Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  Whisper’d reverberations—chords for the ear of the West, joyously

  sounding

  Your tidings old, yet ever new and untranslatable;)

  Infinitessimals out of my life, and many a life,

  (For not my life and years alone I give—all, all I give;)

  These thoughts and Songs—waifs from the deep—here, cast high

  and dry,

  Wash’d on America’s shores.

  -2-

  Currents of starting a Continent new,

  Overtures sent to the solid out of the liquid,

  Fusion of ocean and land—tender and pensive waves,

  (Not safe and peaceful only—waves rous’d and ominous too.

  Out of the depths, the storm’s abysms—Who knows whence?

  Death’s waves,

  Raging over the vast, with many a broken spar and tatter’d sail.)

  FROM MY LAST YEARS

  From my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath,

  Scatter’d and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West,

  Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois—through

  Colorado, California air,

  For Time to germinate fully.

  IN FORMER SONGS

  In former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate,

  joyful Life,

  But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death.

  And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death,

  To you, O FREEDOM, purport of all!

  (You that elude me most—refusing to be caught in songs of mine,)

  I offer all to you.

  -2-

  ‘Tis not for nothing, Death,

  I sound out you, and words of you, with daring tone—embodying

  you,

  In my new Democratic chants—keeping you for a close,

  For last impregnable retreat—a citadel and tower,

  For my last stand—my pealing, final cry.

  AS IN A SWOON

  As in a swoon, one instant,

  Another sun, ineffable, full-dazzles me,

  And all the orbs I knew—and brighter, unknown orbs;

  One instant of the future land, Heaven’s land.

  [LAST DROPLETS]

  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?)

  SHIP AHOY!

  In dreams I was a ship, and sail’d the boundless seas,

  Sailing and ever sailing—all seas and into every port, or out upon

  the offing,

  Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass‘d, little or big,

  “Ship ahoy!” thro’ trumpet or by voice—if nothing more, some

  friendly merry word at least,

  For companionship and good will for ever to all and each.

  FOR QUEEN VICTORIA’S BIRTHDAY

  An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal breakfast table, May 24th, 1890

  Lady, accept a birth-day thought—haply an idle gift and token,

  Right from the scented soil’s May-utterance here,

  (Smelling of countless blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)

  A bunch of white and pink arbutus, silent, spicy, shy,

  From Hudson‘s, Delaware’s, or Potomac’s woody banks.

  L OF G

  Thoughts, suggestions, aspirations, pictures,

  Cities and farms—by day and night—book of peace and war,

  Of platitudes and the commonplace.

  For out-door health, the land and sea—for good will,

  For America—for all the earth, all nations, the common people,

  (Not of one nation only—not America only.)

  In it each claim, ideal, line, by all lines, claims, ideals temper’d; Each right and wish by other wishes, rights.

  AFTER THE ARGUMENT

  A group of little children with their ways and chatter flow in, Like welcome, rippling water oer my heated nerves and flesh.

  FOR US TWO, READER DEAR

  Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging,

  With the original testimony for us continued to the last.

  OLD AGE ECHOES

  TO SOAR IN FREEDOM AND IN FULLNESS OF POWER

  I have not so much emulated the birds that musically sing,

  I have abandon’d myself to flights, broad circles.

  The hawk, the seagull, have far more possess’d me than the

  canary or mocking-bird.

  I have not felt to warble and trill, however sweetly,

  I have felt to soar in freedom and in the fullness of power, joy,

  volition.

  THEN SHALL PERCEIVE

  In softness, languor, bloom, and growth,

  Thine eyes, ears, all thy sense—thy loftiest attribute—all that

  takes cognizance of beauty,

  Shall rouse and fill—then shall perceive!

  THE FEW DROPS KNOWN

  Of heroes, history, grand events, premises, myths, poems,

  The few drops known must stand for oceans of the

  unknown,

  On this beautiful and thick peopl’d earth, here and there a little

  specimen put on record,

  A little of Greeks and Romans, a few Hebrew canticles, a few

  death odors as from graves, from Egypt—

  What are they to the long and copious retrospect of

  antiquity?

  ONE THOUGHT EVER AT THE FORE

  One thought ever at the fore—

  That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space,

  All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are

  bound to the same destination.

  WHILE BEHIND ALL FIRM AND ERECT

  While behind all, firm and erect as ever,

  Undismay’d amid the rapids—amid the irresistible and deadly

  urge,

  Stands a helmsman, with brow elate and strong hand.

  A KISS TO THE BRIDE9

  Marriage of Nelly Grant, May 21, 1874.

