Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  My face rubs to the hunter’s face when he lies down alone in his

  blanket,

  The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his

  wagon,

  The young mother and old mother comprehend me,

  The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where

  they are,

  They and all would resume what I have told them.

  —48—

  I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

  And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

  And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,

  And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own

  funeral drest in his shroud,

  And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the

  earth,

  And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds

  the learning of all times,

  And there is no trade or employment but the young man

  following it may become a hero,

  And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d

  universe,

  And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and

  composed before a million universes.

  And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,

  For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,

  (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God

  and about death.)

  I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not

  in the least,

  Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than

  myself.

  Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

  I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each

  moment then,

  In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in

  the glass,

  I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d

  by God’s name,

  And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe‘er

  I go,

  Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

  -49-

  And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

  To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,

  I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,

  I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,

  And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

  And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does

  not offend me,

  I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,

  I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish’d breasts of

  melons.

  And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many

  deaths,

  (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

  I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,

  O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and

  promotions,

  If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

  Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,

  Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing

  twilight,

  Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay

  in the muck,

  Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.

  I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,

  I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams

  reflected,

  And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or

  small.

  - 50-

  There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

  Wrench’d and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,

  I sleep—I sleep long.

  I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,

  It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

  Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

  To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

  Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

  Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

  It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal

  life—it is Happiness.

  - 51-

  The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.

  And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

  Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

  Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

  (Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute

  longer.)

  Do I contradict myself?

  Very well then I contradict myself,

  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

  I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the

  door-slab.

  Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with

  his supper?

  Who wishes to walk with me?

  Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

  - 52-

  The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

  I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

  I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

  The last scud of day holds back for me,

  It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d

  wilds,

  It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

  I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

  I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

  I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

  If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

  You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

  But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

  And filter and fibre your blood.

  Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

  Missing me one place search another,

  I stop somewhere waiting for you.14

  CHILDREN OF ADAM15

  TO THE GARDEN THE WORLD

  To the garden the world anew ascending,

  Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,

  The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,

  Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,

  The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me

  again,

  Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,

  My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for

  reasons, most wondrous,

  Existing I peer and penetrate still,

  Content with the present, content with the past,

  By my side or back of me Eve following,

  Or in front, and I following her just the same.

  FROM PENT-UP ACHING RIVERS

  From pent-up aching rivers,

  From that of myself without which I were nothing,

  From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand

  sole among men,

  From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,

  Singing the song of procreation,

  Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown

  people,

  Singing the muscular urge and the blending,

  Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!

  O for any and each the body correlative attracting!

  O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more than

  all else, you delighting!)

  From the
hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,

  From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,

  Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it

  many a long year,

  Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,

  Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,

  Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,

  Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,

  Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,

  Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,

  The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,

  The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,

  The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his

  back lying and floating,

  The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous

  aching,

  The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,

  The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it

  arouses,

  The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment,

  (Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,

  I love you, O you entirely possess me,

  O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and

  lawless,

  Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more

  lawless than we;)

  The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling,

  The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman

  that loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath

  swearing,

  (O I willingly stake all for you,

  O let me be lost if it must be so!

  O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?

  What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust

  each other if it must be so;)

  From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,

  The general commanding me, commanding all, from him

  permission taking,

  From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as

  it is.)

  From sex, from the warp and from the woof,16

  From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,

  From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,

  From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers

  through my hair and beard,

  From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom,

  From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk,

  fainting with excess,

  From what the divine husband knows, from the work of

  fatherhood,

  From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace

  in the night,

  From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,

  From the cling of the trembling arm,

  From the bending curve and the clinch,

  From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,

  From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as

  unwilling to leave,

  (Yet a moment O tender waiter,al and I return,)

  From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,

  From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,

  Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,

  And you stalwart loins.

  I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC17

  —1—

  I sing the body electric,

  The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

  They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

  And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of

  the soul.

  Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal

  themselves?

  And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile

  the dead?

  And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

  And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

  —2—

  The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body

  itself balks account,

  That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

  The expression of the face balks account,

  But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his

  face,

  It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his

  hips and wrists,

  It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and

  knees, dress does not hide him,

  The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and

  broadcloth,

  To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

  You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulderside.

  The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of

  women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the

  street, the contour of their shape downwards,

  The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims

  through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up

  and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,

  The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the

  horseman in his saddle,

  Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,

  The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner

  kettles, and their wives waiting,

  The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden

  or cow-yard,

  The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six

  horses through the crowd,

  The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,

  good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown

  after work,

  The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and

  resistance,

  The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and

  blinding the eyes;

  The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of

  masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist

  straps,

  The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes

  suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,

  The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d

  neck and the counting;

  Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s

  breast with the little child,

  Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line

  with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

  —3—

  I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,

  And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

  This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,

  The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and

  beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the

  richness and breadth of his manners,

  These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,

  He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were

  massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,

  They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,

  They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with

  personal love,

  He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the

  clear-brown skin of his face,

  He was a frequent gunner and fisher,
he sail’d his boat himself,

  he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had

  fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,

  When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or

  fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and

  vigorous of the gang,

  You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to

  sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each

  other.

  -4-

  I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,

  To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

  To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh

  is enough,

  To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so

  lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?

  I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

  There is something in staying close to men and women and

  looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that

  pleases the soul well,

  All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

  —5—

  This is the female form,

  A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

  It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

  I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless

  vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,

  Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what

  was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,

  Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response

  likewise ungovernable,

  Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all

  diffused, mine too diffused,

  Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh

  swelling and deliciously aching,

  Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of

  love, white-blow and delirious juice,

  Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the

  prostrate dawn,

  Undulating into the willing and yielding day,