Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!

  To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!

  To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!

  To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!

  To rise thither with my inebriate soul!

  To be lost if it must be so!

  To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and

  freedom!

  With one brief hour of madness and joy.

  OUT OF THE ROLLING OCEAN THE CROWD

  Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,

  Whispering I love you, before long I die,

  I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,

  For I could not die till I once look’d on you,

  For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

  Now we have met, we have look‘d, we are safe,

  Return in peace to the ocean my love,

  I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much

  separated,

  Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!

  But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,

  As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse

  forever;

  Be not impatient—a little space—know you I salute the air, the

  ocean and the land,

  Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.

  AGES AND AGES RETURNING AT INTERVALS

  Ages and ages returning at intervals,

  Undestroy‘d, wandering immortal,

  Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,

  I, chanter of Adamic songs,

  Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,

  Deliriate, thus prelude what is generated, offering these, offering

  myself,

  Bathing myself, bathing my songs in Sex,

  Offspring of my loins.

  WE TWO, HOW LONG WE WERE FOOL’D

  We two, how long we were fool‘d,

  Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,

  We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,

  We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,

  We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,

  We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,

  We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous

  as any,

  We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,

  We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes

  mornings and evenings,

  We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,

  We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,

  We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic

  and stellar, we are as two comets,

  We prowl fang’d and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,

  We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,

  We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling

  over each other and interwetting each other,

  We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious,

  impervious,

  We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and

  influence of the globe,

  We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again,

  we two,

  We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

  O HYMEN! O HYMENEE!

  O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?

  O why sting me for a swift moment only?

  Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?

  Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you

  would soon certainly kill me?

  I AM HE THAT ACHES WITH LOVE

  I am he that aches with amorous love;

  Does the earth gravitate? does not all matter, aching, attract all

  matter?

  So the body of me to all I meet or know.

  NATIVE MOMENTS

  Native moments—when you come upon me—ah you are here

  now,

  Give me now libidinous joys only,

  Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,

  To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,

  I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight

  orgies of young men,

  I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,

  The echoes ring with our indecent calls, I pick out some low

  person for my dearest friend,

  He shall be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be one condemn’d by

  others for deeds done,

  I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my

  companions?

  O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you,

  I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,

  I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

  ONCE I PASS’D THROUGH A POPULOUS CITY22

  Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for

  future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,

  Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met

  there who detain’d me for love of me,

  Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has

  long been forgotten by me,

  I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,

  Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

  Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,

  I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

  I HEARD YOU SOLEMN-SWEET PIPES OF THE ORGAN

  I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn

  I pass’d the church,

  Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your

  long-stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,

  I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the

  soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;

  Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of

  the wrists around my head,

  Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last

  night under my ear.

  FACING WEST FROM CALIFORNIA’S SHORES

  Facing west from California’s shores,

  Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

  I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,

  the land of migrations, look afar,

  Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost

  circled;

  For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of

  Kashmere,

  From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the

  hero,

  From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice

  islands,

  Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander‘d,

  Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,

  (But where is what I started for so long ago?

  And why is it yet unfound?)

  AS ADAM EARLY IN THE MORNING

  As Adam early in the morning,

  Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,

  Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,

  Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,

  Be not afraid of my body.

  “Walt Whitman & his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle”—46 years old, 1865,

  photo taken in Washington D.C. Courtesy of the Library of Congress,

  Charles E. Feinberg Collection. Saunders #29.

  CALAMUS23

/>   IN PATHS UNTRODDEN

  In paths untrodden,

  In the growth by margins of pond-waters,

  Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,

  From all the standards hitherto publish‘d, from the pleasures,

  profits, conformities,

  Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,

  Clear to me now standards not yet publish’d, clear to me that

  my soul,

  That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades,

  Here by myself away from the clank of the world,

  Tallying and talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,

  No longer abash‘d, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I

  would not dare elsewhere,)

  Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains

  all the rest,

  Resolv’d to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,

  Projecting them along that substantial life,

  Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,

  Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,

  I proceed for all who are or have been young men,

  To tell the secret of my nights and days,

  To celebrate the need of comrades.

  SCENTED HERBAGE OF MY BREAST

  Scented herbage of my breast,

  Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best afterwards,

  Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death,

  Perennial roots, tall leaves, 0 the winter shall not freeze you

  delicate leaves,

  Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you

  shall emerge again;

  O I do not know whether many passing by will discover you or

  inhale your faint odor, but I believe a few will;

  O slender leaves! 0 blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell in

  your own way of the heart that is under you,

  O I do not know what you mean there underneath yourselves,

  you are not happiness,

  You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting

  me,

  Yet you are beautiful to me you faint tinged roots, you make me

  think of death,

  Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful

  except death and love?)

  O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers,

  I think it must be for death,

  For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere

  of lovers,

  Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer,

  (I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)

  Indeed O death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the

  same as you mean,

  Grow up taller sweet leaves that I may see! grow up out of my

  breast!

  Spring away from the conceal’d heart there!

  Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves!

  Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!

  Come I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have

  long enough stifled and choked;

  Emblematic and capricious blades I leave you, now you serve me

  not,

  I will say what I have to say by itself,

  I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a

  call only their call,

  I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States,

  I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will

  through the States,

  Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating,

  Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with it,

  Give me yourself, for I see that you belong to me now above

  all, and are folded inseparably together, you love and death

  are,

  Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling

  life,

  For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports essential,

  That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons, and that

  they are mainly for you,

  That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,

  That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter

  how long,

  That you will one day perhaps take control of all,

  That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,

  That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very

  long,

  But you will last very long.

  WHOEVER YOU ARE HOLDING ME NOW IN HAND 24

  Whoever you are holding me now in hand,

  Without one thing all will be useless,

  I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,

  I am not what you supposed, but far different.

  Who is he that would become my follower?

  Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

  The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,

  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be

  your sole and exclusive standard,

  Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,

  The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives

  around you would have to be abandon‘d,

  Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further,

  let go your hand from my shoulders,

  Put me down and depart on your way.

  Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,

  Or back of a rock in the open air,

  (For in any roof d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,

  And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)

  But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any

  person for miles around approach unawares,

  Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or

  some quiet island,

  Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

  With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,

  For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

  Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,

  Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,

  Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;

  For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,

  And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried

  eternally.

  But these leaves conning you con at peril,

  For these leaves and me you will not understand,

  They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will

  certainly elude you,

  Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me,

  behold!

  Already you see I have escaped from you.

  For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this

  book,

  Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,

  Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise

  me,

  Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)

  prove victorious,

  Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,

  perhaps more,

  For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times

  and not hit, that which I hinted at;

  Therefore release me and depart on your way.

  FOR YOU O DEMOCRACY

  Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

  I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,

  I will make divine m
agnetic lands,

  With the love of comrades,

  With the life-long love of comrades.

  I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of

  America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over

  the prairies,

  I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each

  other’s necks.

  By the love of comrades,

  By the manly love of comrades.

  For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma

  femme!

  For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

  THESE I SINGING IN SPRING

  These I singing in spring collect for lovers,

  (For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and

  joy?

  And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

  Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates,

  Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not

  the wet,

  Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown

  there, pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,

  (Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones

  and partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)

  Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I think

  where I go,

  Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the

  silence,

  Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,

  Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my

  arms or neck,

  They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a

  great crowd, and I in the middle,

  Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,

  Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is

  near me,

  Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,

  Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in

  Florida as it hung trailing down,25

  Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,

  And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pond

  side,

  (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again