  Sacred, blithesome, undenied,

  With benisons from East and West,

  And salutations North and South,

  Through me indeed to-day a million hearts and hands,

  Wafting a million loves, a million soul felt prayers;

  —Tender and true remain the arm that shields thee!

  Fair winds always fill the ship’s sails that sail thee!

  Clear sun by day, and light stars at night, beam on thee!

  Dear girl—through me the ancient privilege too,

  For the New World, through me, the old, old wedding

  greeting:

  O youth and health! O sweet Missouri rose! O bonny bride!

  Yield thy red cheeks, thy lips, to-day,

  Unto a Nation’s loving kiss.

  NAY, TELL ME NOT TO-DAY THE PUBLISH’D SHAME10

  Winter of 1873, Congress in Session.

  Nay, tell me not to-day the publish’d shame,

  Read not to-day the journal’s crowded page,

  The merciless reports still branding forehead after forehead,

  The guilty column following guilty column.

  To-day to me the tale refusing,

  Turning from it—from the white capitol turning,

  Far from these swelling domes, topt with statues,

  More endless, jubilant, vital visions rise

  Unpublish‘d, unreported.

  Through all your quiet ways, or North or South, you Equal States,

  you honest farms,

  Your million untold manly healthy lives, or East or West, city or

  country,

  Your noiseless mothers, sisters, wives, unconscious of their

  good,

&n
bsp; Your mass of homes nor poor nor rich, in visions rise—(even your

  excellent poverties,)

  Your self-distilling, never-ceasing virtues, self-denials, graces,

  Your endless base of deep integrities within, timid but certain,

  Your blessings steadily bestow‘d, sure as the light, and still,

  (Plunging to these as a determin’d diver down the deep hidden

  waters),

  These, these to-day I brood upon—all else refusing, these will I

  con,

  To-day to these give audience.

  SUPPLEMENT HOURS

  Sane, random, negligent hours,

  Sane, easy, culminating hours,

  After the flush, the Indian summer, of my life,

  Away from Books—away from Art—the lesson learn‘d, pass’d

  o’er,

  Soothing, bathing, merging all—the sane, magnetic,

  Now for the day and night themselves—the open air,

  Now for the fields, the seasons, insects, trees—the rain and

  snow,

  Where wild bees flitting hum,

  Or August mulleins grow, or winter’s snowflakes fall,

  Or stars in the skies roll round—

  The silent sun and stars.

  OF MANY A SMUTCH’D DEED REMINISCENT

  Full of wickedness, I—of many a smutch’d deed reminiscent—of

  worse deeds capable,

  Yet I look composedly upon nature, drink day and night the joys

  of life, and await death with perfect equanimity,

  Because of my tender and boundless love for him I love and

  because of his boundless love for me.

  TO BE AT ALL

  (Cf. Stanza 27, Song of Myself)

  To be at all—what is better than that?

  I think if there were nothing more developed, the clam in its

  callous shell in the sand were august enough.

  I am not in any callous shell;

  I am cased with supple conductors, all over

  They take every object by the hand, and lead it within me;

  They are thousands, each one with his entry to himself;

  They are always watching with their little eyes, from my head to

  my feet;

  One no more than a point lets in and out of me such bliss and

  magnitude,

  I think I could lift the girder of the house away if it lay between

  me and whatever I wanted.

  DEATH’S VALLEY11

  To accompany a picture; by request. “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” from the painting by George Inness.

  Nay, do not dream, designer dark,

  Thou hast portray’d or hit thy theme entire;

  I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having

  glimpses of it,

  Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol

  too.

  For I have seen many wounded soldiers die,

  After dread suffering—have seen their lives pass off with

  smiles;

  And I have watch’d the death-hours of the old; and seen the

  infant die;

  The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors;

  And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty;

  And I myself for long, O Death, have breath’d my every breath

  Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee.

  And out of these and thee,

  I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee,

  Nor gloom’s ravines, nor bleak, nor dark—for I do not fear thee,

  Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot),

  Of the broad blessed light and perfect air, with meadows, rippling

  tides, and trees and flowers and grass,

  And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God’s

  beautiful eternal right hand,

  Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at

  last of all,

  Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call’d life,

  Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.

  ON THE SAME PICTURE12

  Intended for first stanza of “Death’s Valley.”

  Aye, well I know ‘tis ghastly to descend that valley:

  Preachers, musicians, poets, painters, always render it,

  Philosophs exploit—the battlefield, the ship at sea, the myriad

  beds, all lands,

  All, all the past have enter’d, the ancientest humanity we know,

  Syria‘s, India’s, Egypt‘s, Greece’s, Rome’s;

  Till now for us under our very eyes spreading the same to-day,

  Grim, ready, the same to-day, for entrance, yours and mine,

  Here, here ‘tis limn’d.

