Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  Overhand so steady, overhand they turn and fall with joyous

  clank,

  Like a tumult of laughter.

  Mark the spirit of invention everywhere, thy rapid patents,

  Thy continual workshops, foundries, risen or rising,

  See, from their chimneys how the tall flame-fires stream.

  Mark, thy interminable farms, North, South,

  Thy wealthy daughter-states, Eastern and Western,

  The varied products of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Georgia,

  Texas, and the rest,

  Thy limitless crops, grass, wheat, sugar, oil, corn, rice, hemp, hops,

  Thy barns all fill‘d, the endless freight-train and the bulging store

  house,

  The grapes that ripen on thy vines, the apples in thy orchards,

  Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes, thy coal, thy gold

  and silver,

  The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.

  All thine O sacred Union!

  Ships, farms, shops, barns, factories, mines,

  City and State, North, South, item and aggregate,

  We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!

  Protectress absolute, thou! bulwark of all!

  For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous

  as God,)

  Without thee neither all nor each, nor land, home,

  Nor ship, nor mine, nor any here this day secure,

  Nor aught, nor any day secure.

  —9—

  And thou, the Emblem waving over all!

  Delicate beauty, a word to thee, (it may be salutary,)

  Remember thou hast not always been as here to-day so

  comfortably ensovereign‘d,

  In other scenes than these have I observ’d thee flag,

  Not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of

  stainless silk,

  But I have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinter’d

  staff,

  Or clutch’d to some young color-bearer’s breast with desperate

  hands,

  Savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long,

  ’Mid cannons’ thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and

  yell, and rifle-volleys cracking sharp,

  And moving masses as wild demons surging, and lives as nothing

  risk‘d,

  For thy mere remnant grimed with dirt and smoke and sopp’d in

  blood,

  For sake of that, my beauty, and that thou might’st dally as now

  secure up there,

  Many a good man have I seen go under.

  Now here and these and hence in peace, all thine O Flag!

  And here and hence for thee, O universal Muse! and thou for

  them!

  And here and hence O Union, all the work and workmen

  thine!

  None separate from thee—henceforth One only, we and

  thou,

  (For the blood of the children, what is it, only the blood

  maternal?

  And lives and works, what are they all at last, except the roads to

  faith and death?)

  While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear

  Mother,

  We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in thee;

  Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross

  or lucre—it is for thee, the soul in thee, electric,

  spiritual!

  Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in thee! cities and States in

  thee!

  Our freedom all in thee! our very lives in thee!

  SONG OF THE REDWOOD-TREE41

  —1—

  A California song,

  A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,

  A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,ay

  A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,

  Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.

  Farewell my brethren,

  Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters,

  My time has ended, my term has come.

  Along the northern coast,

  Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,

  In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country,

  With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse,

  With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by strong

  arms,

  Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood

  forest dense,

  I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.

  The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not,

  The quick-ear’d teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not,

  As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to

  join the refrain,

  But in my soul I plainly heard.

  Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,

  Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,

  Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,

  That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but

  the future.

  You untold life of me,

  And all you venerable and innocent joys,

  Perennial hardy life of me with joys ‘mid rain and many a summer

  sun,

  And the white snows and night and the wild winds;

  O the great patient rugged joys, my soul’s strong joys unreck’d by

  man,

  (For know I bear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness,

  identity,

  And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth,)

  Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,

  Our time, our term has come.

  Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers,

  We who have grandly fill’d our time;

  With Nature’s calm content, with tacit huge delight,

  We welcome what we wrought for through the past,

  And leave the field for them.

  For them predicted long,

  For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time,

  For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings!

  In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta,

  Nevadas,

  These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far

  Yosemite,

  To be in them absorb‘d, assimilated.

  Then to a loftier strain,

  Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,

  As if the heirs, the deities of the West,

  Joining with master-tongue bore part.

  Not wan from Asia’s fetiches,

  Nor red from Europe’s old dynastic slaughter-house,

  (Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars and

  scaffolds everywhere,)

  But come from Nature’s long and harmless throes, peacefully

  builded thence,

  These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore,

  To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new,

  You promis’d long, we pledge, we dedicate.

