Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

232 We had received some eighteen-pound shots under the water,
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around, and blowing up overhead.

233 Ten o’clock at night, and the full moon shining, and the leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported,
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold, to give them a chance for themselves.

234 The transit to and from the magazine was now stopped by the sentinels,
They saw so many strange faces, they did not know whom to trust.

235 Our frigate was afire,
The other asked if we demanded quarter?
If our colors were struck, and the fighting done?

236 I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little captain,
We have not struck, he composedly cried, We have just begun our part of the fighting .

237 Only three guns were in use,
One was directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s main-mast,
Two, well served with grape and canister, silenced his musketry and cleared his decks.

238 The tops alone seconded the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top,
They all held out bravely during the whole of the action.

239 Not a moment’s cease,
The leaks gained fast on the pumps—the fire eat toward the powder-magazine,
One of the pumps was shot away—it was generally thought we were sinking.

240 Serene stood the little captain,
He was not hurried—his voice was neither high nor low,
His eyes gave more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

241 Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon, they surrendered to us.

242 Stretched and still lay the midnight,
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking—preparations to pass to the one we had conquered,
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet,
Near by, the corpse of the child that served in the cabin,
The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers,
The flames, spite of all that could be done, flickering aloft and below,
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
Formless stacks of bodies, and bodies by themselves—dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,
The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long dull tapering groan,
These so—these irretrievable.

243 O Christ! This is mastering me!
Through the conquered doors they crowd. I am possessed.

244 What the rebel said, gayly adjusting his throat to the rope-noose,
What the savage at the stump, his eye-sockets empty, his mouth spirting whoops and defiance,
What stills the traveller come to the vault at Mount Vernon,
What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the shores of the Wallabout and remembers the Prison Ships,
What burnt the gums of the red-coat at Saratoga when he surrendered his brigades,
These become mine and me every one—and they are but little,
I become as much more as I like.

245 I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
See myself in prison shaped like another man,
And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

246 For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.

247 Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him and walk by his side,
I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one, with sweat on my twitching lips.

248 Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.

249 Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp, but I also lie at the last gasp,
My face is ash-colored—my sinews gnarl—away from me people retreat.

250 Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

251 Enough—I bring such to a close,
Rise extatic through all, sweep with the true gravitation,
The whirling and whirling elemental within me.

252 Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

253 That I could forget the mockers and insults!
That I could forget the trickling tears, and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning.

254 I remember now,
I resume the overstaid fraction,
The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,
Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

255 I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,
We walk the roads of the six North Eastern States, and of Virginia, Wisconsin, Manhattan Island, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Texas, Charleston, Havana, Mexico,
Inland and by the sea-coast and boundary lines, and we pass all boundary lines.

256 Our swift ordinances are on their way over the whole earth,
The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years.

257 Élèves, I salute you!
I see the approach of your numberless gangs—I see you understand yourselves and me,
And know that they who have eyes and can walk are divine, and the blind and lame are equally divine,
And that my steps drag behind yours, yet go before them,
And are aware how I am with you no more than I am with everybody.

258 The friendly and flowing savage, Who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

259 Is he some south-westerner, raised out-doors? Is he Kanadian?
Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California? the mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or from the sea?

260 Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

261 Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter, and näveté,
Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath—they fly out of the glance of his eyes.

262 Flaunt of the sunshine, I need not your bask,—lie over!
You light surfaces only—I force surfaces and depths also.
Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
Say, old Top-knot! what do you want?

263 Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me, and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have—that pulse of my nights and days.