Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they may be,

They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from thee,

While thou, Time’s spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself still

extricating, fusing,

Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with immortal blent,)

Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of the

body and the mind,

The soul, its destinies.

The soul, its destinies, the real real,

(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)

In thee America, the soul, its destinies,

Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!

By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d, (by these thyself solidifying,)

Thou mental, moral orb — thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World!

The Present holds thee not — for such vast growth as thine,

For such unparallel’d flight as thine, such brood as thine,

The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.

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Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,

Ten fishermen waiting — they discover a thick school of mossbonkers

— they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,

The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the

beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,

The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,

Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand

ankle-deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,

The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,

Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the water,

the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.

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Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!

Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,

The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,

And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;

O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.

Hear me illustrious!

Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,

Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge, thy

touching-distant beams enough,

Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.

(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,

I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,

Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice — and

thou O sun,

As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of

flame gigantic,

I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)

Thou that with fructifying heat and light,

O’er myriad farms, o’er lands and waters North and South,

O’er Mississippi’s endless course, o’er Texas’ grassy plains,

Kanada’s woods,

O’er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,

Thou that impartially enfoldest all, not only continents, seas,

Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,

Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of

thy million millions,

Strike through these chants.

Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,

Prepare the later afternoon of me myself — prepare my lengthening shadows,

Prepare my starry nights.

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1

Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, faces!

Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,

The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common benevolent face,

The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural lawyers

and judges broad at the back-top,

The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved

blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens,

The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face,

The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or

despised face,

The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of

many children,

The face of an amour, the face of veneration,

The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,

The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,

A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper,

A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry, faces

and faces and faces,

I see them and complain not, and am content with all.

2

Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their

own finale?

This now is too lamentable a face for a man,

Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,

Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage,

Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,

Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,

And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog’s-lard.

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,

Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show

nothing but their whites,

Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn’d-in nails,

The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he

speculates well.

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,

And this is some murderer’s knife with a half-pull’d scabbard.

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,

An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

3

Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas’d and

cadaverous march?

Well, you cannot trick me.

I see your rounded never-erased flow,

I see ‘neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

Splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats,

You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at

the asylum,

And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,

I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,

The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,

And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,

And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm’d, every inch

as good as myself.

4

The Lord advances, and yet advances,

Always the shadow in front, always the reach’d hand bringing up the

laggards.

Out of this face emerge banners and horses — O superb! I see what is coming,

I see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way,

I hear victorious drums.

This face is a life-boat,

This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest,

This face is flavor’d fruit ready for eating,

This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,

They show their descent from the Master himself.

Off the word I have spoken I except not one — red, white, black, are

all deific,

In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,

Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,

I read the promise and patiently wait.

This is a full-grown lily’s face,

She speaks to the limber-hipp’d man near the garden pickets,

Come here she blushingly cries, Come nigh to me limber-hipp’d man,