Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,

Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his

golden wings,

The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,

Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,

All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,

The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,

The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,

With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,

Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest

of his mate,

The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,

For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it

and from it?

Thou, soul, unloosen’d — the restlessness after I know not what;

Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!

O if one could but fly like a bird!

O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!

To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters;

Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the

morning drops of dew,

The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,

Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,

Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,

To grace the bush I love — to sing with the birds,

A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.

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1

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?

What tablets, outlines, hang for thee, O millionnaire?

The life thou lived’st we know not,

But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ‘mid the haunts of

brokers,

Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory.

2

Silent, my soul,

With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d,

Turning from all the samples, monuments of heroes.

While through the interior vistas,

Noiseless uprose, phantasmic, (as by night Auroras of the north,)

Lambent tableaus, prophetic, bodiless scenes,

Spiritual projections.

In one, among the city streets a laborer’s home appear’d,

After his day’s work done, cleanly, sweet-air’d, the gaslight burning,

The carpet swept and a fire in the cheerful stove.

In one, the sacred parturition scene,

A happy painless mother birth’d a perfect child.

In one, at a bounteous morning meal,

Sat peaceful parents with contented sons.

In one, by twos and threes, young people,

Hundreds concentring, walk’d the paths and streets and roads,

Toward a tall-domed school.

In one a trio beautiful,

Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter’s daughter, sat,

Chatting and sewing.

In one, along a suite of noble rooms,

‘Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes,

Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics young and old,

Reading, conversing.

All, all the shows of laboring life,

City and country, women’s, men’s and children’s,

Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy,

Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room,

Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college,

The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught,

The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father’d and mother’d,

The hungry fed, the houseless housed;

(The intentions perfect and divine,

The workings, details, haply human.)

3

O thou within this tomb,

From thee such scenes, thou stintless, lavish giver,

Tallying the gifts of earth, large as the earth,

Thy name an earth, with mountains, fields and tides.

Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,

By you, your banks Connecticut,

By you and all your teeming life old Thames,

By you Potomac laving the ground Washington trod, by you Patapsco,

You Hudson, you endless Mississippi — nor you alone,

But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.

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1

Out from behind this bending rough-cut mask,

These lights and shades, this drama of the whole,

This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for

you, in each for each,

(Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears — 0 heaven!

The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid!)

This glaze of God’s serenest purest sky,

This film of Satan’s seething pit,

This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this

soundless sea;

Out from the convolutions of this globe,

This subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,

This condensation of the universe, (nay here the only universe,

Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt;)

These burin’d eyes, flashing to you to pass to future time,

To launch and spin through space revolving sideling, from these to emanate,

To you whoe’er you are — a look.

2

A traveler of thoughts and years, of peace and war,

Of youth long sped and middle age declining,

(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,

Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)

Lingering a moment here and now, to you I opposite turn,

As on the road or at some crevice door by chance, or open’d window,

Pausing, inclining, baring my head, you specially I greet,

To draw and clinch your soul for once inseparably with mine,

Then travel travel on.

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1

Vocalism, measure, concentration, determination, and the divine

power to speak words;

Are you full-lung’d and limber-lipp’d from long trial? from vigorous

practice? from physique?

Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?

Come duly to the divine power to speak words?

For only at last after many years, after chastity, friendship,

procreation, prudence, and nakedness,

After treading ground and breasting river and lake,

After a loosen’d throat, after absorbing eras, temperaments, races,

after knowledge, freedom, crimes,

After complete faith, after clarifyings, elevations, and removing

obstructions,

After these and more, it is just possible there comes to a man,

woman, the divine power to speak words;

Then toward that man or that woman swiftly hasten all — none

refuse, all attend,

Armies, ships, antiquities, libraries, paintings, machines, cities,

hate, despair, amity, pain, theft, murder, aspiration, form in

close ranks,

They debouch as they are wanted to march obediently through the

mouth of that man or that woman.

2

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?

Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,

As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere

around the globe.

All waits for the right voices;

Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? where is the develop’d soul?

For I see every word utter’d thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,

impossible on less terms.

I see brains and lips closed, tympans and temples unstruck,

Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,

Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies

slumbering forever ready in all words.

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My spirit to yours dear brother,