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Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

Page 43

by Walt Whitman


  If they had not reference to you in especial what were they then?)

  I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells

  the best,

  I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

  Say on, sayers! sing on, singers!

  Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!

  Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost,

  It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use,

  When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects

  shall appear.

  I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail,

  I swear to you they will understand you and justify you,

  The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and

  encloses all and is faithful to all,

  He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you

  are not an iota less than they,

  You shall be fully glorified in them.

  YOUTH, DAY, OLD AGE AND NIGHT

  Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,

  Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,

  force, fascination?

  Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action,

  ambition, laughter,

  The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and

  restoring darkness.

  BIRDS OF PASSAGE

  SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL

  - 1 -

  Come said the Muse,

  Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,

  Sing me the universal.

  In this broad earth of ours,

  Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,

  Enclosed and safe within its central heart,

  Nestles the seed perfection.

  By every life a share or more or less,

  None born but it is born, conceal’d or unconceal’d the seed is

  waiting.

  -2-

  Lo! keen-eyed towering science,

  As from tall peaks the modern overlooking,

  Successive absolute fiats issuing.

  Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science,

  For it has history gather’d like husks around the globe,

  For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.

  In spiral routes by long detours,

  (As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)

  For it the partial to the permanent flowing,

  For it the real to the ideal tends.

  For it the mystic evolution,

  Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.

  Forth from their masks, no matter what,

  From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears,

  Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.

  Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,

  Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and

  states,

  Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,

  Only the good is universal.

  - 3-

  Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,

  An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,

  High in the purer, happier air.

  From imperfection’s murkiest cloud,

  Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,

  One flash of heaven’s glory.

  To fashion‘s, custom’s discord,

  To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,

  Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard,

  From some far shore the final chorus sounding.

  O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,

  That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,

  Along the mighty labyrinth.

  -4-

  And thou America,

  For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality,

  For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.

  Thou too surroundest all,

  Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad

  and new,

  To the ideal tendest.

  The measur’d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,

  Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,

  Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,

  All eligible to all.

  All, all for immortality,

  Love like the light silently wrapping all,

  Nature’s amelioration blessing all,

  The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain,

  Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.

  Give me 0 God to sing that thought,

  Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,

  In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,

  Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,

  Health, peace, salvation universal.

  Is it a dream?

  Nay but the lack of it the dream,

  And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream,

  And all the world a dream.

  PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!

  Come my tan-faced children,

  Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,

  Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  For we cannot tarry here,

  We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of

  danger,

  We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  O you youths, Western youths,

  So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,

  Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Have the elder races halted?

  Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there

  beyond the seas?

  We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  All the past we leave behind,

  We debouch bbupon a newer mightier world, varied world,

  Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  We detachments steady throwing,

  Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,

  Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  We primeval forests felling,

  We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the

  mines within,

  We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Colorado men are we,

  From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the

  high plateaus,

  From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  From Nebraska, from Arkansas,

  Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the con-

  tinental blood intervein‘d,

  All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all

  the Northern,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  O resistless restless race!

  O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love

  for all!

  O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Raise the mighty mother mistress,

  Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mis

  tress, (bend your heads all,)

  Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive,

  weapon’d mistress,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  See my children, resolute children,

 
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or

  falter,

  Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us

  urging,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  On and on the compact ranks,

  With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead

  quickly fill‘d,

  Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never

  stopping,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  O to die advancing on!

  Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour

  come?

  Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap

  is fill‘d,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  All the pulses of the world,

  Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement

  beat,

  Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all

  for us,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,

  All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,

  All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  All the hapless silent lovers,

  All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,

  All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  I too with my soul and body,

  We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,

  Through these shores amid the shadows, with the appari

  tions pressing,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Lo, the darting bowling orb!

  Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,

  All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  These are of us, they are with us,

  All for primal needed work, while the followers there in

  embryo wait behind,

  We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  O you daughters of the West!

  O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and

  you wives!

  Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Minstrels latent on the prairies!

  (Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have

  done your work,)

  Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and

  tramp amid us,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Not for delectations sweet,

  Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the

  studious,

  Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Do the feasters gluttonous feast?

  Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and

  bolted doors?

  Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Has the night descended?

  Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged

  nodding on our way?

  Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause

  oblivious,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  Till with sound of trumpet,

  Far, far off the daybreak call -hark! how loud and clear I

  hear it wind,

  Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,

  Pioneers! O pioneers!

  TO YOU

  Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,

  I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet

  and hands,

  Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,

  troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,

  Your true soul and body appear before me,

  They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,

  farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,

  suffering, dying.

  Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my

  poem,

  I whisper with my lips close to your ear,

  I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than

  you.

  O I have been dilatory and dumb,

  I should have made my way straight to you long ago,

  I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted

  nothing but you.

  I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,

  None has understood you, but I understand you,

  None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,

  None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in

  you,

  None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never

  consent to subordinate you,

  I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,

  beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

  Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure

  of all,

  From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-

  color’d light,

  But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its

  nimbus of gold-color’d light,

  From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it

  streams, effulgently flowing forever.

  O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

  You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon

  yourself all your life,

  Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,

  What you have done returns already in mockeries,

  (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in

  mockeries, what is their return?)

  The mockeries are not you,

  Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,

  I pursue you where none else has pursued you,

  Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the

  accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from

  yourself, they do not conceal you from me,

  The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if

  these balk others they do not balk me,

  The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed,

  premature death, all these I part aside.

  There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in

  you,

  There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in

  you,

  No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,

  No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

  As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like

  carefully to you,

  I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing

  the songs of the glory of you.

  Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

  These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,

  These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are im

  mense and interminable as they,

  These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of

  apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or

  mistress over them,

  Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,

  passion, dissolution.

  The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,

  Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,

  whatever you
are promulges itself,

  Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided,

  nothing is scanted,

  Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are

  picks its way.

  FRANCE, THE 18TH YEAR OF THESE STATES43

  A great year and place,

  A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the

  mother’s heart closer than any yet. bc

  I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea,

  Heard over the waves the little voice,

  Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing,

  amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling

  buildings,

  Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from

  the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away

  in the tumbrils,

  Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock’d

  at the repeated fusillades of the guns.

  Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?

  Could I wish humanity different?

  Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?

  Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

  O Liberty! O mate for me!

  Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch

  them out in case of need,

  Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy‘d,

  Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,

  Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.

  Hence I sign this salute over the sea,

  And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,

  But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with

  perfect trust, no matter how long,

  And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath’d cause,

  as for all lands,

 

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