Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  Curious envelop’d messages delivering,

  Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping,

  Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never

  daring,

  To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving,

  To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set

  promulging,

  To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection

  me more clearly explaining,

  To young men my problems onering—no dallier I—I the muscle

  of their brains trying,

  So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,

  Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making

  me really undying,)

  The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I

  have been incessantly preparing.

  What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended

  with unshut mouth?

  Is there a single final farewell?

  My songs cease, I abandon them,

  From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely

  to you.

  Camerado, this is no book,

  Who touches this touches a man,

  (Is it night? are we here together alone?)

  It is I you hold and who holds you,

  I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.

  O how your fingers drowse me,

  Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the

  tympans of my ears,

  I feel immerged from head to foot,

  Delicious, enough.

  Enough O deed impromptu and secret,

  Enough O gliding present—enough O summ‘d-up past.

  Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,

  I give it especially to you, do not forget me,

  I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,

  I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras

  ascending, while others doubtless await me,

  An unknown sphere more real than I dream‘d, more direct, darts

  awakening rays about me, So long!

  Remember my words, I may again return,

  I love you, I depart from materials,

  I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

  Holding a butterfly—64). years old, 1883, photo taken at Ocean Grove,

  New Jersey, by Phillips & Taylor. Courtesy of the Library of Congress,

  Charles E. Feinberg Collection. Saunders #48.

  FIRST ANNEX

  SANDS AT SEVENTY114

  MANNAHATTA

  My city’s fit and noble name resumed,

  Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,

  A rocky founded island-shores where ever gayly dash the coming,

  going, hurrying sea waves.

  PAUMANOK

  Sea beauty! stretch’d and basking!

  One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,

  steamers, sails,

  And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle—mighty

  hulls dark-gliding in the distance.

  Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water—healthy air and soil!

  Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!

  FROM MONTAUK POINT

  I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,

  Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)

  The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,

  The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that inbound urge and

  urge of waves,

  Seeking the shores forever.

  635

  TO THOSE WHO’VE FAIL’D

  To those who’ve fail‘d, in aspiration vast,

  To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,

  To calm, devoted engineers—to over-ardent travelers—to pilots

  on their ships,

  To many a lofty song and picture without recognition—I’d rear a

  laurel-cover’d monument,

  High, high above the rest—To all cut off before their time,

  Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,

  Quench’d by an early death.

  A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY-NINE

  A carol closing sixty-nine—a résumé—a repetition,

  My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,

  Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;

  Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled Flag

  I love,

  Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north, south, east and west,

  your items all;

  Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my

  breast,

  The body wreck‘d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia

  falling pall-like round me,

  The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet

  extinct,

  The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.

  THE BRAVEST SOLDIERS

  Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived

  through the fight;

  But the bravest press’d to the front and fell unnamed,

  unknown.

  A FONT OF TYPE115

  This latent mine—these unlaunch’d voices—passionate

  powers,

  Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,

  (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)

  These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,

  Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,

  Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

  AS I SIT WRITING HERE

  As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,

  Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,

  Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering

  ennui,

  May filter in my daily songs.

  MY CANARY BIRD

  Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty

  books,

  Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?

  But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous

  warble,

  Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,

  Is it not just as great, O soul?

  QUERIES TO MY SEVENTIETH YEAR

  Approaching, nearing, curious,

  Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?

  Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?

  Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?

  Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,

  Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping,

  screeching?

  THE WALLABOUT MARTYRS116

  [In Brooklyn, in an old vault, mark’d by no special recognition, lie huddled at this moment the undoubtedly authentic remains of the stanchest and earliest revolutionary patriots from the British prison ships and prisons of the times of 1776—83, in and around New York, and from all over Long Island; originally buried—many thousands of them—in trenches in the Wallabout sands.]

  Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,

  More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,

  Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy

  bones,

  Once living men—once resolute courage, aspiration,

  strength,

  The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.

  THE FIRST DANDELION

  Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,

  As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

  Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—innocent, golden,

  calm as the dawn,
>
  The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

  AMERICA117

  Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,

  All, all alike endear‘d, grown, ungrown, young or old,

  Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,

  Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,

  A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,

  Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

  MEMORIES

  How sweet the silent backward tracings!

  The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation of old times

  resumed—their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

  TO-DAY AND THEE

  The appointed winners in a long-stretch’d game;

  The course of Time and nations—Egypt, India, Greece and

  Rome;

  The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,

  Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,

  Garner’d for now and thee—To think of it!

  The heirdom all converged in thee!

  AFTER THE DAZZLE OF DAY

  After the dazzle of day is gone,

  Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;

  After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,

  Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BORN FEB. 12, 1809

  To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer—a pulse of

  thought,

  To memory of Him—to birth of Him.

  (Publish’d Feb. 12, 1888.)

  OUT OF MAY’S SHOWS SELECTED

  Apple orchards, the trees all cover’d with blossoms;

  Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;

  The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;

  The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon

  sun;

  The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.

  HALCYON DAYS

  Not from successful love alone,

  Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;

  But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,

  As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,

  As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,

  As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs

  really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,

  Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!

  The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

  FANCIES AT NAVESINK118

  The Pilot in the Mist

  Steaming the northern rapids—(an old St. Lawrence

  reminiscence,

  A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,

  Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)bt

  Again ‘tis just at morning—a heavy haze contends with

  daybreak,

  Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me—I press through

  foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch me,

  Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman

  Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.

  Had I the Choice

  Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,

  To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,

  Homer with all his wars and warriors—Hector, Achilles, Ajax,

  Or Shakspere’s woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—

  Tennyson’s fair ladies,

  Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme,

  delight of singers;

  These, these, O sea, all these I’d gladly barter,

  Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,

  Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,

  And leave its odor there.

  You Tides with Ceaseless Swell

  You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!

  You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space’s spread,

  Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,

  What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what

  Sirius‘? what Capella’s?

  What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all? what

  boundless aggregate of all?

  What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all

  in you? what fluid, vast identity,

  Holding the universe with all its parts as one—as sailing in a ship?

  Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning

  Last of ebb, and daylight waning,

  Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt

  incoming,

  With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,

  Many a muffled confession—many a sob and whisper’d word,

  As of speakers far or hid.

  How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!

  Poets unnamed—artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost designs,

  Love’s unresponse—a chorus of age’s complaints—hope’s last words,

  Some suicide’s despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and

  never again return.

  On to oblivion then!

  On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!

  On for your time, ye furious debouché!

  And Yet Not You Alone

  And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,

  Nor you, ye lost designs alone—nor failures, aspirations;

  I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;

  Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again—duly the hinges

  turning,

  Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,

  Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,

  The rhythmus of Birth eternal.

  Proudly the Flood Comes In

  Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,

  Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,

  All throbs, dilates—the farms, woods, streets of cities—workmen

  at work,

  Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—steamers’ pennants

  of smoke—and under the forenoon sun

  Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the

  inward bound,

  Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

  By That Long Scan of Waves

  By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon

  myself,

  In every crest some undulating light or shade—some retrospect,

  Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas—scenes ephemeral,

  The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and

  the dead,

  Myself through every by-gone phase—my idle youth—old age at

  hand,

  My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past,

  By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,

  And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble—some

  wave, or part of wave,

  Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.

  Then Last of All

  Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,

  Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:

  Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,

  The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.

  ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884

  If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest

  scene and show,

  ‘Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor

  your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

  Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-

  loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

  Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—

  nor Mississippi’s stream:

  —This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the

  still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,

  (The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the

  quadriennial choosing,)

  The stretch of North and South arous’d—sea-board and inland—

  Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia,

  California,

  The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and

  conflict,

  The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,

  Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the

  peaceful choice of all,

  Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

  -Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the

  heart pants, life glows:

  These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

  Swell’d Washington‘s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

  WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA!

  With husky-haughty lips, O sea!

  Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,

  Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,

  (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)

  Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,

  Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the

  sun,

  Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos’d hurricanes,

  Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;

  Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all

  eternity in thy content,

  (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make

  thee greatest—no less could make thee,)