shores,

  Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,

  I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left

  wafted hither,

  I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile

  among it,)

  Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve

  more than it deserves,

  Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,

  I stand in my place with my own day here.

  Here lands female and male,

  Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame

  of materials,

  Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow‘d,

  The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,

  The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,

  Yes here comes my mistress the soul.

  -6-

  The soul,

  Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer

  than water ebbs and flows.

  I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the

  most spiritual poems,

  And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,

  For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul

  and of immortality.

  I will make a song for these States that no one State may under

  any circumstances be subjected to another State,

  And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by

  night between all the States, and between any two of them,

  And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of

  weapons with menacing points,

  And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;

  And a song make I of the One form’d out of all,

  The fang’d and glittering One whose head is over all,

  Resolute warlike One including and over all,

  (However high the head of any else that head is over all.)

  I will acknowledge contemporary lands,

  I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute

  courteously every city large and small,

  And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is

  heroism upon land and sea,

  And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.

  I will sing the song of companionship,

  I will show what alone must finally compact these,

  I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love,

  indicating it in me,

  I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were

  threatening to consume me,

  I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,

  I will give them complete abandonment,

  I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love, />
  For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?

  And who but I should be the poet of comrades?

  —7—

  I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,

  I advance from the people in their own spirit,

  Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

  Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,

  I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part

  also,

  I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—and

  I say there is in fact no evil,

  (Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or to

  me, as any thing else.)

  I too, following many and follow’d by many, inaugurate a religion,

  I descend into the arena,

  (It may be I am destin’d to utter the loudest cries there, the

  winner’s pealing shouts,

  Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every

  thing.)

  Each is not for its own sake,

  I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s

  sake.

  I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,

  None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough,

  None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how

  certain the future is.

  I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must

  be their religion,

  Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;

  (Nor character nor life worthy the name without

  religion,

  Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)

  —8—

  What are you doing young man?

  Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art,

  amours?

  These ostensible realities, politics, points?

  Your ambition or business whatever it may be?

  It is well—against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,

  But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion’s sake,

  For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential

  life of the earth,

  Any more than such are to religion.

  -9-

  What do you seek so pensive and silent?

  What do you need camerado?6

  Dear son do you think it is love?

  Listen dear son—listen America, daughter or son,

  It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it

  satisfies, it is great,

  But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,

  It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps

  and provides for all.

  —10—

  Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater

  religion,

  The following chants each for its kind I sing.

  My comrade!

  For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising

  inclusive and more resplendent,

  The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of

  Religion.

  Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,

  Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,

  Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me,

  Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we

  know not of,

  Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,

  These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.

  Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,

  Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me

  to him,

  Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual

  world,

  After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

  O such themes—equalities! O divine average!

  Warblings under the sun, usher’d as now, or at noon,

  or setting,

  Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,

  I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and

  cheerfully pass them forward.

  —11—

  As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,

  I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest

  in the briers hatching her brood.

  I have seen the he-bird also,

  I have paus’d to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and

  joyfully singing.

  And while I paus’d it came to me that what he really sang for was

  not there only,

  Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the

  echoes,

  But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,

  A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

  -12-

  Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.

  Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,

  For those who belong here and those to come,

  I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger

  and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

  I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,

  And your songs outlaw’d offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any.

  I will make the true poem of riches,

  To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes

  forward and is not dropt by death;

  I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the

  bard of personality,

  And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of

  the other,

  And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am

  determin’d to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove

  you illustrious,

  And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and

  can be none in the future,

  And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be

  turn’d to beautiful results,

  And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than

  death,

  And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and

  events are compact,

  And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each

  as profound as any.

  I will not make poems with reference to parts,

  But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to

  ensemble,

  And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to

  all days,

  And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has

  reference to the soul,

  Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there

  is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the

  soul.

  —13—

  Was somebody asking to see the soul?

  See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances,

  beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

  All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;

  How can the real body ever die and be buried?

  Of your real body and any man’s or woman’s real body,

  Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and

  pass to fitting spheres,

  Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the

  moment of death.

  Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the

  meaning, the main concern,

  Any more than a man’s substance and life or a woman’
s substance

  and life return in the body and the soul,

  Indifferently before death and after death.

  Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern,

  and includes and is the soul;

  Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any

  part of it!

  —14—

  Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

  Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?

  Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

  Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the

  States,

  Exulting words, words to Democracy’s lands.

  Interlink‘d, food-yielding lands!

  Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!

  Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the

  apple and the grape!

  Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of

  those sweet-air’d interminable plateaus!

  Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!

  Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the

  south-west Colorado winds!

  Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!

  Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

  Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont

  and Connecticut!

  Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!

  Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen’s land!

  Inextricable lands! the clutch’d together! the passionate ones!

  The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony

  limb’d!

  The great women’s land! the feminine! the experienced sisters

  and the inexperienced sisters!

  Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez‘d! the diverse!

  the compact!

  The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!

  O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any

  rate include you all with perfect love!