Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions
Page 69
spiritualistic,
Had fought in the ranks—fought well—had been all through the
Revolutionary war,)
Lay dying—sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending
him,
Sharping their sense, their ears, towards his murmuring, half
caught words:
“Let me return again to my war-days,
To the sights and scenes—to forming the line of battle,
To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,
To the cannons, the grim artillery,
To the galloping aids, carrying orders,
To the wounded, the fallen, the heat, the suspense,
The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;
Away with your life of peace!—your joys of peace!
Give me my old wild battle-life again!”
STRONGER LESSONS
Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and
were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject
you, and brace themselves against you? or who
treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage
with you?
A PRAIRIE SUNSET
Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn,
The earth’s whole amplitude and Nature’s multiform power
consign’d for once to colors;
The light, the general air possess’d by them—colors till now
unknown,
No limit, confine—not the Western sky alone—the high
meridian—North, South, all,
Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.
TWENTY YEARS
Down on the ancient wharf, the sand, I sit, with a newcomer
chatting:
He shipp’d as green-hand boy, and sail’d away, (took some
sudden, vehement notion;)
Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round,
While he the globe was circling round and round,—and now
returns:
How changed the place—all the old land-marks gone—the
parents dead;
(Yes, he comes back to lay in port for good—to settle—has a well-
fill’d purse—no spot will do but this;)
The little boat that scull’d him from the sloop, now held in leash
I see,
I hear the slapping waves, the restless keel, the rocking in the
sand,
I see the sailor kit, the canvas bag, the great box bound with brass,
I scan the face all berry-brown and bearded—the stout-strong
frame,
Dress’d in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:
(Then what the told-out story of those twenty years? What of the
future?)
ORANGE BUDS BY MAIL FROM FLORIDA
[Voltaire closed a famous argument by claiming that a ship of war and the grand opera were proofs enough of civilization’s and France’s progress, in his day.]
A lesser proof than old Voltaire‘s, yet greater,
Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America,
To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,
Brought safely for a thousand miles o’er land and tide,
Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,
Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,
A bunch of orange buds by mail from Florida.
TWILIGHT
The soft voluptuous opiate shades,
The sun just gone, the eager light dispell‘d—(I too will soon be
gone, dispell’d,)
A haze—nirwana—rest and night—oblivion.
YOU LINGERING SPARSE LEAVES OF ME
You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,
And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row;
You tokens diminute and lorn—(not now the flush of May or July
clover-bloom—no grain of August now;)
You pallid banner-staves—you pennants valueless—you over-
stay’d of time,
Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,
The faithfulest—hardiest—last.
NOT MEAGRE, LATENT BOUGHS ALONE
Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like
eagles’ talons,)
But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring,
some summer—bursting forth,
To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade—to nourishing fruit,
Apples and grapes—the stalwart limbs of trees emerging—the
fresh, free, open air,
And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.
THE DEAD EMPEROR
To-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, Columbia,
Less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrow—less for the Emperor,
Thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o‘er many a salt sea
mile,
Mourning a good old man—a faithful shepherd, patriot.
(Publish’d March 10, 1888.)
AS THE GREEK’S SIGNAL FLAME123
[For Whittier’s eightieth birthday, December 17, 1887.]
As the Greek’s signal flame, by antique records told,
Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory,
Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero,
With rosy tinge reddening the land he’d served,
So I aloft from Mannahatta’s ship-fringed shore,
Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet.
THE DISMANTLED SHIP
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and
hawser’d tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.
NOW PRECEDENT SONGS, FAREWELL
Now precedent songs, farewell—by every name farewell,
(Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession,
waggons,
From ups and downs—with intervals—from elder years, mid-age,
or youth,)
“In Cabin’d Ships,” or “Thee Old Cause” or “Poets to Come”
Or “Paumanok,” “Song of Myself,” “Calamus,” or “Adam,”
Or “Beat! Beat! Drums!” or “To the Leaven’d Soil they Trod,”
Or “Captain! My Captain!” “Kosmos,” “Quicksand Years,” or
“Thoughts,”
“Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood,” and many, many more
unspecified,
From fibre heart of mine—from throat and tongue—(My life’s
hot pulsing blood,
The personal urge and form for me—not merely paper, automatic
type and ink,)
Each song of mine—each utterance in the past—having its long,
long history,
Of life or death, or soldier’s wound, of country’s loss or safety,
(O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared
indeed to that!
What wretched shred e‘en at the best of all!)
AN EVENING LULL
After a week of physical anguish,
Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,
Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,
Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.bu
OLD AGE’S LAMBENT PEAKS
The touch of flame—the illuminating fire—the loftiest look at
last,
O‘er city, passion, sea—o’er prairie, mountain, wood—the earth
itself;
The airy, different, changing hues of all, in falling twilight,
Objects and groups, bearings, faces,
reminiscences;
The calmer sight—the golden setting, clear and broad:
So much i’ the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations
whence we scan,
Bro’t out by them alone—so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d
before;
The lights indeed from them—old age’s lambent peaks.
AFTER THE SUPPER AND TALK
After the supper and talk—after the day is done,
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,
(So hard for his hand to release those hands—no more will they
meet,
No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,
A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)
Shunning, postponing severance—seeking to ward off the last
word ever so little,
E‘en at the exit door turning—charges superfluous calling back—
e’en as he descends the steps,
Something to eke out a minute additional—shadows of nightfall
deepening,
Farewells, messages lessening—dimmer the forthgoer’s visage and
form,
Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness—loth, O so loth to depart!
