Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

180 I am given up by traitors,
I talk wildly—I have lost my wits—I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,
I went myself first to the headland—my own hands carried me there.

181 You villain touch! what are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat,
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

182 Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheathed, hooded, sharp-toothed touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

183 Parting, tracked by arriving—perpetual payment of perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

184 Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital,
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized, and golden.

185 All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?

186 Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my Soul.

187 Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.

188 A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.

189 I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking short-cake.

190 I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it.

191 In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

192 I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes an hour at a stretch.

193 They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
No one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

194 So they show their relations to me, and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself—they evince them plainly in their possession.

195 I do not know where they get those tokens,
I may have passed that way untold times ago, and negligently dropt them,
Myself moving forward then and now forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that I love, to go with on brotherly terms.

196 A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes well apart, full of sparkling wickedness—ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

197 His nostrils dilate, as my heels embrace him,
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure, as we speed around and return.

198 I but use you a moment, then I resign you stallion,
Why do I need your paces, when I myself out-gallop them?
Even, as I stand or sit, passing faster than you.

199 O swift wind! Space! my Soul! now I know it is true, what I guessed at,
What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,
What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed,
And again as I walked the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

200 My ties and ballasts leave me—I travel—I sail—my elbows rest in the sea-gaps,
I skirt the sierras—my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

201 By the city’s quadrangular houses—in log huts—camping with lumbermen,
Along the ruts of the turnpike—along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
Weeding my onion-patch, or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips—crossing savannas—trailing in forests,
Prospecting—gold-digging—girdling the trees of a new purchase,
Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand—hauling my boat down the shallow river,
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead—Where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock—Where the otter is feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey—Where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-tail,
Over the growing sugar—over the cotton plant—over the rice in its low moist field,
Over the sharp-peaked farm house, with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the gutters,
Over the western persimmon—over the long-leaved corn—over the delicate blue-flowered flax,
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze,
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,
Where the bat flies in the Seventh Month eve—
Where the great gold-bug drops through the dark,
Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides,
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen—Where andirons straddle the hearth-slab—Where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters,
Where trip-hammers crash—Where the press is whirling its cylinders,
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs,
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, floating in it myself and looking composedly down,
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose—Where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calf, and never forsakes it,
Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,
Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck—Where the dead are corrupting below,
Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments,
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,
Upon a door-step—upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs, or a good game of base-ball,
At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter,
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown sqush, sucking the juice through a straw,
At apple-peelings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps,
Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard—Where the dry-stalks are scattered—Where the brood cow waits in the hovel,
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work—Where the stud to the mare—Where the cock is treading the hen,
Where heifers browse—Where geese nip their food with short jerks,
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near,
Where the humming-bird shimmers—Where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh,
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden, half hid by the high weeds,
Where band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out,
Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery,
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,
Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs,
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,
Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well,
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,
Through the gymnasium—through the curtained saloon—through the office or public hall,
Pleased with the native, and pleased with the foreign—pleased with the new and old,
Pleased with women, the homely as well as the handsome,
Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,
Pleased with the tunes of the choir of the white-washed church,
Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any preacher—Impressed seriously at the camp-meeting,
Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon—flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate-glass,
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds,
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;
Coming home with the silent and dark-cheeked bush-boy—riding behind him at the drape of the day,
Far from the settlements, studying the print of animals’ feet, or the moccason print,
By the cot in the hospital, reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
By the coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle,
Voyaging to every port, to dicker and adventure,
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any,
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
Walking the old hills of Judea, with the beautiful gentle God by my side,
Speeding through space—speeding through heaven and the stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites, and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles,
Speeding with tailed meteors—throwing fire-balls like the rest,
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,
Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.