Walt Whitman - Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass (English Edition)

the future is.

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be

their religion,

Otherwise there is just no real and permanent grandeur;

(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,

Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)

8

What are you doing young man?

Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?

These ostensible realities, politics, points?

Your ambition or business whatever it may be?

It is well—against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,

But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion's sake,

For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential

life of the earth,

Any more than such are to religion.

9

What do you seek so pensive and silent?

What do you need camerado?

Dear son do you think it is love?

Listen dear son—listen America, daughter or son,

It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it

satisfies, it is great,

But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,

It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and

provides for all.

10

Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,

The following chants each for its kind I sing.

My comrade!

For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising

inclusive and more resplendent,

The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.

Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,

Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,

Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me,

Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we

know not of,

Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,

These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.

Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,

Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,

Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual world,

After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

O such themes—equalities! O divine average!

Warblings under the sun, usher'd as now, or at noon, or setting,

Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,

I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and

cheerfully pass them forward.

11

As I have walk'd in Alabama my morning walk,

I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in

the briers hatching her brood.

I have seen the he-bird also,

I have paus'd to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and

joyfully singing.

And while I paus'd it came to me that what he really sang for was

not there only,

Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,

But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,

A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

12

Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and

joyfully singing.

Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,

For those who belong here and those to come,

I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger

and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,

And your songs outlaw'd offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes,

and carry you with me the same as any.

I will make the true poem of riches,

To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward

and is not dropt by death;

I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the

bard of personality,

And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of

the other,

And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin'd

to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and

can be none in the future,

And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to

beautiful results,

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,

And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are

compact,

And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each

as profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts,

But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble,

And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to

all days,

And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has

reference to the soul,

Because having look'd at the objects of the universe, I find there

is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.

13

Was somebody asking to see the soul?

See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts,

the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;

How can the real body ever die and be buried?

Of your real body and any man's or woman's real body,

Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and

pass to fitting spheres,

Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the

moment of death.

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the

meaning, the main concern,

Any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance and

life return in the body and the soul,

Indifferently before death and after death.

Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and

includes and is the soul;

Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part

of it!

14

Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?

Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,

Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.

Interlink'd, food-yielding lands!

Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple

and the grape!

Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of

those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus!

Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!

Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west

Colorado winds!

Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and

Connecticut!

Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!

Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land!

Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones!

The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd!

The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and

the inexperienced sisters!

Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the

compact!

The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!

O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any

rate include you all with perfect love!

I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another!

O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with

irrepressible love,

Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,

Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on

Paumanok's sands,

Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every town,