Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

The singers do not beget—only the poet begets,
The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often enough—but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems,
Not every century, or every five centuries, has contained such a day, for all its names.

The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,
The name of each is, a heart-singer, eye-singer, hymn-singer, law-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-singer, wise-singer, droll-singer, thrift-singer, sea-singer, wit-singer, echo-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer, passion-singer, mystic-singer, weeping-singer, fable-singer, item-singer, or something else.

All this time, and at all times, wait the words of poems;
The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers,
The words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness—such are the words of poems.

The sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems,
The builder, geometer, mathematician, astronomer, melodist, philosoph, chemist, anatomist, spiritualist, language-searcher, geologist, phrenologist, artist—all these underlie the maker of poems.

The words of poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behaviour, histories, essays, romances, and every thing else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty, they are sought—forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick;
They are not the finish, but rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full,
Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith—to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and never be quiet again.

I need no assurances—I am a man who is pre-occupied of his own soul;
I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given time, there waits for me more which I do not know;
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of—calm and actual faces;
I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world is latent in any iota of the world;
I do not doubt there are realizations I have no idea of, waiting for me through time and through the universes—also upon this earth;
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless—in vain I try to think how limitless;
I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the air on purpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they;
I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have supposed;
I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have supposed—and more in all men and women—and more in my poems than I have supposed;
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years;
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors—and that the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice;
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for—and that the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children, are provided for;
I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them—no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down—are provided for, to the minutest point;
I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malignance, are provided for;
I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the remainder of the earth, politics, freedom, degradations, are carefully provided for;
I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at any time, is provided for, in the inherences of things.

Courage ! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserved, whatever occurs;
That is nothing, that is quelled by one or two failures, or any number of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people,
Or the show of the tushes of power—soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

What we believe in waits latent forever through Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Australia, Cuba, and all the islands and archipelagoes of the sea;
What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waits patiently its time—a year—a century—a hundred centuries.

The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs—or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold, garrote, hand-cuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead-balls, do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled—they lie sick in distant lands,
The cause is asleep—the strong throats are choked with their own blood,
The young men drop their eye-lashes toward the ground when they meet,
But for all this, liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel entered into possession.

When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go—it is the last.

When there are no more memories of the lovers of the whole of the nations of the world,
The lovers’ names scouted in the public gatherings by the lips of the orators,
Boys not christened after them, but christened after traitors and murderers instead,
Laws for slaves sweet to the taste of people—the slave-hunt acknowledged,
You or I walking abroad upon the earth, elated at the sight of slaves, no matter who they are,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,
Then shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,
Then shall the infidel and the tyrant come into possession.

Clear the way there, Jonathan!
Way for the President’s marshal! Way for the government cannon!
Way for the federal foot and dragoons—and the apparitions copiously tumbling.

I rose this morning early to get betimes in Boston town,
Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.

I love to look on the stars and stripes, I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle.

How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.

A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,
Some appear wooden-legged and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

Why this is a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see!
Uncountable phantoms gather by flank and rear of it!
Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist!
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men’s shoulders!