Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes,

To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

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O magnet-south! O glistening perfumed South! my South!

O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and love! good and evil! O all

dear to me!

O dear to me my birth-things — all moving things and the trees where

I was born — the grains, plants, rivers,

Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant,

over flats of slivery sands or through swamps,

Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the

Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine,

O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their

banks again,

Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the

Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings

or dense forests,

I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the

blossoming titi;

Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast

up the Carolinas,

I see where the live-oak is growing, I see where the yellow-pine,

the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the

graceful palmetto,

I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pamlico sound through an inlet,

and dart my vision inland;

O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!

The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel-tree with large white flowers,

The range afar, the richness and barrenness, the old woods charged

with mistletoe and trailing moss,

The piney odor and the gloom, the awful natural stillness, (here in

these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the

fugitive has his conceal’d hut;)

O the strange fascination of these half-known half-impassable

swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the

alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and

the whirr of the rattlesnake,

The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon,

singing through the moon-lit night,

The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the raccoon, the opossum;

A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, long-leav’d corn,

slender, flapping, bright green, with tassels, with beautiful

ears each well-sheath’d in its husk;

O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs, I can stand them not, I will depart;

O to be a Virginian where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!

O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee and

never wander more.

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I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,

Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly,

musical, self-sufficient,

I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,

Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb,

Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships, an

island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,

Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,

light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,

Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,

The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining

islands, the heights, the villas,

The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the

ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d,

The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses

of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets,

Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,

The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses, the

brown-faced sailors,

The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft,

The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the river,

passing along up or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide,

The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d,

beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,

Trottoirs throng’d, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the shops and shows,

A million people — manners free and superb — open voices — hospitality —

the most courageous and friendly young men,

City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!

City nested in bays! my city!

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O me, man of slack faith so long,

Standing aloof, denying portions so long,

Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,

Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be none,

but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself,

Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the earth does.

(This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be

realized,

I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,

And that the universe does.)

Where has fail’d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?

Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?

or in the meat and blood?

Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see

that there are really no liars or lies after all,

And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called

lies are perfect returns,

And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,

And that the truth includes all, and is compact just as much as

space is compact,

And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth — but

that all is truth without exception;

And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am,

And sing and laugh and deny nothing.

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That which eludes this verse and any verse,

Unheard by sharpest ear, unform’d in clearest eye or cunningest mind,

Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,

And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,

Which you and I and all pursuing ever ever miss,

Open but still a secret, the real of the real, an illusion,

Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner,

Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme, historians in prose,

Which sculptor never chisel’d yet, nor painter painted,

Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter’d,

Invoking here and now I challenge for my song.

Indifferently, ‘mid public, private haunts, in solitude,

Behind the mountain and the wood,

Companion of the city’s busiest streets, through the assemblage,

It and its radiations constantly glide.

In looks of fair unconscious babes,

Or strangely in the coffin’d dead,

Or show of breaking dawn or stars by night,

As some dissolving delicate film of dreams,

Hiding yet lingering.

Two little breaths of words comprising it,

Two words, yet all from first to last comprised in it.

How ardently for it!

How many ships have sail’d and sunk for it!

How many travelers started from their homes and neer return’d!

How much of genius boldly staked and lost for it!

What countless stores of beauty, love, ventur’d for it!

How all superbest deeds since Time began are traceable to it — and

shall be to the end!

How all heroic martyrdoms to it!

How, justified by it, the horrors, evils, battles of the earth!

How the bright fascinating lambent flames of it, in every age and

land, have drawn men’s eyes,