Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Many a muffled confession — many a sob and whisper’d word,

As of speakers far or hid.

How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!

Poets unnamed — artists greatest of any, with cherish’d lost designs,

Love’s unresponse — a chorus of age’s complaints — hope’s last words,

Some suicide’s despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and

never again return.

On to oblivion then!

On, on, and do your part, ye burying, ebbing tide!

On for your time, ye furious debouche!

[V] And Yet Not You Alone

And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,

Nor you, ye lost designs alone — nor failures, aspirations;

I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour’s seeming;

Duly by you, from you, the tide and light again — duly the hinges turning,

Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,

Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,

The rhythmus of Birth eternal.

[VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In

Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,

Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,

All throbs, dilates — the farms, woods, streets of cities — workmen at work,

Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing — steamers’ pennants

of smoke — and under the forenoon sun,

Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the

inward bound,

Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.

[VII] By That Long Scan of Waves

By that long scan of waves, myself call’d back, resumed upon myself,

In every crest some undulating light or shade — some retrospect,

Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas — scenes ephemeral,

The long past war, the battles, hospital sights, the wounded and the dead,

Myself through every by-gone phase — my idle youth — old age at hand,

My three-score years of life summ’d up, and more, and past,

By any grand ideal tried, intentionless, the whole a nothing,

And haply yet some drop within God’s scheme’s ensemble — some

wave, or part of wave,

Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.

[VIII] Then Last Of All

Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill,

Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:

Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same,

The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.

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If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

’Twould not be you, Niagara — nor you, ye limitless prairies — nor

your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite — nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic

geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones — nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes — nor

Mississippi’s stream:

— This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name — the still

small voice vibrating — America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen — the act itself the main, the

quadriennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d — sea-board and inland —

Texas to Maine — the Prairie States — Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West — the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling — (a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the

peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity — welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

— Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify — while the heart

pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

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With husky-haughty lips, O sea!

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,

Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,

(I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)

Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,

Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,

Thy brooding scowl and murk — thy unloos’d hurricanes,

Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;

Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears — a lack from all

eternity in thy content,

(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee

greatest — no less could make thee,)

Thy lonely state — something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet

never gain’st,

Surely some right withheld — some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of

freedom-lover pent,

Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,

By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,

And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,

And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,

And undertones of distant lion roar,

(Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear — but now, rapport for once,

A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)

The first and last confession of the globe,

Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,

The tale of cosmic elemental passion,

Thou tellest to a kindred soul.

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As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,

From that great play on history’s stage eterne,

That lurid, partial act of war and peace — of old and new contending,

Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense;

All past — and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing,

Victor’s and vanquish’d — Lincoln’s and Lee’s — now thou with them,

Man of the mighty days — and equal to the days!

Thou from the prairies! — tangled and many-vein’d and hard has been thy part,

To admiration has it been enacted!

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Upon this scene, this show,

Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,

(Nor in caprice alone — some grains of deepest meaning,)

Haply, aloft, (who knows?) from distant sky-clouds’ blended shapes,

As some old tree, or rock or cliff, thrill’d with its soul,

Product of Nature’s sun, stars, earth direct — a towering human form,

In hunting-shirt of film, arm’d with the rifle, a half-ironical

smile curving its phantom lips,

Like one of Ossian’s ghosts looks down.

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Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:

Far from its base and shaft expanding — the round zones circling,

comprehending,

Thou, Washington, art all the world’s, the continents’ entire — not

yours alone, America,

Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot,

Or frozen North, or sultry South — the African’s — the Arab’s in his tent,

Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;

(Greets the antique the hero new? ’tis but the same — the heir

legitimate, continued ever,

The indomitable heart and arm — proofs of the never-broken line,

Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same — e’en in defeat

defeated not, the same:)

Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,

Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,

Now, or to come, or past — where patriot wills existed or exist,

Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,