Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  By the wind’s voice and that of the drum,

  By the banner’s voice and child’s voice and sea’s voice and father’s

  voice,

  Low on the ground and high in the air,

  On the ground where father and child stand,

  In the upward air where their eyes turn,

  Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.

  Words! book-words! what are you?

  Words no more, for hearken and see,

  My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,

  With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

  I’ll weave the chord and twine in,

  Man’s desire and babe’s desire, I’ll twine them in, I’ll put in life,

  I’ll put the bayonet’s flashing point, I’ll let bullets and slugs

  whizz,

  (As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the future,

  Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and

  arouse!)

  I’ll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full

  of joy,

  Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,

  With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

  Pennant

  Come up here, bard, bard,

  Come up here, soul, soul,

  Come up here, dear little child,

  To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the

  measureless light.

  Child

  Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long

  finger?

  And what does it say to me all the while?

  Father

  Nothing my babe you see in the sky,

  And nothing at all to you it says—but look you my babe,

  Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the

  money-shops opening,

  And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with

  goods;

  These, ah these, how valued and toil’d for these!

  How envied by all the earth.

  Poet

  Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,

  On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its channels,

  On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward

  land,

  The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,

  Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.

  But I am not the sea nor the red sun,

  I am not the wind with girlish laughter,

  Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which

  lashes,

  Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,

  But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,

  Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,

  Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,

  And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner

  and pennant,

  Aloft there flapping and flapping.

  Child

  O father it is alive—it is full of people—it has children,

  O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,

  I hear it—it talks to me—O it is wonderful!

  O it stretches—it spreads and runs so fast—O my father,

  It is so broad it covers the whole sky.

  Father

  Cease, cease, my foolish babe,

  What you are saying is sorrowful to me, much it displeases me;

  Behold with the rest again I say, behold not banners and pennants

  aloft,

  But the well-prepared pavements behold, and mark the solid-

  wall’d houses.

  Banner and Pennant

  Speak to the child O bard out of Manhattan,

  To our children all, or north or south of Manhattan,

  Point this day, leaving all the rest, to us over all—and yet we know

  not why,

  For what are we, mere strips of cloth profiting nothing,

  Only flapping in the wind?

  Poet

  I hear and see not strips of cloth alone,

  I hear the tramp of armies, I hear the challenging sentry,

  I hear the jubilant shouts of millions of men, I hear Liberty!

  I hear the drums beat and the trumpets blowing,

  I myself move abroad swift-rising flying then,

  I use the wings of the land-bird and use the wings of the sea-bird,

  and look down as from a height,

  I do not deny the precious results of peace, I see populous cities

  with wealth incalculable,

  I see numberless farms, I see the farmers working in their fields or

  barns,

  I see mechanics working, I see buildings everywhere founded,

  going up, or finish‘d,

  I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks drawn by

  the locomotives,

  I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New

  Orleans,

  I see far in the West the immense area of grain, I dwell awhile

  hovering,

  I pass to the lumber forests of the North, and again to the

  Southern plantation, and again to California;

  Sweeping the whole I see the countless profit, the busy

  gatherings, earn’d wages,

  See the Identity formed out of thirty-eight spacious and haughty

  States, (and many more to come,)

  See forts on the shores of harbors, see ships sailing in and out;

  Then over all, (aye! aye!) my little and lengthen’d pennant shaped

  like a sword,

  Runs swiftly up indicating war and defiance—and now the

  halyards have rais’d it,

  Side of my banner broad and blue, side of my starry banner,

  Discarding peace over all the sea and land.

  Banner and Pennant

  Yet louder, higher, stronger, bard! yet farther, wider cleave!

  No longer let our children deem us riches and peace alone,

  We may be terror and carnage, and are so now,

  Not now are we any one of these spacious and haughty States,

  (nor any five, nor ten,)

  Nor market nor depot we, nor money-bank in the city,

  But these and all, and the brown and spreading land, and the

  mines below, are ours,

  And the shores of the sea are ours, and the rivers great and

  small,

  And the fields they moisten, and the crops and the fruits

  are ours,

  Bays and channels and ships sailing in and out are ours—while

  we over all,

  Over the area spread below, the three or four millions of square

  miles, the capitals,

  The forty millions of people,—O bard! in life and death supreme,

  We, even we, henceforth flaunt out masterful, high up above,

  Not for the present alone, for a thousand years chanting through

  you,

  This song to the soul of one poor little child.

  Child

  O my father I like not the houses,

  They will never to me be any thing, nor do I like money,

  But to mount up there I would like, O father dear, that banner

  I like,

  That pennant I would be and must be.

  Father

  Child of mine you fill me with anguish,

  To be that pennant would be too fearful,

  Little you know what it is this day, and after this day, forever,

  It is to gain nothing, but risk and defy every thing,

  Forward to stand in front of wars—and O, such wars!—what have

  you to do with them?

  With passions of demons, slaughter, premature death?

