Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek‘st and seek’st, yet

  never gain‘st,

  Surely some right withheld—some voice, in huge monotonous

  rage, of freedom-lover pent,

  Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those

  breakers,

  By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,

  And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,

  And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,

  And undertones of distant lion roar,

  (Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear—but now, rapport for

  once,

  A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)

  The first and last confession of the globe,

  Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,

  The tale of cosmic elemental passion,

  Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

  DEATH OF GENERAL GRANT

  As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,

  From that great play on history’s stage eterne,

  That lurid, partial act of war and peace—of old and new

  contending,

  Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long

  suspense;

  All past—and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing,

  Victor’s and vanquish‘d—Lincoln’s and Lee’s—now thou with

  them,

  Man of the mighty days—and equal to the days!

  Thou from the prairies!—tangled and many-vein’d and hard has

  been thy part,

  To admiration has it been enacted!

  RED JACKET (FROM ALOFT)119

  [Impromptu on Buffalo City’s monument to, and re-burial of the old Iroquois orator, October 9, 1884.]

  Upon this scene, this show,

  Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,

  (Nor in caprice alone—some grains of deepest meaning,)

  Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes,

  As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul,

  Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct—a towering human

  form,

  In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical smile

  curving its phantom lips,

  Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.

  WASHINGTON’S MONUMENT, FEBRUARY, 1885

  Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:

  Far from its base and shaft expanding—the round zones circling,

  comprehending,

  Thou, Washington, art all the world‘s, the continents’ entire—not

  yours alone, America,

  Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot,

  Or frozen North, or sultry South—the African’s—the Arab’s in his

  tent,

  Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;

  (Greets the antique the hero new? ‘tis but the same—the heir

  legitimate, continued ever,

  The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken

  line,

  Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e’en in defeat

  defeated not, the same:)

  Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,

  Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or

  farms,

  Now, or to come, or past—where patriot wills existed or exist,

  Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,

  Stands or is rising thy true monument.

  OF THAT BLITHE THROAT OF THINE

  [More than eighty-three degrees north—about a good day’s steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water—Greely the explorer heard the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.]

  Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,

  I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird—let me too welcome chilling

  drifts,

  E‘en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain

  unnerv’d,

  Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay—(cold, cold, O cold!)

  These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,

  For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;

  Not summer’s zones alone—not chants of youth, or south’s warm

  tides alone,

  But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the

  cumulus of years,

  These with gay heart I also sing.

  BROADWAY

  What hurrying human tides, or day or night!

  What passions, winnings, losses, ardors, swim thy waters!

  What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!

  What curious questioning glances—glints of love!

  Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!

  Thou portal—thou arena—thou of the myriad long-drawn lines

  and groups!

  (Could but thy flagstones, curbs, façades, tell their inimitable

  tales;

  Thy windows rich, and huge hotels—thy side-walks wide;)

  Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!

  Thou, like the parti-colored world itself—like infinite, teeming,

  mocking life!

  Thou visor‘d, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!

  TO GET THE FINAL LILT OF SONGS

  To get the final lilt of songs,

  To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones,

  Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakspere, Tennyson, Emerson;

  To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and

  doubt—to truly understand,

  To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price,

  Old age, and what it brings from all its past experiences.

  OLD SALT KOSSABONE 120

  Far back, related on my mother’s side,

  Old Salt Kossabone, I’ll tell you how he died:

  (Had been a sailor all his life—was nearly 90—lived with his

  married grandchild, Jenny;

  House on a hill, with view of bay at hand, and distant cape, and

  stretch to open sea;)

  The last of afternoons, the evening hours, for many a year his

  regular custom,

  In his great arm chair by the window seated,

  (Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,)

  Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to

  himself—And now the close of all:

  One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long—cross-

  tides and much wrong going,

  At last at nightfall strikes the breeze aright, her whole luck

  veering,

  And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly

  entering, cleaving, as he watches,

  “She’s free—she’s on her destination”—these the last words—

  when Jenny came, he sat there dead,

  Dutch Kossabone, Old Salt, related on my mother’s side, far back.

  THE DEAD TENOR121

  As down the stage again,

  With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable,

  Back from the fading lessons of the past, I’d call, I’d tell and

  own,

  How much from thee! the revelation of the singing voice from

  thee!

  (So firm—so liquid-soft—again that tremulous, manly timbre!

  The perfect singing voice—deepest of all to me the lesson—trial

  and test of all:)

  How through those strains distili‘d—how the rapt ears, the soul of

  me, absorbing

  Fernando’s heart, Manrico’s passionate call, Ernani’s, sweet

  Gennaro‘s,

  I fold
thenceforth, or seek to fold, within my chants

  transmuting,

  Freedom’s and Love’s and Faith’s unloos’d cantabile,

  (As perfume’s, color‘s, sunlight’s correlation:)

  From these, for these, with these, a hurried line, dead tenor,

  A wafted autumn leaf, dropt in the closing grave, the shovel’d

  earth,

  To memory of thee.

  CONTINUITIES

  [From a talk I had lately with a German spiritualist.]

  Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,

  No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.

  Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;

  Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.

  Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.

  The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier

  fires,

  The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;

  The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons

  continual;

  To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns,

  With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

  YONNONDIO

  [The sense of the word is lament for the aborigines. It is an Iroquois term; and has been used for a personal name.]

