Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  chasing,

  Fulfilling our foray.

  A PROMISE TO CALIFORNIA

  A promise to California,

  Or inland to the great pastoral Plains, and on to Puget Sound and

  Oregon;

  Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to

  remain, to teach robust American love,

  For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,

  inland, and along the Western sea;

  For these States tend inland and toward the Western sea, and I

  will also.

  HERE THE FRAILEST LEAVES OF ME

  Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,

  Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose

  them,

  And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.

  NO LABOR-SAVING MACHINE

  No labor-saving machine,

  Nor discovery have I made,

  Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to

  found a hospital or library,

  Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,

  Nor literary success nor intellect, nor book for the book-shelf,

  But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,

  For comrades and lovers.

  A GLIMPSE29

  A glimpse through an interstice caught,

  Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the

  stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a

  corner,

  Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching

  and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,

  A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking

  and oath and smutty jest,

  There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,

  perhaps not a word.

  A LEAF FOR HAND IN HAND

  A leaf for hand in hand;

  You natural persons old and young!

  You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of the

  Mississippi!

  You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!

  You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!

  I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to

  walk hand in hand.

  EARTH, MY LIKENESS

  Earth, my likeness,

  Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,

  I now suspect that is not all;

  I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst

  forth,

  For an athlete is enamour’d of me, and I of him,

  But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me

  eligible to burst forth,

  I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.

  I DREAM’D IN A DREAM30

  I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the

  whole of the rest of the earth,

  I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,

  Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led

  the rest,

  It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,

  And in all their looks and words.

  WHAT THINK YOU I TAKE MY PEN IN HAND?

  What think you I take my pen in hand to record?

  The battle ship, perfect-model‘d, majestic, that I saw pass the

  offing to-day under full sail?

  The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that

  envelops me?

  Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around

  me?—no;

  But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the

  midst of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends,

  The one to remain hung on the other’s neck and passionately

  kiss’d him,

  While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his

  arms.

  TO THE EAST AND TO THE WEST

  To the East and to the West,

  To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,

  To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,

  These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in

  all men,

  I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb

  friendship, exalté, previously unknown,

  Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in

  all men.

  SOMETIMES WITH ONE I LOVE

  Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse

  unreturn’d love,

  But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one

  way or another,

  (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return‘d,

  Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

  TO A WESTERN BOY

  Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;

  Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,

  If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select

  lovers,

  Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?

  FAST-ANCHOR’D ETERNAL O LOVE!

  Fast-anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love!

  O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!

  Then separate, as disembodied or another born,

  Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,

  I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,

  O sharer of my roving life.

  AMONG THE MULTITUDE

  Among the men and women the multitude,

  I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,

  Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother,

  child, any nearer than I am,

  Some are baffled, but that one is not—that one knows me.

  Ah lover and perfect equal,

  I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,

  And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.

  O YOU WHOM I OFTEN AND SILENTLY COME

  O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may

  be with you,

  As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room

  with you,

  Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing

  within me.

  THAT SHADOW MY LIKENESS

  That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,

  chattering, chaffering,

  How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,

  How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;

  But among my lovers and caroling these songs,

  O I never doubt whether that is really me.

  FULL OF LIFE NOW

  Full of life now, compact, visible,

  I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,

  To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,

  To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

  When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,

  Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking

  me,

  Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become

  your comrade;

  Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with

  you.)

  SALUT AU MONDE!

  —1—

  O take my hand Walt Whitman!

  Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!

  Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next,

  Each answering all, each sharing the ea
rth with all.

  What widens within you Walt Whitman?

  What waves and soils exuding?

  What climes? what persons and cities are here?

  Who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering?

  \‘ho are the girls? who are the married women?

  Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms

  about each other’s necks?

  What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?

  What are the mountains call’d that rise so high in the mists?

  What myriads of dwellings are they fill’d with dwellers ?

  —2—

  Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,

  Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east-America is provided for in

  the west.

  Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,

  Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends,

  Within me is the longest day. the sun wheels in slanting rings, it

  does not set for months,

  Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above

  the horizon and sinks again.

  Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,

  Malaysia. Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.

  —3—

  What do you hear Walt Whitman?

  I hear the workman singing and the farmer’s wife singing,

  I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early

  in the day,

  I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse.

  I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to

  the rebeck and guitar.

  I hear continual echoes from the Thames,

  I hear fierce French liberty songs,

  I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems,

  I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with

  the showers of their terrible clouds,

  I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the

  breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,

  I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the

  mule,

  I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,

  I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear

  the responsive bass and soprano,

  I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor’s voice putting to sea

  at Okotsk,am

  I hear the wheeze of the slave-cofflean as the slaves march on, as

  the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten’d together

  with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,

  I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,

  I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends

  of the Romans,

  I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful

  God the Christ,

  I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,

  adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote

  three thousand years ago.

  -4-

  What do you see Walt Whitman?

  Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?

  I see a great round wonder rolling through space,

  I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,

  palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the

  surface,

  I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,

  and the sunlit part on the other side,

  I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,

  I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as

  my land is to me.

  I see plenteous waters,

  I see mountain peaks, I see the sierras of Andes where they range,

  I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,

  I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,

  I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,

  I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the

  Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecia,ao

  I see Vesuvius and Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the

  Red mountains of Madagascar,

  I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,

  I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,

  I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the Atlantic and

  Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of

  Peru,

  The waters of Hindustan, the China sea, and the gulf of Guinea,

  The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki landlock’d in its

  mountains,

  The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores,

  and the bay of Biscay,

  The clear-sunn’d Mediterranean, and from one to another of its

  islands,

  The White sea, and the sea around Greenland.

  I behold the mariners of the world,

  Some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the

  look-out,

  Some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.

  I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters in

  port, some on their voyages,

  Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes

  Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,

  Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others cape

  Lopatka, others Behring’s straits,

  Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along Cuba

  or Hayti, others Hudson’s bay or Baffin’s bay,

  Others pass the straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the

  firth of Solway, others round cape Clear, others the Land’s End,

  Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,

  Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,

  Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,

  Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,

  Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the

  Burampooter and Cambodia,

  Others wait steam’d up ready to start in the ports of Australia,

  Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,

  Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,

  Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.

  -5-

  I see the tracks of the railroads31 of the earth,

  I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,

  I see them in Asia and in Africa.

  I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,

  I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,

  passions, of my race.

  I see the long river-stripes of the earth,

  I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,

  I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River,

  the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl,

  I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire,

  the Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,

  I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,

  I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along

  the Po,

  I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.

  -6-

  I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and

  that of India,

  I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.

  I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in

  human forms,

  I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles,


  sacrifices, brahmins, sabians, llamas, monks, muftis, exhorters,

  I see where druids walk’d the groves of Mona, I see the mistletoe

  and vervain,ap

  I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods, I see the old

  signifiers.

  I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of

  youths and old persons,

  I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil’d

  faithfully and long and then died,

  I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the

  beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb’d Bacchus,

  I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers

  on his head,

  I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov‘d, saying to the

  people Do not weep for me,

  This is not my true country, I have lived banish’d from my true

  country, I now go back there,

  I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.

  —7—

  I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and

  blossoms and corn,

  I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.

  I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth.

  I see the places of the sagas,

  I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,

  I see granite bowlders and cliffs, I see green meadows and lakes,

  I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,

  I see them raised high with stones by the marge of restless oceans,

  that the dead men’s spirits when they wearied of their quiet

  graves might rise up through the mounds and gaze on the

  tossing billows, and be refresh’d by storms, immensity, liberty,

  action.

  I see the steppes of Asia,

  I see the tumuli of Mongolia, I see the tents of Kalmucks and

  Baskirs,

  I see the nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows,