Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  early death;

  But my charity has no death—my wisdom dies not, neither early

  nor late,

  And my sweet love bequeath’d here and elsewhere never

  dies.

  —3—

  Aloof, dissatisfied, plotting revolt,

  Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves,

  Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant,

  With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my

  heart, proud as any,

  Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to

  rule me,

  Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many

  wiles,

  (Though it was thought I was baffled and dispel‘d, and my wiles

  done, but that will never be,)

  Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly

  appearing, (and old ones also,)

  Permanent here from my side, warlike, equal with any, real

  as any,

  Nor time nor change shall ever change me or my words.

  —4—

  Santa Spirita, breather, life,

  Beyond the light, lighter than light,

  Beyond the flames of hell, joyous, leaping easily above hell,

  Beyond Paradise, perfumed solely with mine own perfume,

  Including all life on earth, touching, including God, including

  Saviour and Satan,

  Ethereal, pervading all, (for without me what were all? what were

  God?)

  Essence of forms, life of the real identities, permanent, positive,

  (namely the unseen,)

  Life of the great round world, the sun and stars, and of man, I,

  the general soul,

  Here the square finishing, the solid, I the most solid,

  Breathe my breath also through these songs.

  OF HIM I LOVE DAY AND NIGHT92

  Of him I love day and night I dream’d I heard he was

  dead,

  And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love, but he

  was not in that place,

  And I dream’d I wander’d searching among burial-places to find

  him,

  And I found that every place was a burial-place;

  The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is

  now,)

  The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,

  Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the

  dead as of the living,

  And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;

  And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,

  And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream‘d,

  And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense with

  them,

  And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently

  everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should

  be satisfied,

  And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be

  duly render’d to powder and pour’d in the sea, I shall be

  satisfied,

  Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.

  YET, YET, YE DOWNCAST HOURS

  Yet, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also,

  Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles,

  Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o‘erweening,

  mocking voice,

  Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant only, continues onward.

  Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,

  The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm‘d, uncertain,

  The sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me,

  Come tell me where I am speeding, tell me my destination.

  I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,

  I approach, hear, behold, the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes,

  your mute inquiry,

  Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me;

  Old age, alarm‘d, uncertain—a young woman’s voice, appealing

  to me for comfort;

  A young man’s voice, Shall I not escape?

  AS IF A PHANTOM CARESS’D ME

  As if a phantom caress’d me,

  I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;

  But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore,

  the one I loved that caress’d me,

  As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has

  utterly disappear‘d,

  And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.

  ASSURANCES93

  I need no assurances, I am a man who is pre-occupied of his own

  soul;

  I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and

  face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not

  cognizant of, calm and actual faces,

  I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent

  in any iota of the world,

  I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless,

  in vain I try to think how limitless,

  I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift

  sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day be

  eligible to do as much as they, and more than they,

  I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of

  years,

  I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have

  their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and

  the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,

  I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are

  provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the

  deaths of little children are provided for,

  (Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the

  purport of all Life, is not well provided for?)

  I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of

  them, no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has

  gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points,

  I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at

  any time, is provided for in the inherences of things,

  I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I

  believe Heavenly Death provides for all.

  QUICKSAND YEARS

  Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither,

  Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and

  elude me,

  Only the theme I sing, the great and strong possess’d soul, eludes

  not,

  One‘s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that

  out of all is sure,

  Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally

  remains?

  When shows break up what but One’s-Self is sure?

  THAT MUSIC ALWAYS ROUND ME94

  That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long

  untaught I did not hear,

  But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

  A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes

  of daybreak I hear,

  A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense

  waves,

  A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the

  universe,

  The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and

  violins, all these I fill myself with,

  I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the

  exquisite meanings,

  I listen to the different voic
es winding in and out, striving,

  contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other

  in emotion;

  I do not think the performers know themselves—but now I think I

  begin to know them.

  WHAT SHIP PUZZLED AT SEA

  What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?

  Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect

  pilot needs?

  Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,

  Whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.

  A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER95

  A noiseless patient spider,

  I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

  Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

  It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

  Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

  And you O my soul where you stand,

  Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

  Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to

  connect them,

  Till the bridge you will need be form‘d, till the ductile anchor

  hold,

  Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

  O LIVING ALWAYS, ALWAYS DYING

  O living always, always dying!

  O the burials of me past and present,

  O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;

  O me, what I was for years, now dead, (I lament not, I am content;)

  O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and

  look at where I cast them,

  To pass on, (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses

  behind.

  TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE

  From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,

  You are to die—let others tell you what they please, I cannot

  prevaricate,

  I am exact and merciless, but I love you—there is no escape for you.

  Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,

  I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,

  I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,

  I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,

  I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is

  eternal, you yourself will surely escape,

  The corpse you leave will be but excrementitious.

  The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,

  Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,

  You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,

  You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping

  friends, I am with you,

  I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,

  I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.

  NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIES

  Night on the prairies,

  The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,

  The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets;

  I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now

  I never realized before.

  Now I absorb immortality and peace,

  I admire death and test propositions.

  How plenteous! how spiritual! how resume!

  The same old man and soul—the same old aspirations, and the

  same content.

  I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day

  exhibited,

  I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless

  around me myriads of other globes.

  Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will

  measure myself by them,

  And now touch’d with the lives of other globes arrived as far along

  as those of the earth,

  Or waiting to arrive, or pass’d on farther than those of the earth,

  I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,

  Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to

  arrive.

  O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,

  I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

  THOUGHT

  As I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is

  playing,

  To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of a

  wreck at sea,

  Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and

  wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,

  Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the

  President,

  Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder’d

  off the Northeast coast and going down—of the steamship

  Arctic going down,

  Of the veil’d tableau—women gather’d together on deck, pale,

  heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close—O the

  moment!

  A huge sob—a few bubbles—the white foam spirting up—and

  then the women gone,

  Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on—and I now

  pondering, Are those women indeed gone?

  Are souls drown’d and destroy’d so?

  Is only matter triumphant?

  THE LAST INVOCATION

  At the last, tenderly,

  From the walls of the powerful fortress’d house,

  From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well

  closed doors,

  Let me be wafted.

  Let me glide noiselessly forth;

  With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,

  Set ope the doors O soul.

  Tenderly—be not impatient,

  (Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,

  Strong is your hold O love.)

  AS I WATCH’D THE PLOUGHMAN PLOUGHING

  As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,

  Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,

  I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;

  (Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

  PENSIVE AND FALTERING

  Pensive and faltering,

  The words the Dead I write,

  For living are the Dead,

  (Haply the only living, only real,

  And I the apparition, I the spectre.)

  THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD

  —1—

  Thou Mother with thy equal brood,

  Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only,

  A special song before I go I’d sing o‘er all the rest,

  For thee, the future.

  I’d sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality,

  I’d fashion thy ensemble including body and soul,

  I’d show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be

  accomplish’d.

  The paths to the house I seek to make,

  But leave to those to come the house itself.

  Belief I sing, and preparation;

  As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the present only,

  But greater still from what is yet to come,

  Out of that formula for thee I sing.

  —2—

  As a strong bird on pinions free,

  Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,

  Such be the thought I’d think of thee America,

  Such be the recitative I’d bring for thee.

  The conceits of the poets of other lands I’d bring thee not,

  Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,

  Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or

  indoor
library;

  But an odor I’d bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or breath

  of an Illinois prairie,

  With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from Texas

  uplands, or Florida’s glades,

  Or the Saguenay’s black stream, or the wide blue spread of

  Huron,

  With presentment of Yellowstone’s scenes, or Yosemite,

  And murmuring under, pervading all, I’d bring the rustling sea

  sound,

  That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world.

  And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother,

  Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas fitted

  for thee, real and sane and large as these and thee,

  Thou! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou

  transcendental Union!

  By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought,

  Thought of man justified, blended with God,

  Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality!

  Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea!

  —3—

  Brain of the New World, what a task is thine,

  To formulate the Modern—out of the peerless grandeur of the

  modern,

  Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, art,

  (Recast, may-be discard them, end them—may-be their work is

  done, who knows?)

  By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the mighty

  past, the dead,

  To limn with absolute faith the mighty living present.

  And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old World

  brain,

  Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so

  long,

  Thou carefully prepared by it so long—haply thou but unfoldest

  it, only maturest it,

  It to eventuate in thee—the essence of the by-gone time contain’d

  in thee,

  Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined with

  reference to thee;