Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,

I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and

cheerfully pass them forward.

11

As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,

I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in

the briers hatching her brood.

I have seen the he-bird also,

I have paus’d to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and

joyfully singing.

And while I paus’d it came to me that what he really sang for was

not there only,

Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,

But subtle, clandestine, away beyond,

A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

12

Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and

joyfully singing.

Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,

For those who belong here and those to come,

I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger

and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,

And your songs outlaw’d offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes,

and carry you with me the same as any.

I will make the true poem of riches,

To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward

and is not dropt by death;

I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the

bard of personality,

And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of

the other,

And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin’d

to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and

can be none in the future,

And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to

beautiful results,

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,

And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are

compact,

And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each

as profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts,

But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble,

And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to

all days,

And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has

reference to the soul,

Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there

is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.

13

Was somebody asking to see the soul?

See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts,

the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;

How can the real body ever die and be buried?

Of your real body and any man’s or woman’s real body,

Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and

pass to fitting spheres,

Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the

moment of death.

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the

meaning, the main concern,

Any more than a man’s substance and life or a woman’s substance and

life return in the body and the soul,

Indifferently before death and after death.

Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and

includes and is the soul;

Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part

of it!

14

Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?

Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?

Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,

Exulting words, words to Democracy’s lands.

Interlink’d, food-yielding lands!

Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!

Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple

and the grape!

Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of

those sweet-air’d interminable plateaus!

Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!

Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west

Colorado winds!

Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!

Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!

Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and

Connecticut!

Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!

Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen’s land!

Inextricable lands! the clutch’d together! the passionate ones!

The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb’d!

The great women’s land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and

the inexperienced sisters!

Far breath’d land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez’d! the diverse! the

compact!

The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!

O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any

rate include you all with perfect love!

I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another!

O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with

irrepressible love,

Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,

Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on

Paumanok’s sands,

Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every town,

Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,

Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,

Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor,

The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,

The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them,

Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie,

Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,

Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome to me,

Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the

Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,

Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every

new brother,

Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they

unite with the old ones,

Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal,

coming personally to you now,

Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

15

With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.

For your life adhere to me,

(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give

myself really to you, but what of that?

Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

No dainty dolce affettuoso I,

Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck’d, forbidding, I have arrived,

To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,

For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.

16

On my way a moment I pause,

Here for you! and here for America!

Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I

harbinge glad and sublime,

And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines,

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds

and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,

Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,

Kaqueta, Oronoco,

Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,

Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the

water and the land with names.