  You occult deep volitions,

  You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois’d on yourself,

  giving not taking law,

  You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence life and

  love and aught that comes from life and love,

  You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America, (age

  upon age working in death the same as life,)

  You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape

  and mould the New World, adjusting it to Time and

  Space,

  You hidden national will lying in your abysms, con
ceal’d but ever

  alert,

  You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, may be

  unconscious of yourselves,

  Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the

  surface;

  You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts,

  statutes, literatures,

  Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire,

  lands of the Western shore,

  We pledge, we dedicate to you.

  For man of you, your characteristic race,

  Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate

  to Nature,

  Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck’d by wall or

  roof,

  Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure,

  Here heed himself, unfold himself, (not others’ formulas heed,) here

  fill his time,

  To duly fall, to aid, unreck’d at last,

  To disappear, to serve.

  Thus on the northern coast,

  In the echo of teamsters’ calls and the clinking chains, and the

  music of choppers’ axes,

  The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the

  groan,

  Such words combined from the redwood tree, as of voices

  ecstatic, ancient and rustling,

  The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing,

  All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,

  From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or

  Utah,

  To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding,

  The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the

  settlements, features all,

  In the Mendocino woods I caught.

  -2-

  The flashing and golden pageant of California,

  The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands,

  The long and varied stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south,

  Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and

  mountain cliffs,

  The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic

  chemistry,

  The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface

  ripening, the rich ores forming beneath;

  At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,

  A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere,

  Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to

  the whole world,

  To India and China and Australia and the thousand island

  paradises of the Pacific,

  Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers,

  the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,

  And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow

  gold.

  —3—

  But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore,

  (These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground,)

  I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years,

  till now deferr‘d,

  Promis’d to be fulfill’d, our common kind, the race.

  The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,

  In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwart trees

  imperial,

  In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, or even

  vital air.

  Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,

  I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,

  Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, heir

  of the past so grand,

  To build a grander future.

  A SONG FOR OCCUPATIONS

  —1—

  A song for occupations!

  In the labor of engines and trades and the labor of fields I find the

  developments,

  And find the eternal meanings.

  Workmen and Workwomen!

  Were all educations practical and ornamental well display’d out of

  me, what would it amount to?

  Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman,

  what would it amount to?

  Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that

  satisfy you?

  The learn‘d, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,

  A man like me and never the usual terms.

  Neither a servant nor a master I,

  I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have my

  own whoever enjoys me,

  I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.

  If you stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as the nighest in the

  same shop,

  If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as

  good as your brother or dearest friend,

  If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be

  personally as welcome,

  If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your

  sake,

  If you remember your foolish and outlaw’d deeds, do you

  think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw’d

  deeds?

  If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the

  table,

  If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why

  I often meet strangers in the street and love them.

  Why what have you thought of yourself?

  Is it you then that thought yourself less?

  Is it you that thought the President greater than you?

  Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

  (Because you are greasy or pimpled, or were once drunk, or a

  thief,

  Or that you are diseas‘d, or rheumatic, or a prostitute,

  Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar and

  never saw your name in print,

  Do you give in that you are any less immortal?)

  -2-

  Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard,

  untouchable and untouching,

  It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether

  you are alive or no,

  I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.

  Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every country,

  in-doors and out-doors, one just as much as the other, I see,

  And all else behind or through them.

  The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,

  The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,

  The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.

  Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to trades,

  Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working on farms,

  Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,

  All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,

  None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.

  I bring what you much need yet always have,

  Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,

  I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but

  offer the value itself.

  There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,

  It is not what is printed, preach‘d, discussed, it eludes discussion

  and print,

  It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,

  It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your

  hearing and sight are from you,

  It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by

 
them.

  You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,

  You may read the President’s message and read nothing about it

  there,

  Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury

  department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,

  Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any

  accounts of stock.

  -3-

  The sun and stars that float in the open air,

  The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is

  something grand,

  I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is

  happiness,

  And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or

  bon-mot or reconnoissance,

  And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for

  us, and without luck must be a failure for us,

  And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain

  contingency.

  The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity,

  the greed that with perfect complaisance devours all

  things,

  The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys

  and sorrows,

  The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the

  wonders that fill each minute of time forever,

  What have you reckon’d them for, camerado?

  Have you reckon’d them for your trade or farm-work? or for the

  profits of your store?

  Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman’s leisure,

  or a lady’s leisure?

  Have you reckon’d that the landscape took substance and form

  that it might be painted in a picture?

  Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?

  Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious

  combinations and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the

  savans?

  Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?

  Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?

  Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or agriculture