Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,

Quench’d by an early death.

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A carol closing sixty-nine — a resume — a repetition,

My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,

Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;

Of you, my Land — your rivers, prairies, States — you, mottled Flag I love,

Your aggregate retain’d entire — Of north, south, east and west, your

items all;

Of me myself — the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,

The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed — the strange inertia

falling pall-like round me,

The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,

The undiminish’d faith — the groups of loving friends.

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Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through

the fight;

But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.

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This latent mine — these unlaunch’d voices — passionate powers,

Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,

(Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)

These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,

Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,

Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

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As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,

Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,

Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,

May filter in my dally songs.

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Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books,

Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?

But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,

Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,

Is it not just as great, O soul?

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Approaching, nearing, curious,

Thou dim, uncertain spectre — bringest thou life or death?

Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?

Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?

Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,

Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?

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Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,

More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,

Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,

Once living men — once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,

The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.

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Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,

As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass — innocent, golden, calm

as the dawn,

The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

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Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,

All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,

Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,

Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,

A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,

Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

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How sweet the silent backward tracings!

The wanderings as in dreams — the meditation of old times resumed

— their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

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The appointed winners in a long-stretch’d game;

The course of Time and nations — Egypt, India, Greece and Rome;

The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,

Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,

Garner’d for now and thee — To think of it!

The heirdom all converged in thee!

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After the dazzle of day is gone,

Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;

After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,

Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

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To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer — a pulse of thought,

To memory of Him — to birth of Him.

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Apple orchards, the trees all cover’d with blossoms;

Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;

The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;

The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;

The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.

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Not from successful love alone,

Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;

But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,

As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,

As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,

As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs

really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,

Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!

The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

FANCIES AT NAVESINK

[I] The Pilot in the Mist

Steaming the northern rapids — (an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,

A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,

Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)

Again ’tis just at morning — a heavy haze contends with daybreak,

Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me — I press through

foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch me,

Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman

Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.

[II] Had I the Choice

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,

To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,

Homer with all his wars and warriors — Hector, Achilles, Ajax,

Or Shakspere’s woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello — Tennyson’s fair ladies,

Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme,

delight of singers;

These, these, O sea, all these I’d gladly barter,

Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,

Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,

And leave its odor there.

[III] You Tides with Ceaseless Swell

You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!

You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space’s spread,

Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,

What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius’?

what Capella’s?

What central heart — and you the pulse — vivifies all? what boundless

aggregate of all?

What subtle indirection and significance in you? what clue to all in

you? what fluid, vast identity,

Holding the universe with all its parts as one — as sailing in a ship?

[IV] Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning

Last of ebb, and daylight waning,

Scented sea-cool landward making, smells of sedge and salt incoming,

With many a half-caught voice sent up from the eddies,