Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down, seeking to give satisfaction,
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.

Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely, by day or by night,
He has the pass-key of hearts—to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs.

His welcome is universal—the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is,
The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue,
He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also,
One part does not counteract another part—he is the joiner, he sees how they join.

He says indifferently and alike, How are you, friend? to the President at his levee,
And he says, Good-day, my brother! to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,
And both understand him, and know that his speech is right.

He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,
He walks among the Congress, and one representative says to another, Here is our equal appearing and new.

Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose him to be a captain, and the sailors that he has followed the sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them.
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it,
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.

The English believe he comes of their English stock,
A Jew to the Jew he seems—a Russ to the Russ—usual and near, removed from none.

Whoever he looks at in the traveler’s coffee-house claims him,
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and the island Cuban is sure.

The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or Hudson, or Delaware, claims him.

The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him—he strangely transmutes them,
They are not vile any more—they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.

Do you think it would be good to be the writer of melodious verses?
Well, it would be good to be the writer of melodious verses;
But what are verses beyond the flowing character you could have? or beyond beautiful manners and behaviour?
Or beyond one manly or affectionate deed of an apprentice-boy? or old woman? or man that has been in prison, or is likely to be in prison?

This night I am happy,
As I watch the stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future.

What can the future bring me more than I have?
Do you suppose I wish to enjoy life in other spheres?
I say distinctly I comprehend no better sphere than this earth,
I comprehend no better life than the life of my body.
I do not know what follows the death of my body,
But I know well that whatever it is, it is best for me,
And I know well that what is really Me shall live just as much as before.

I am not uneasy but I shall have good housing to myself,
But this is my first—how can I like the rest any better?
Here I grew up—the studs and rafters are grown parts of me.

I am not uneasy but I am to be beloved by young and old men, and to love them the same,
I suppose the pink nipples of the breasts of women with whom I shall sleep will taste the same to my lips,
But this is the nipple of a breast of my mother, always near and always divine to me, her true child and son.

I suppose I am to be eligible to visit the stars, in my time,
I suppose I shall have myriads of new experiences—and that the experience of this earth will prove only one out of myriads;
But I believe my body and my soul already indicate those experiences,
And I believe I shall find nothing in the stars more majestic and beautiful than I have already found on the earth,
And I believe I have this night a clue through the universes,
And I believe I have this night thought a thought of the clef of eternity.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
All distances of place, however wide,
All distances of time—all inanimate forms,
All souls—all living bodies, though they be in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All men and women—me also,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe or any globe,
All lives and deaths—all of past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spanned, and shall forever span them.

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning Europe le’pt forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats of kings.

O hope and faith! O aching close of lives! O many a sickened heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.

And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laughed at in the breaking,
Then in their power, not for all these did the blows strike of personal revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall,
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.

But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened rulers come back,
Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, soldier, lawyer, jailer, sycophant.

Behind all, lo, a Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head front and form, in scarlet folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see,
Out of its robes only this—the red robes, lifted by the arm,
One finger, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears.

Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves—bloody corpses of young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierced by the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality.

They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death—they were taught and exalted.