Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  still feet and caution,

  Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin’d city,

  The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities

  of the globe.

  I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,

  I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride

  myself,

  I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

  My voice is the wife’s voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,

  They fetch my man’s body up dripping and drown’d.

  I understand the large hearts of heroes,

  The courage of present times and all times,

  How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the

  steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,

  How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was

  faithful of days and faithful of nights,

  And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will

  not desert you;

  How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and

  would not give it up,

  How he saved the drifting company at last,

  How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the

  side of their prepared graves,

  How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharplipp’d unshaved men;

  All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,

  I am the man, I suffer‘d, I was there.

  The disdain and calmness of martyrs,

  The mother of old, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood,

  her children gazing on,

  The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,

  blowing, cover’d with sweat,

  The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the

  murderous buckshot and the bullets,

  All these I feel or am.

  I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,

  Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the

  marksmen,

  I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the

  ooze of my skin,

  I fall on the weeds and stones,

  The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,

  Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with

  whip-stocks.

  Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

  I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become

  the wounded person,

  My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

  I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken,

  Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,

  Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my

  comrades,

  I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,

  They have clear’d the beams away, they tenderly lift me

  forth.

  I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my

  sake,

  Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,

  White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared

  of their fire-caps,

  The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

  Distant and dead resuscitate,

  They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock

  myself.

  I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment,

  I am there again.

  Again the long roll of the drummers,

  Again the attacking cannon, mortars,

  Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

  I take part, I see and hear the whole,

  The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim’d shots,

  The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,

  Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable

  repairs,

  The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped

  explosion,

  The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.

  Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves

  with his hand,

  He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the

  entrenchments.

  —34—

  Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,

  (I tell not the fall of Alamo,

  Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,

  The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)

  ‘Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and

  twelve young men.

  Retreating they had form’d in a hollow square with their baggage

  for breastworks,

  Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemys, nine times

  their number, was the price they took in advance,

  Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,

  They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv’d writing and

  seal, gave up their arms and march’d back prisoners of war.

  They were the glory of the race of rangers,

  Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,

  Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,

  Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,

  Not a single one over thirty years of age.

  The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads

  and massacred, it was beautiful early summer,

  The work commenced about five o‘clock and was over by

  eight.

  None obey’d the command to kneel,

  Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and

  straight,

  A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead

  lay together,

  The maim’d and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw

  them there,

  Some half-kill’d attempted to crawl away,

  These were despatch’d with bayonets or batter’d with the blunts of

  muskets,

  A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more

  came to release him,

  The three were all torn and cover’d with the boy’s blood.

  At eleven o‘clock began the burning of the bodies;

  That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve

  young men.

  —35—

  Would you hear of an old-time sea fight?

  Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?

  List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.

  Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)

  His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer,

  and never was, and never will be;

  Along the lower’d eve he came horribly raking us.

  We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch‘d,

  My captain lash’d fast with his own hands.

  We had receiv’d some eighteen pound shots under the water,

  On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire,

  killing all around and blowing up overhead.

  Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,

  Ten o‘clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain,

  and five feet of water reported,

  The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-

  hold to give them a chance for themselves.

  The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,

  They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.

  Our frigate takes fire,

 
The other asks if we demand quarter?

  If our colors are struck and the fighting done?

  Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,

  We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our

  part of the fighting.

  Only three guns are in use,

  One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s

  main-mast,

  Two well serv’d with grape and canister silence his musketry and

  clear his decks.

  The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the

  main-top,

  They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

  Not a moment’s cease,

  The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder

  magazine.

  One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.

  Serene stands the little captain,

  He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,

  His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

  Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.

  -36-

  Stretch’d and still lies the midnight,

  Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,

  Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the

  one we have conquer‘d,

  The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through

  a countenance white as a sheet,

  Near by the corpse of the child that serv’d in the cabin,

  The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully

  curl’d whiskers,

  The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and

  below,

  The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,

  Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh

  upon the masts and spars,

  Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of

  waves,

  Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,

  A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,

  Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by

  the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,

  The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,

  Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and

  long, dull, tapering groan,

  These so, these irretrievable.

  -37-

  You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!

  In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess‘d!

  Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering,

  See myself in prison shaped like another man,

  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.11

  For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep

  watch,

  It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.

  Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to

  him and walk by his side,

  (I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat

  on my twitching lips.)

  Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.

  Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last

  gasp,

  My face is ash-color‘d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people

  retreat.

  Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,

  I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

  - 38-

  Enough! enough! enough!12

  Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!

  Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams,

  gaping,

  I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

  That I could forget the mockers and insults!

  That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the

  bludgeons and hammers!

  That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and

  bloody crowning.

  I remember now,

  I resume the overstaid fraction,

  The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to

  any graves,

  Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

  I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average

  unending procession,

  Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,

  Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,

  The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.

  Eleves, I salute you! come forward!

  Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

  —39—

  The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?

  Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

  Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian?

  Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?

  The mountains? prairie life, bush life? or sailor from the sea?

  Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,

  They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay

  with them.

  Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d

  head, laughter, and naivete,

  Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and

  emanations,

  They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,

  They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out

  of the glance of his eyes.

  -40-

  Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!

  You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

  Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,

  Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

  Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,

  And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but

  cannot,

  And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights

  and days.

  Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,

  When I give I give myself.

  You there, impotent, loose in the knees,

  Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,

  Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,

  I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to

  spare,

  And any thing I have I bestow.

  I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,

  You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

  To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,

  On his right cheek I put the family kiss,

  And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

  On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,

  (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

  To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,

  Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,

  Let the physician and the priest go home.

  I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,

  O despairer, here is my neck,

  By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.

  I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,

  Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,

  Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

  Sleep—I and they keep guard all night,

  Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger up
on you,

  I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,

  And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you

  is so.

  -41-

  I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,

  And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

  I heard what was said of the universe,

  Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;

  It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?

  Magnifying and applying come I,

  Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,

  Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,

  Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,

  Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,

  In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix

  engraved,

  With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and

  image,

  Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,

  Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,

  (They bore mites as for unfledg’d birds who have now to rise and

  fly and sing for themselves,)

  Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself,

  bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,

  Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,

  Putting higher claims for him there with his roll‘d-up sleeves

  driving the mallet and chisel,

  Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke

  or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any

  revelation,

  Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to

  me than the gods of the antique wars,

  Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

  Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr’d laths, their white

  foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;