Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums?
Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for fire-locks, and level them?

If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President’s marshal,
If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.

For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms and let your white hair be,
Here gape your smart grand-sons—their wives gaze at them from the windows,
See how well-dressed—see how orderly they conduct themselves.

Worse and worse! Can’t you stand it? Are you retreating?
Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

Retreat then! Pell-mell! Back to the hills, old limpers!
I do not think you belong here, anyhow.

But there is one thing that belongs here—shall I tell you what it is, gentlemen of Boston?

I will whisper it to the Mayor—he shall send a committee to England,
They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal vault,
Dig out King George’s coffin—unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes—box up his bones for a journey,
Find a swift Yankee clipper—here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper!
Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston bay.

Now call the President’s marshal again, bring out the government cannon,
Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession, guard it with foot and dragoons.

This centre-piece for them:
Look! all orderly citizens—look from the windows, women!

The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that will not stay,
Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.

You have got your revenge, old buster! The crown is come to its own, and more than its own.

Stick your hands in your pockets Jonathan—you are a made man from this day,
You are mighty cute, and here is one of your bargains.

Remember the organic compact of These States!
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality, of man!
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, read by Washington at the head of the army!
Remember the purposes of the founders!—Remember Washington!
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America!
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men!—(Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals!
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.

Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions are to become the hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred millions, of equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined.

Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a part,
Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions of the idea of caste,
Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.

Anticipate the best women!
I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to spread through all These States,
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a boy.

Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless power,
Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?
Do you see that lost character?—Do you see decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?
Do you see death, and the approach of death?

Think of the soul!
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your soul somehow to live in other spheres,
I do not know how, but I know it is so.
Think of loving and being loved!
I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you!

Think of the past!
I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times.

The race is never separated—nor man nor woman escapes,
All is inextricable—things, spirits, nature, nations, you too—from precedents you come.

Recall the ever-welcome defiers! (The mothers precede them;)
Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth,
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons—brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.

Think of the time when you was not yet born!
Think of times you stood at the side of the dying!
Think of the time when your own body will be dying!

Think of spiritual results!
Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results!

Think of manhood, and you to be a man!
Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?

Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman!
The creation is womanhood,
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?

Realism is mine, my miracles,
Take all of the rest—take freely—I keep but my own—I give only of them,
I offer them without end—I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you, or your eyes reach.

Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of an August forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-moon in May,
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best—mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass,
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring—yet each distinct and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.