Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,

Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,

Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.

5

The old face of the mother of many children,

Whist! I am fully content.

Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,

It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,

It hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and cat-brier under them.

I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,

I heard what the singers were singing so long,

Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.

Behold a woman!

She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more

beautiful than the sky.

She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,

The sun just shines on her old white head.

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,

Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it with

the distaff and the wheel.

The melodious character of the earth,

The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish to go,

The justified mother of men.

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1

Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,

Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.

I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes,

Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,

Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.

2

Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds

Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life

Was fill’d with aspirations high, unform’d ideals,

Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,

That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,

Gives out to no one’s ears but mine, but freely gives to mine,

That I may thee translate.

3

Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,

While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,

The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,

A holy calm descends like dew upon me,

I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,

I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;

Thy song expands my numb’d imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me,

Floating and basking upon heaven’s lake.

4

Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,

Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world.

What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,

Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls,

the troubadours are singing,

Arm’d knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the holy Graal;

I see the tournament, I see the contestants incased in heavy armor

seated on stately champing horses,

I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel;

I see the Crusaders’ tumultuous armies — hark, how the cymbals clang,

Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high.

5

Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,

Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,

Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,

The heart of man and woman all for love,

No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.

O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!

I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames that

heat the world,

The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,

So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death;

Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, that mocks time and space,

Love, that is day and night — love, that is sun and moon and stars,

Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,

No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.

6

Blow again trumpeter — conjure war’s alarums.

Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls,

Lo, where the arm’d men hasten — lo, mid the clouds of dust the glint

of bayonets,

I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid the

smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns;

Nor war alone — thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every

sight of fear,

The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder — I hear the cries for help!

I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below deck the

terrible tableaus.

7

O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,

Thou melt’st my heart, my brain — thou movest, drawest, changest

them at will;

And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me,

Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope,

I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the

whole earth,

I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it becomes

all mine,

Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds

and hatreds,

Utter defeat upon me weighs — all lost — the foe victorious,

(Yet ‘mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,

Endurance, resolution to the last.)

8

Now trumpeter for thy close,

Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,

Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,

Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,

Give me for once its prophecy and joy.

O glad, exulting, culminating song!

A vigor more than earth’s is in thy notes,

Marches of victory — man disenthral’d — the conqueror at last,

Hymns to the universal God from universal man — all joy!

A reborn race appears — a perfect world, all joy!

Women and men in wisdom innocence and health — all joy!

Riotous laughing bacchanals fill’d with joy!

War, sorrow, suffering gone — the rank earth purged — nothing but joy left!

The ocean fill’d with joy — the atmosphere all joy!

Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!

Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!

Joy! joy! all over joy!

Table of Contents

Thee for my recitative,

Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,

Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,

Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,

Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating,

shuttling at thy sides,

Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,

Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,

Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,

The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,

Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of

thy wheels,

Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,

Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;

Type of the modern — emblem of motion and power — pulse of the continent,

For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,

With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,

By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,

By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

Fierce-throated beauty!

Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps

at night,

Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake,

rousing all,

Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,

(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)

Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,