  Banner

  Demons and
death then I sing,

  Put in all, aye all will I, sword-shaped pennant for war,

  And a pleasure new and ecstatic, and the prattled yearning of

  children,

  Blent with the sounds of the peaceful land and the liquid wash of

  the sea,

  And the black ships fighting on the sea envelop’d in smoke,

  And the icy cool of the far, far north, with rustling cedars and pines,

  And the whirr of drums and the sound of soldiers marching, and

  the hot sun shining south,

  And the beach-waves combing over the beach on my Eastern

  shore, and my Western shore the same,

  And all between those shores, and my ever running Mississippi

  with bends and chutes,

  And my Illinois fields, and my Kansas fields, and my fields of

  Missouri,

  The Continent, devoting the whole identity without reserving an

  atom,

  Pour in! whelm that which asks, which sings, with all and the

  yield of all,

  Fusing and holding, claiming, devouring the whole,

  No more with tender lip, nor musical labial sound,

  But out of the night emerging for good, our voice persuasive no

  more,

  Croaking like crows here in the wind.

  Poet

  My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last,

  Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty

  and resolute,

  I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen’d and

  blinded,

  My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,)

  I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand,

  Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner!

  Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their

  prosperity, (if need be, you shall again have every one of

  those houses to destroy them,

  You thought not to destroy those valuable houses, standing fast,

  full of comfort, built with money,

  May they stand fast, then? not an hour except you above them

  and all stand fast;)

  O banner, not money so precious are you, not farm produce you,

  nor the material good nutriment,

  Nor excellent stores, nor landed on wharves from the ships,

  Not the superb ships with sail-power or steam-power, fetching and

  carrying cargoes,

  Nor machinery, vehicles, trade, nor revenues—but you as

  henceforth I see you,

  Running up out of the night, bringing your cluster of stars, (ever

  enlarging stars,)

  Divider of daybreak you, cutting the air, touch’d by the sun,

  measuring the sky,

  (Passionately seen and yearn’d for by one poor little child,

  While others remain busy or smartly talking, forever teaching

  thrift, thrift;)

  O you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake

  hissing so curious,

  Out of reach, an idea only, yet furiously fought for, risking bloody

  death, loved by me,

  So loved—O you banner leading the day with stars brought from

  the night!

  Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—(absolute

  owner of all)—O banner and pennant!

  I too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing—houses, machines

  are nothing—I see them not,

  I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes,

  I sing you only,

  Flapping up there in the wind.

  RISE O DAYS FROM YOUR FATHOMLESS DEEPS

  —1—

  Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer

  sweep,

  Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth

  gave me,

  Long I roam’d the woods of the north, long I watch’d Niagara

  pouring,

  I travel’d the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross’d the

  Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus,

  I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out

  to sea,

  I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm,

  I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves,

  I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling

  over,

  I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds,

  Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as

  my heart, and powerful!)

  Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow’d after the lightning,

  Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden

  and fast amid the din they chased each other across

  the sky;

  These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet

  pensive and masterful,

  All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me,

  Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.

  —2—

  ‘Twas well, O soul—’twas a good preparation you gave me,

  Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill,

  Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never

  gave us,

  Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier

  cities,

  Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring,

  Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest are you

  indeed inexhaustible?)

  What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms

  of the mountains and sea?

  What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea

  risen?

  Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?

  Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and

  savage,

  Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front—Cincinnati,

  Chicago, unchain’d;

  What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes

  here,

  How it climbs with daring feet and hands—how it dashes!

  How the true thunder bellows after the lightning—how bright the

  flashes of lightning!

  How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown

  through the dark by those flashes of lightning!

  (Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through the

  dark,

  In a lull of the deafening confusion.)

  —3—

  Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!

  And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities!

  Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good,

  My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong

  nutriment,

  Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads through farms,

  only half satisfied,

  One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the

  ground before me,

  Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically

  hissing low;

  The cities I loved so well I abandon’d and left, I sped to the

  certainties suitable to me,

  Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and

  Nature’s dauntlessness,

  I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only,

  I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air I

  waited long;

  But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,

  I have witness’d the true lightning, I
have witness’d my cities

  electric,

  I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,

  Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary

  wilds,

  No more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea.

  VIRGINIA—THE WEST

  The noble sire fallen on evil days,

  I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,

  (Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)

  The insane knife toward the Mother of All.

  The noble son on sinewy feet advancing,

  I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of Ohio’s waters and of

  Indiana,

  To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his plenteous offspring,

  Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on their shoulders.

  Then the Mother of All with calm voice speaking,

  As to you Rebellious, (I seemed to hear her say,) why strive

  against me, and why seek my life?

  When you yourself forever provide to defend me?

  For you provided me Washington—and now these also.

  CITY OF SHIPS62

  City of ships!

  (O the black ships! O the fierce ships!

  O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!)

  City of the world! (for all races are here,

  All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)

  City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!

  City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in

  and out with eddies and foam!

  City of wharves and stores—city of tall façades of marble and iron!

  Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!

  Spring up O city—not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself,

  warlike!

  Fear not—submit to no models but your own O city!

  Behold me—incarnate me as I have incarnated you!

  I have rejected nothing you offer’d me—whom you adopted

  I have adopted,

  Good or bad I never question you—I love all—I do not condemn

  any thing,

  I chant and celebrate all that is yours—yet peace no more,

  In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine,

  War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!

  THE CENTENARIAN’S STORY63

  (Volunteer of 1861-2, at Washington Park, Brooklyn, assisting the Centenarian.)