Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

the sod and turn it up underneath,

I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!

Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person — yet behold!

The grass of spring covers the prairies,

The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,

The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,

The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,

The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,

The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,

The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on

their nests,

The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,

The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the

colt from the mare,

Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,

Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in

the dooryards,

The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata

of sour dead.

What chemistry!

That the winds are really not infectious,

That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which

is so amorous after me,

That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,

That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited

themselves in it,

That all is clean forever and forever,

That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,

That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,

That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that

melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,

That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,

Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once

catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,

It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,

It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless

successions of diseas’d corpses,

It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,

It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,

It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings

from them at last.

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Courage yet, my brother or my sister!

Keep on — Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;

That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any

number of failures,

Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any

unfaithfulness,

Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,

Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is

positive and composed, knows no discouragement,

Waiting patiently, waiting its time.

(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,

But songs of insurrection also,

For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,

And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,

And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)

The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,

The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,

The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and

leadballs do their work,

The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,

The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant lands,

The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their own blood,

The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;

But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the

infidel enter’d into full possession.

When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the

second or third to go,

It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,

And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged

from any part of the earth,

Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from

that part of the earth,

And the infidel come into full possession.

Then courage European revolter, revoltress!

For till all ceases neither must you cease.

I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself,

nor what any thing is for,)

But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,

In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment — for they too are great.

Did we think victory great?

So it is — but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d, that

defeat is great,

And that death and dismay are great.

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Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times ten

thousand years before these States,

Garner’d clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up and

travel’d their course and pass’d on,

What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes

and nomads,

What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,

What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,

What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and phrenology,

What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of death

and the soul,

Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish and

undevelop’d,

Not a mark, not a record remains — and yet all remains.

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any more

than we are for nothing,

I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as much

as we now belong to it.

Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,

Some with oval countenances learn’d and calm,

Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,

Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,

Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,

laboring, reaping, filling barns,

Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,

libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.

Are those billions of men really gone?

Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?

Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?

Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?

I believe of all those men and women that fill’d the unnamed lands,

every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible to us.

In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of

what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn’d, in life.

I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of

them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of me;

Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,

games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,

I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,

counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,

I suspect I shall meet them there,

I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed lands.

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Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d pondering,

On Time, Space, Reality — on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence.

The last explanation always remains to be made about prudence,

Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that

suits immortality.

The soul is of itself,