  A THOUGHT OF COLUMBUS13

  The mystery of mysteries, the crude and hurried ceaseless flame,

  spontaneous, bearing on itself.

  The bubble and the huge, round, concrete orb!

  A breath of Deity, as thence the bulging universe unfolding!

  The many issuing cycles from their precedent minute!

  The eras of the soul incepting in an hour,

  Haply the widest, farthest evolutions of the world and man.

  Thousands and thousands of miles hence, and now four centuries

  back,

  A mortal impulse thrilling its brain cell,

  Reck’d or unreck‘d, the birth can no longer be postpon’d:

  A phantom of the moment, mystic, stalking, sudden,

  Only a silent thought, yet toppling down of more than walls of

  brass or stone.

  (A flutter at the darkness’ edge as if old Time’s and Space’s secret

  near revealing.)

  A thought! a definite thought works out in shape.

  Four hundred years roll on.

  The rapid cumulus—trade, navigation, war, peace, democracy,

  roll on;

  The restless armies and the fleets of time following their leader—

  the old camps of ages pitch’d in newer, larger areas,

  The tangl’d, long-deferr’d eclaircissement of human life and,

  hopes boldly begins untying,

  As here to-day up-grows the Western World.

  (An added word yet to my song, far Discoverer, as ne‘er before

  sent back to son of earth—

  If still thou hearest, hear me,

  Voicing as now—lands, races, arts, bravas to thee,

  O’er the long backward path to thee-one vast consensus, north,

  south, east, west,

  Soul plaudits! acclamation! reverent echoes!

  One manifold, huge memory to thee! oceans and lands!

  The modern world to thee and thought of thee!)

  Outdoors, sitting, with cane—71 years old, 1890, photo taken by Dr. John

  Johnston on a wharf in Camden, New Jersey. Courtesy of the Bayley-

  WhitmanCollection of Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio,

  and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, Huntington,

  New York. Saunders #109.

  ENDNOTES

  FIRST EDITION (1855)

  1 (p. 7) [Preface]: The bracketed titles of this section and the following twelve poems were provided by Whitman in later editions of Leaves of Grass. In the 1855 edition, Whitman did not provide a title for the preface and wrote “Leaves of Grass” as a header for the first six poems, leaving the last six without any title (see “Publication Information”).

  Whitman claimed that he had written the preface and included it in his book at the last minute. As he was assisting the Rome brothers with the printing of Leaves of Grass in their Brooklyn Heights shop, Whitman felt that his literary experiment needed an introduction. It is part of Whitman lore that the poet composed what turned out to be ten double-columned, tightly printed pages in one sitting. Whether or not the preface was a spontaneous c
reation, its fluid, conversational language—as well as its strong call to consciousness to American poets and their readers—make it a revolutionary statement in American culture.

  The idea for a ground-breaking prefatory statement was not original to Whitman. Though Whitman’s preface is thoroughly American in voice, imagery, and intention, it also can be read as a response to or expansion of William Wordsworth’s epoch-making “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1798). Wordsworth’s popularity after his death in 1850 resulted in a flood of new American editions of his poetry; Whitman’s notebooks indicate that he was familiar with Wordsworth’s writings, and parts of Whitman’s preface seem to borrow from the poet laureate’s manifesto.

  2 (p. 9) His spirit responds to his country’s spirit ... he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes: Whitman here shows how the poet’s patriotism and spirit take actual shape. It is the first instance of one of Whitman’s favorite themes: the connection between physicality and spirituality. His interest in this subject is evinced by his inclusion of his phrenological chart in advertisements for Leaves of Grass. (Phrenology, a popular pseudoscience of Whitman’s day, was based on the assumption that intellectual and emotional qualities could be manifested on the body as bumps on the head.) On page 17 of the “[Preface],” Whitman names phrenologists (along with lexicographers) as among the “lawgivers of poets.”

  3 (p. 10) Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest: For Whitman, the “need” here is particularly urgent. The 1850S were a time of unprecedented political corruption. A series of weak presidencies (Millard Fillmore, president 1850-1853; Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857; and James Buchanan, 1857-1861) eroded Americans’ confidence in leadership. Just a few months before the printing of the First Edition, Pierce’s failed leadership helped set the stage in “Bleeding Kansas” for what amounted to a local civil war between pro-slavery and abolitionist settlers.