Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

The night and sleep have liken’d them and restored them.

I swear they are all beautiful,

Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is

beautiful,

The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.

Peace is always beautiful,

The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.

The myth of heaven indicates the soul,

The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it

comes or it lags behind,

It comes from its embower’d garden and looks pleasantly on itself

and encloses the world,

Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting,and perfect and

clean the womb cohering,

The head well-grown proportion’d and plumb, and the bowels and

joints proportion’d and plumb.

The soul is always beautiful,

The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place,

What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in its place,

The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,

The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of

the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,

The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced are to go on

in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their turns,

The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite —

they unite now.

8

The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,

They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as

they lie unclothed,

The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American

are hand in hand,

Learn’d and unlearn’d are hand in hand, and male and female are hand

in hand,

The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they

press close without lust, his lips press her neck,

The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with

measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with

measureless love,

The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,

The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is

inarm’d by friend,

The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar,

the wrong ‘d made right,

The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master

salutes the slave,

The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the

suffering of sick persons is reliev’d,

The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound,

the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress’d

head is free,

The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother

than ever,

Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple,

The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themselves in condition,

They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the

night, and awake.

I too pass from the night,

I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again and love you.

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?

I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you,

I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,

I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with you, but

I know I came well and shall go well.

I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,

I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.

Table of Contents

Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever

bawling — let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands;

Let judges and criminals be transposed — let the prison-keepers be

put in prison — let those that were prisoners take the keys;

Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1

To think of time — of all that retrospection,

To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?

Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?

Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing?

If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east — that men and women were

flexible, real, alive — that every thing was alive,

To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part,

To think that we are now here and bear our part.

2

Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement,

Not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse.

The dull nights go over and the dull days also,

The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,

The physician after long putting off gives the silent and terrible

look for an answer,

The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters

are sent for,

Medicines stand unused on the shelf, (the camphor-smell has long

pervaded the rooms,)

The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,

The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,

The breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,

The corpse stretches on the bed and the living look upon it,

It is palpable as the living are palpable.

The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,

But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously

on the corpse.

3

To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials,

To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking

great interest in them, and we taking no interest in them.

To think how eager we are in building our houses,

To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent.

(I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or

seventy or eighty years at most,

I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)

Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth — they never

cease — they are the burial lines,

He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall

surely be buried.

4

A reminiscence of the vulgar fate,

A frequent sample of the life and death of workmen,

Each after his kind.

Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river,

half-frozen mud in the streets,

A gray discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of December,

A hearse and stages, the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver,

the cortege mostly drivers.

Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell,

The gate is pass’d, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living

alight, the hearse uncloses,

The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on

the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel’d in,

The mound above is flatted with the spades — silence,

A minute — no one moves or speaks — it is done,

He is decently put away — is there any thing more?

He was a good fellow, free-mouth’d, quick-temper’d, not bad-looking,

Ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, gambled, ate

hearty, drank hearty,

Had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited toward the

last, sicken’d, was help’d by a contribution,

Died, aged forty-one years — and that was his funeral.

Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap,

wet-weather clothes, whip carefully chosen,