  A song, a poem of itself—the word itself a dirge,

  Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry night,

  To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up;

  Yonnondio—I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with

  plains and mountains dark,

  I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine-men, and warriors,

  As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the

  twilight,

  (Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls!

  No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future:)

  Yonnondio! Yonnondio!—unlimn’d they disappear;

  To-day gives place, and fades—the cities, farms, factories fade;

  A muffled sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the

  air for a moment,

  Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.

  LIFE

  Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;

  (Have former armies fail’d? then we send fresh armies—and fresh

  again;)

  Ever the grappled mystery of all earth’s ages old or new;

  Ever the eager eyes, hurrahs, the welcome-clapping hands, the

  loud applause;

  Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;

  Struggling to-day the same—battling the same.

  “GOING SOMEWHERE”122

  My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,

  (Now buried in an English grave—and this a memory-leaf for her

  dear sake,)

  Ended our talk—“The sum, concluding all we know of old or

  modern learning, intuitions deep,

  ”Of all Geologies—Histories—of all Astronomy—of Evolution,

  Metaphysics all,

  “Is, that we all are onward, onward, speeding slowly, surely

  bettering,

  ”Life, life an endless march, an endless army, (no halt, but it is

  duly over,)

  “The world, the race, the soul—in space and time the universes,

  ”All bound as is befitting each—all surely going somewhere.“

  SMALL THE THEME OF MY CHANT

  Small the theme of my Chant, yet the greatest—namely, One‘s-

  Self—a simple, separate person. That, for the use of the New

  World, I sing.

  Man’s physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not

  physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the

  Muse;—I say the Form complete is worthier far. The Female

  equally with the Male, I sing.

  Nor cease at the theme of One’s-Self. I speak the word of the

  modern, the word En-Masse.

  My Days I sing, and the Lands—with interstice I knew of hapless

  War.

  (O friend, whoe‘er you are, at last arriving hither to commence, I

  feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, which I

  return.

  And thus upon our journey, footing the road, and more than

  once, and link’d together let us go.)

  TRUE CONQUERORS

  Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or

  bent,)

  Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck,

  Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and

  scars;

  Enough that they’ve survived at all—long life’s unflinching ones!

  Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all—in

  that alone,

  True conquerors o‘er all the rest.

  THE UNITED STATES TO OLD WORLD CRITICS

  Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete,

  Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;

  As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice,

  Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps,

  The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.

  THE CALMING THOUGHT OF ALL

  That coursing on, whate‘er men’s speculations,

  Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies,

  Amid the bawling presentations new and old,

  The round earth’s silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.

  THANKS IN OLD AGE

  Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,

  For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere

  life,

  For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—

  you, father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)

  For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the

  same,

  For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,

  For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation,

  (You distant, dim unknown—or young or old—countless,

  unspecified, readers belov‘d,

  We never met, and ne’er shall meet—and yet our souls embrace,

  long, close and long;)

  For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books—for colors, forms,

  For all the brave strong men—devoted, hardy men—who’ve

  forward sprung in freedom’s help, all years, all lands,

  For braver, stronger, more devoted men—(a special laurel ere I

  go, to life’s war’s chosen ones.

  The cannoneers of song and thought—the great artillerists—the

  foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)

  As soldier from an ended war return‘d—As traveler out of myriads,

  to the long procession retrospective,

  Thanks—joyful thanks’—a soldier‘s, traveler’s thanks.

  LIFE AND DEATH

  The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,

  Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.

  By each successive age insoluble, pass’d on,

  To ours to-day-and we pass on the same.

  THE VOICE OF THE RAIN

  And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower,

  Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated:

  I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain,

  Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea,

  Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form‘d, altogether changed,

  and yet the same,

  I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe,

  And all that in them without m
e were seeds only, latent, unborn;

  And forever, by day and night, I give back life to my own origin,

  and make pure and beautify it;

  (For song, issuing from its birth-place, after fulfilment, wandering,

  Reck’d or unreck’d, duly with love returns.)

  SOON SHALL THE WINTER’S FOIL BE HERE

  Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;

  Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt—A little while,

  And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and

  growth—a thousand forms shall rise

  From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.

  Thine eyes, ears—all thy best attributes—all that takes

  cognizance of natural beauty,

  Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the

  delicate miracles of earth,

  Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and

  flowers,

  The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming

  plum and cherry;

  With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs—the

  flitting bluebird;

  For such the scenes the annual play brings on.

  WHILE NOT THE PAST FORGETTING

  While not the past forgetting,

  To-day, at least, contention sunk entire—peace, brotherhood

  uprisen;

  For sign reciprocal our Northern, Southern hands,

  Lay on the graves of all dead soldiers, North or South,

  (Nor for the past alone—for meanings to the future,)

  Wreaths of roses and branches of palm.

  (Publish’d May 30, 1888.)

  THE DYING VETERAN

  [A Long Island incident—early part of the present century.]

  Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,

  Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,

  I cast a reminiscence—(likely ‘twill offend you,

  I heard it in my boyhood;)—More than a generation since,

  A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself,

  (Large, brave, cleanly, hot-blooded, no talker, rather