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

Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,

Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,

Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor,

The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,

The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them,

Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie,

Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,

Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome to me,

Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the

Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,

Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every

new brother,

Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they

unite with the old ones,

Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal,

coming personally to you now,

Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

15

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.

For your life adhere to me,

(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give

myself really to you, but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,

Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,

To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,

For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.

16

On my way a moment I pause,

Here for you! and here for America!

Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I

harbinge glad and sublime,

And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines,

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds

and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,

Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,

Kaqueta, Oronoco,

Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,

Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the

water and the land with names.

17

Expanding and swift, henceforth,

Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious,

A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching,

A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests,

New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

These, my voice announcing—I will sleep no more but arise,

You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,

fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

18

See, steamers steaming through my poems,

See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing,

See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat,

the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village,

See, on the one side the Western Sea and on the other the Eastern Sea,

how they advance and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores,

See, pastures and forests in my poems—see, animals wild and tame—see,

beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass,

See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,

with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce,

See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press—see, the electric

telegraph stretching across the continent,

See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reaching,

pulses of Europe duly return'd,

See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing

the steam-whistle,

See, ploughmen ploughing farms—see, miners digging mines—see,

the numberless factories,

See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools—see from among them

superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in

working dresses,

See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me

well-belov'd, close-held by day and night,

Hear the loud echoes of my songs there—read the hints come at last.

19

O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.

O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!

O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!

O now I triumph—and you shall also;

O hand in hand—O wholesome pleasure—O one more desirer and lover!

O to haste firm holding—to haste, haste on with me.

Song of Myself

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their

parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with

perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the

distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing

of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and

dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of

the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields

and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising

from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of

all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions

of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through

the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the

beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and

increase, always sex,