Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  breath of my infant,

  There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;

  The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,

  The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the

  irregular snap! snap!

  I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of

  the rifle balls,

  I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the

  great shells shrieking as they pass,

  The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees,

  (tumultuous now the contest rages,)

  All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,

  The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their

  pieces,

  The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse

  of the right time,

  After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the

  effect;

  Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young

  colonel leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)

  I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no

  delay,)

  I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low

  concealing all;

  Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either

  side,

  Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and

  orders of officers,

  While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my

  ears a shout of applause, (some special success,)

  And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in

  dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the

  depths of my soul,)

  And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries,

  cavalry, moving hither and thither,

  (The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red

  I heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)

  Grime, heat, rush, aide-de-camps galloping by or on a

  full run,

  With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these

  in my vision I hear or see,)

  And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.

  ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE COLORS

  Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,

  With your woolly-white and turban’d head, and bare bony feet?

  Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?

  (‘Tis while our army lines Carolina’s sands and pines,

  Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com’st to me,

  As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)

  Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder‘d,

  A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,

  Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.

  No further does she say, but lingering all the day,

  Her high-borne turban’d head she wags, and rolls her darkling

  eye,

  And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.

  What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?

  Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?

  Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?

  NOT YOUTH PERTAINS TO ME

  Not youth pertains to me,

  Nor delicatesse, I cannot beguile the time with talk,

  Awkward in the parlor, neither a dancer nor elegant,

  In the learn’d coterie sitting constrain’d and still, for learning

  inures not to me,

  Beauty, knowledge, inure not to me—yet there are two or three

  things inure to me,

  I have nourish’d the wounded and sooth’d many a dying soldier,

  And at intervals waiting or in the midst of camp,

  Composed these songs.

  RACE OF VETERANS

  Race of veterans—race of victors!

  Race of the soil, ready for conflict—race of the conquering march!

  (No more credulity’s race, abiding-temper’d race,)

  Race henceforth owning no law but the law of itself,

  Race of passion and the storm.

  WORLD TAKE GOOD NOTICE

  World take good notice, silver stars fading,

  Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching,

  Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,

  Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,

  Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores.

  O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE-BOY

  O tan-faced prairie-boy,

  Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift,

  Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among

  the recruits,

  You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but look’d on each

  other,

  When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

  LOOK DOWN FAIR MOON

  Look down fair moon and bathe this scene,

  Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods on faces ghastly, swollen,

  purple,

  On the dead on their backs with arms toss’d wide,

  Pour down your unstinted nimbus sacred moon.

  RECONCILIATION

  Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

  Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be

  utterly lost,

  That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly

  wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world;

  For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,

  I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,

  Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the

  coffin.

  HOW SOLEMN AS ONE BY ONE

  (Washington City, 1865)

  How solemn as one by one,

  As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where

  I stand,

  As the faces the masks appear, as I glance at the faces studying the

  masks,

  (As I glance upward out of this page studying you, dear friend,

  whoever you are,)

  How solemn the thought of my whispering soul to each in the

  ranks, and to you,

  I see behind each mask that wonder a kindred soul,

  O the bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend,

  Nor the bayonet stab what you really are;

  The soul! yourself I see, great as any, good as the best,

  Waiting secure and content, which the bullet could never kill,

  Nor the bayonet stab O friend.

  AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD IN YOUR LAP CAMERADO

  As I lay with my head in your lap camerado,

  The confession I made I resume, what I said to you and the open

  air I resume,

  I know I am restless and make others so,

  I know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,

  For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle

  them,

  I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever

  have been had all accepted me,

  I heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions,

  majorities, nor ridicule,

  And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me,

  And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;

  Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me,

  and still urge you, without the least idea what is our

  destination,

  Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and
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  defeated.

  DELICATE CLUSTER67

  Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!

  Covering all my lands—all my seashores lining!

  Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle

  pressing!

  How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)

  Flag cerulean—sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!

  Ah my silvery beauty—ah my wooly white and crimson!

  Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!

  My sacred one, my mother.

  TO A CERTAIN CIVILIAN

  Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?

  Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes?

  Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard to follow?

  Why I was not singing erewhile for you to follow, to understand

  nor am I now;

  (I have been born of the same as the war was born,

  The drum-corps’ rattle is ever to me sweet music, I love well the

  martial dirge,

  With slow wail and convulsive throb leading the officer’s

  funeral;)

  What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my

  works,

  And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with

  piano-tunes,

  For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.

