Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

And that my steps drag behind yours yet go before them,

And are aware how I am with you no more than I am with everybody.

The friendly and flowing savage . . . . Who is he?

Is he waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it?

Is he some southwesterner raised outdoors? Is he Canadian?

Is he from the Mississippi country? or from Iowa, Oregon or California? or from the mountains? or prairie life or bush-life? or from the sea?

Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,

They desire he should like them and touch them and speak to them and stay with them.

Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes . . . . words simple as grass . . . . uncombed head and laughter and naivete;

Slowstepping feet and the common features, and the common modes and emanations,

They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,

They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath . . . . they fly out of the glance of his eyes.

Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask . . . . lie over,

You light surfaces only . . . . I force the surfaces and the depths also.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,

Say old topknot! what do you want?

Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but cannot,

And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,

And might tell the pinings I have . . . . the pulse of my nights and days.

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,

What I give I give out of myself.

You there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarfed chops till I blow grit within you,

Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,

I am not to be denied . . . . I compel . . . . I have stores plenty and to spare,

And any thing I have I bestow.

I do not ask who you are . . . . that is not important to me,

You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

To a drudge of the cottonfields or emptier of privies I lean . . . . on his right cheek I put the family kiss,

And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,

This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.

To any one dying . . . . thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,

Turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed,

Let the physician and the priest go home.

I seize the descending man . . . . I raise him with resistless will.

O despairer, here is my neck,

By God! you shall not go down! Hang your whole weight upon me.

I dilate you with tremendous breath . . . . I buoy you up;

Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force . . . . lovers of me, bafflers of graves:

Sleep! I and they keep guard all night;

Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,

I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,

And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.

I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,

And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

I heard what was said of the universe,

Heard it and heard of several thousand years;

It is middling well as far as it goes . . . . but is that all?

Magnifying and applying come I,

Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,

The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of my own seminal wet,

Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them away,

Lithographing Kronos and Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,

Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and Adonai,

In my portfolio placing Manito loose, and Allah on a leaf, and the crucifix engraved,

With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and all idols and images,

Honestly taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more,

Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,

Admitting they bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,

Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself . . . . bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,

Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,

Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-up sleeves, driving the mallet and chisel;

Not objecting to special revelations . . . . considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand as curious as any revelation;

Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes more to me than the gods of the antique wars,

Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

Their brawny limbs passing safe over charred laths . . . . their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;

By the mechanic’s wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born;

Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagged out at their waists;

The snag-toothed hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,

Selling all he possesses and traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery:

What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then;

The bull and the bug never worshipped half enough,

Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed,

The supernatural of no account . . . . myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes,

The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious,

Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs out of pulpit or print;

By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator!

Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows!

. . . . A call in the midst of the crowd,

My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

Come my children,

Come my boys and girls, and my women and household and intimates,

Now the performer launches his nerve . . . . he has passed his prelude on the reeds within.

Easily written loosefingered chords! I feel the thrum of their climax and close.

My head evolves on my neck,

Music rolls, but not from the organ . . . . folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.

Ever the hard and unsunk ground,

Ever the eaters and drinkers . . . . ever the upward and downward sun . . . . ever the air and the ceaseless tides,

Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing and wicked and real,

Ever the old inexplicable query . . . . ever that thorned thumb -- that breath of itches and thirsts,

Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth;

Ever love . . . . ever the sobbing liquid of life,

Ever the bandage under the chin . . . . ever the tressels of death.

Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,

To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,

Tickets buying or taking or selling, but in to the feast never once going;

Many sweating and ploughing and thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,

A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

This is the city . . . . and I am one of the citizens;

Whatever interests the rest interests me . . . . politics, churches, newspapers, schools,

Benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, markets,

Stocks and stores and real estate and personal estate.

They who piddle and patter here in collars and tailed coats . . . . I am aware who they are . . . . and that they are not worms or fleas,

I acknowledge the duplicates of myself under all the scrape-lipped and pipe-legged concealments.

The weakest and shallowest is deathless with me,

What I do and say the same waits for them,