Garrulous to the very last.
SECOND ANNEX
GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
PREFACE NOTE TO 2D ANNEX, CONCLUDING L. OF G.—1891124
Had I not better withhold (in this old age and paralysis of me) such little tags and fringe-dots (maybe specks, stains,) as follow a long dusty journey, and witness it afterward? I have probably not been enough afraid of careless touches, from the first—and am not now—nor of parrot-like repetitions—nor platitudes and the commonplace. Perhaps I am too democratic for such avoidances. Besides, is not the verse-field, as originally plann’d by my theory, now sufficiently illustrated—and full time for me to silently retire?—(indeed amid no loud call or market for my sort of poetic utterance.)
In answer, or rather defiance, to that kind of well-put interrogation, here comes this little cluster, and conclusion of my preceding clusters. Though not at all clear that, as here collated, it is worth printing (certainly I have nothing fresh to write)—I while away the hours of my 72d year—hours of forced confinement in my den—by putting in shape this small old age collation:
Last droplets of and after spontaneous rain,
From many limpid distillations and past showers;
(Will they germinate anything? mere exhalations as they
all are—the land’s and sea‘s—America’s;
Will they filter to any deep emotion? any heart and
brain?)
However that may be, I feel like improving to-day’s opportunity and wind up. During the last two years I have sent out, in the lulls of illness and exhaustion, certain chirps—lingering-dying ones probably (undoubtedly)—which now I may as well gather and put in fair type while able to see correctly—(for my eyes plainly warn me they are dimming, and my brain more and more palpably neglects or refuses, month after month, even slight tasks or revisions.)
In fact, here I am these current years 1890 and ‘91, (each successive fortnight getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shell-fish or time-bang’ d conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywhere—nothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign’d, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time-bang’d conch to be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere within his gray-blurr’d old shell ............ (Reader, you must allow a little fun here—for one reason there are too many of the following poemets about death, &c., and for another the passing hours (July 5, 1890) are so sunny-fine. And old as I am I feel to-day almost a part of some frolicsome wave, or for sporting yet like a kid or kitten—probably a streak of physical adjustment and perfection here and now. I believe I have it in me perennially anyhow.)
Then behind all, the deep-down consolation (it is a glum one, but I dare not be sorry for the fact of it in the past, nor refrain from dwelling, even vaunting here at the end) that this late-years palsied old shorn and shell-fish condition of me is the indubitable outcome and growth, now near for 20 years along, of too over-zealous, over-continued bodily and emotional excitement and action through the times of 1862, ‘3, ’4 and ‘5, visiting and waiting on wounded and sick army volunteers, both sides, in campaigns or contests, or after them, or in hospitals or fields south of Washington City, or in that place and elsewhere—those hot, sad, wrenching times—the army volunteers, all States,—or North or South—the wounded, suffering, dying—the exhausting, sweating summers, marches, battles, carnage—those trenches hurriedly heap’d by the corpse-thousands, mainly unknown—Will the America of the future—will this vast rich Union ever realize what itself cost, back there after all?—those hecatombs of battle-deaths-Those times of which, O far-off reader, this whole book is indeed finally but a reminiscent memorial from thence by me to you?
SAIL OUT FOR GOOD, EIDOLON YACHT!
Heave the anchor short!
Raise main-sail and jib—steer forth,
O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep
waters,
(I will not call it our concluding voyage,
But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best,
maturest;)
Depart, depart from solid earth—no more returning to these
shores,
Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,
Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities,
gravitation,
Sail out for good, eidólon yacht of me!
LINGERING LAST DROPS
And whence and why come you?
We know not whence, (was the answer,)
We only know that we drift here with the rest,
That we linger’d and lagg‘d—but were wafted at last, and are now
here,
To make the passing shower’s concluding drops.
GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
Good-byebv my fancy—(I had a word to say,
But ‘tis not quite the time—The best of any man’s word or say,
Is when its proper place arrives—and for its meaning,
I keep mine till the last.)
ON, ON THE SAME, YE JOCUND TWAIN!
On, on the same, ye jocund twain!
My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age
years,
Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged
in one—combining all,
My single soul—aims, confirmations, failures, joys—Nor single
soul alone,
I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America‘s, haply humanity’s)—
the trial great, the victory great,
A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world,
the ancient, medieval,
Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats—
here at the west a voice triumphant—justifying all,
A gladsome pealing cry—a song for once of utmost pride and
satisfaction;
I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde,
(the best no sooner than the worst)—And now I chant
old age,
(My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer’s,
autumn’s spread,
I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses winter-
cool’d the same;)
As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and
love,
Wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions,
On, on, ye jocund twain! continue on the same!
MY 71ST YEAR
&n
bsp; After surmounting three score and ten,
With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,
My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing
passions of me, the war of ‘63 and ’4,
As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or
haply after battle,
To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here,
with vital voice,
Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.
APPARITIONS
A vague mist hanging ‘round half the pages:
(Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,
non-realities.)
THE PALLID WREATH
Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch‘d, and the white now gray and
ashy,
One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play—the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw
thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.
AN ENDED DAY
The soothing sanity and blitheness of completion,
The pomp and hurried contest-glare and rush are done;
Now triumph! transformation! jubilate!bw
OLD AGE’S SHIP & CRAFTY DEATH’S
From east and west across the horizon’s edge,
Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal upon us:
But we’ll make race a-time upon the seas—a battle-contest yet!