  LO, VICTRESS ON THE PEAKS68

  Lo, Victress on the peaks,

  Where thou with mighty brow regarding the world,

  (The world O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee,)

  Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all,

  Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,

  Flauntest now unharm’d in immortal soundness and bloom—lo,

  in these hours supreme,

  No poem proud, I chanting bring to thee, nor mastery’s rapturous

  verse,

  But a cluster containing night’s darkness and blood-dripping

  wounds,

  And psalms of the dead.

  SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE

  (Washington City, 1865)

  Spirit whose work is done—spirit of dreadful hours!

  Ere departing fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;

  Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering

  pressing,)

  Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene—electric

  spirit,

  That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a

  tireless phantom flitted,

  Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat

  the drum,

  Now as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last,

  reverberates round me,

  As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the

  battles,

  As the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders,

  As I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders,

  As those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them appearing

  in the distance, approach and pass on, returning homeward,

  Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro to the right and

  left,

  Evenly lightly rising and falling while the steps keep time;

  Spirit of hours I knew, all hectic red one day, but pale as

  death next day,

  Touch my mouth ere you depart, press my lips close,

  Leave me your pulses of rage—bequeath them to me—fill me

  with currents convulsive,

  Let them scorch and blister out of my chants when you are

  gone,

  Let them identify you to the future in these songs.

  ADIEU TO A SOLDIER

  Adieu O soldier,

  You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)

  The rapid march, the life of the camp,

  The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,

  Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific

  game,

  Spell of all brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you

  and like of you all fill‘d,

  With war and war’s expression.

  Adieu dear comrade,

  Your mission is fulfill‘d—but I, more warlike,

  Myself and this contentious soul of mine,

  Still on our own campaigning bound,

  Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,

  Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled,

  Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here,

  To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

  TURN O LIBERTAD

  Turn O Libertad, for the war is over,

  From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more,

  resolute, sweeping the world,

  Turn from lands retrospective recording proofs of the past,

  From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past,

  From the chants of the feudal world, the triumphs of kings,

  slavery, caste,

  Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come—give up

  that backward world,

  Leave to the singers of hitherto, give them the trailing past,

  But what remains remains for singers for you—wars to come are

  for you,

  (Lo, how the wars of the past have duly inured to you, and the

  wars of the present also inure;)

  Then turn, and be not alarm’d O Libertad—turn your undying

  face,

  To where the future, greater than all the past,

  Is swiftly, surely preparing for you.

  TO THE LEAVEN’D SOIL THEY TROD69

  To the leaven’d soil they trod calling I sing for the last,

  (Forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent

  ropes,)

  In the freshness the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and

  vistas again to peace restored,

  To the fiery fields emanative and the endless vistas beyond, to the

  South and the North,

  To the leaven’d soil of the general Western world to attest my

  songs,

  To the Alleghanian hills and the tireless Mississippi,

  To the rocks I calling sing, and all the trees in the woods,

  To the plains of the poems of heroes, to the prairies spreading

  wide,

  To the far-off sea and the unseen winds, and the sane

  impalpable air;

  And responding they answer all, (but not in words,)

  The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges

  mutely,

  The prairie draws me close, as the father to bosom broad the son,

  The Northern ice and rain that began me nourish me to the end,

  But the hot sun of the South is to fully ripen my songs.

  MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

  WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM‘D70

  -1-

  When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom‘d,

  And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

  I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

  Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

  Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

  And thought of him I love.

  -2-

  O powerful western fallen star!

  O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!

  O great star disappear‘d—O the black murk that hides the star!

  O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!

  O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

  -3-

  In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the whi
te-wash’d

  palings,

  Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich

  green,

  With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume

  strong I love,

  With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,

  With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich

  green,

  A sprig with its flower I break.

  -4-

  In the swamp in secluded recesses,

  A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

  Solitary the thrush,

  The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,

  Sings by himself a song.

  Song of the bleeding throat,

  Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,

  If thou wast not granted to sing thou would‘st surely die.)

  -5-

  Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,

  Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets

  peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,

  Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the

  endless grass,

  Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in

  the dark-brown fields uprisen,

  Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,

  Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,

  Night and day journeys a coffin.71

  -6-

  Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

  Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,

  With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in

  black,

  With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women

  standing,

  With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the

  night,

  With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the

  unbared heads,

  With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,

  With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising