Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

To lift their cunning covers to signify me with stretch’d arms, and

resume the way;

Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting

music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!

I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,

The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,

He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after to-day,

The stammerer, the well-form’d person, the wasted or feeble person.

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,

My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

Double yourself and receive me darkness,

Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him.

I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the dusk.

He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,

He rises with me silently from the bed.

Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting,

I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,

I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.

Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?

I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,

I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.

2

I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,

Perfume and youth course through me and I am their wake.

It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman’s,

I sit low in a straw-bottom chair and carefully darn my grandson’s

stockings.

It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,

I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.

A shroud I see and I am the shroud, I wrap a body and lie in the coffin,

It is dark here under ground, it is not evil or pain here, it is

blank here, for reasons.

(It seems to me that every thing in the light and air ought to be happy,

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)

3

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies

of the sea,

His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with

courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,

I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,

I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on

the rocks.

What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves?

Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime

of his middle age?

Steady and long he struggles,

He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d, he holds out while his strength

holds out,

The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away,

they roll him, swing him, turn him,

His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is

continually bruis’d on rocks,

Swiftly and ought of sight is borne the brave corpse.

4

I turn but do not extricate myself,

Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.

The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound,

The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through the drifts.

I look where the ship helplessly heads end on, I hear the burst as

she strikes, I hear the howls of dismay, they grow fainter and fainter.

I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,

I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and freeze upon me.

I search with the crowd, not one of the company is wash’d to us alive,

In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.

5

Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,

Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the intrench’d

hills amid a crowd of officers.

His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the weeping drops,

He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanch’d

from his cheeks,

He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by

their parents.

The same at last and at last when peace is declared,

He stands in the room of the old tavern, the well-belov’d soldiers

all pass through,

The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,

The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses them on the cheek,

He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another, he shakes hands

and bids good-by to the army.

6

Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner together,

Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on

the old homestead.

A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead,

On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,

Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-envelop’d

her face,

Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded exquisitely as

she spoke.

My mother look’d in delight and amazement at the stranger,

She look’d at the freshness of her tall-borne face and full and

pliant limbs,

The more she look’d upon her she loved her,

Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity,

She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fireplace, she cook’d

food for her,

She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness.

The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the

afternoon she went away,

O my mother was loth to have her go away,

All the week she thought of her, she watch’d for her many a month,

She remember’d her many a winter and many a summer,

But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there again.

7

A show of the summer softness — a contact of something unseen — an

amour of the light and air,

I am jealous and overwhelm’d with friendliness,

And will go gallivant with the light and air myself.

O love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me,

Autumn and winter are in the dreams, the farmer goes with his thrift,

The droves and crops increase, the barns are well-fill’d.

Elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the dreams,

The sailor sails, the exile returns home,

The fugitive returns unharm’d, the immigrant is back beyond months

and years,

The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood with

the well known neighbors and faces,

They warmly welcome him, he is barefoot again, he forgets he is well off,

The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welshman voyage

home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,

To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-fill’d ships,

The Swiss foots it toward his hills, the Prussian goes his way, the

Hungarian his way, and the Pole his way,

The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.

The homeward bound and the outward bound,

The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuye, the onanist, the female that

loves unrequited, the money-maker,

The actor and actress, those through with their parts and those

waiting to commence,

The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee

that is chosen and the nominee that has fail’d,

The great already known and the great any time after to-day,

The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-form’d, the homely,

The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced

him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,

The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red squaw,

The consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that is wrong’d,

The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,

I swear they are averaged now — one is no better than the other,