Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Dress’d in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:

(Then what the told-out story of those twenty years? What of the future?)

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A lesser proof than old Voltaire’s, yet greater,

Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad expanse, America,

To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,

Brought safely for a thousand miles o’er land and tide,

Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,

Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,

A bunch of orange buds by mall from Florida.

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The soft voluptuous opiate shades,

The sun just gone, the eager light dispell’d — (I too will soon be

gone, dispell’d,)

A haze — nirwana — rest and night — oblivion.

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You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,

And I some well-shorn tree of field or orchard-row;

You tokens diminute and lorn — (not now the flush of May, or July

clover-bloom — no grain of August now;)

You pallid banner-staves — you pennants valueless — you overstay’d of time,

Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,

The faithfulest — hardiest — last.

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Not meagre, latent boughs alone, O songs! (scaly and bare, like

eagles’ talons,)

But haply for some sunny day (who knows?) some future spring, some

summer — bursting forth,

To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade — to nourishing fruit,

Apples and grapes — the stalwart limbs of trees emerging — the fresh,

free, open air,

And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.

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To-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, Columbia,

Less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrow — less for the Emperor,

Thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o’er many a salt sea mile,

Mourning a good old man — a faithful shepherd, patriot.

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As the Greek’s signal flame, by antique records told,

Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory,

Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero,

With rosy tinge reddening the land he’d served,

So I aloft from Mannahatta’s ship-fringed shore,

Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet.

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In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,

On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor’d near the shore,

An old, dismasted, gray and batter’d ship, disabled, done,

After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul’d up at last and

hawser’d tight,

Lies rusting, mouldering.

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Now precedent songs, farewell — by every name farewell,

(Trains of a staggering line in many a strange procession, waggons,

From ups and downs — with intervals — from elder years, mid-age, or youth,)

“In Cabin’d Ships, or Thee Old Cause or Poets to Come

Or Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, or Adam,

Or Beat! Beat! Drums! or To the Leaven’d Soil they Trod,

Or Captain! My Captain! Kosmos, Quicksand Years, or Thoughts,

Thou Mother with thy Equal Brood,” and many, many more unspecified,

From fibre heart of mine — from throat and tongue — (My life’s hot

pulsing blood,

The personal urge and form for me — not merely paper, automatic type

and ink,)

Each song of mine — each utterance in the past — having its long, long

history,

Of life or death, or soldier’s wound, of country’s loss or safety,

(O heaven! what flash and started endless train of all! compared

indeed to that!

What wretched shred e’en at the best of all!)

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After a week of physical anguish,

Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,

Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,

Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.

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The touch of flame — the illuminating fire — the loftiest look at last,

O’er city, passion, sea — o’er prairie, mountain, wood — the earth itself,

The airy, different, changing hues of all, in failing twilight,

Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;

The calmer sight — the golden setting, clear and broad:

So much i’ the atmosphere, the points of view, the situations whence

we scan,

Bro’t out by them alone — so much (perhaps the best) unreck’d before;

The lights indeed from them — old age’s lambent peaks.

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After the supper and talk — after the day is done,

As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,

Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,

(So hard for his hand to release those hands — no more will they meet,

No more for communion of sorrow and joy, of old and young,

A far-stretching journey awaits him, to return no more,)

Shunning, postponing severance — seeking to ward off the last word

ever so little,

E’en at the exit-door turning — charges superfluous calling back —

e’en as he descends the steps,

Something to eke out a minute additional — shadows of nightfall deepening,

Farewells, messages lessening — dimmer the forthgoer’s visage and form,

Soon to be lost for aye in the darkness — loth, O so loth to depart!

Garrulous to the very last.

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Heave the anchor short!

Raise main-sail and jib — steer forth,

O little white-hull’d sloop, now speed on really deep waters,

(I will not call it our concluding voyage,

But outset and sure entrance to the truest, best, maturest;)

Depart, depart from solid earth — no more returning to these shores,

Now on for aye our infinite free venture wending,

Spurning all yet tried ports, seas, hawsers, densities, gravitation,

Sail out for good, eidolon yacht of me!

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And whence and why come you?

We know not whence, (was the answer,)

We only know that we drift here with the rest,

That we linger’d and lagg’d — but were wafted at last, and are now here,

To make the passing shower’s concluding drops.

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Good-bye my fancy — (I had a word to say,

But ’tis not quite the time — The best of any man’s word or say,

Is when its proper place arrives — and for its meaning,

I keep mine till the last.)

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On, on the same, ye jocund twain!

My life and recitative, containing birth, youth, mid-age years,

Fitful as motley-tongues of flame, inseparably twined and merged in

one — combining all,

My single soul — aims, confirmations, failures, joys — Nor single soul alone,

I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America’s, haply humanity’s) —

the trial great, the victory great,