Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east — America is provided for in the west,

Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,

Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends,

Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it

does not set for months,

Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above

the horizon and sinks again,

Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,

Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.

3

What do you hear Walt Whitman?

I hear the workman singing and the farmer’s wife singing,

I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early

in the day,

I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,

I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to

the rebeck and guitar,

I hear continual echoes from the Thames,

I hear fierce French liberty songs,

I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems,

I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with

the showers of their terrible clouds,

I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the

breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,

I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule,

I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,

I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear

the responsive base and soprano,

I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor’s voice putting to sea

at Okotsk,

I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the

husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten’d together

with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,

I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,

I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of

the Romans,

I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful

God the Christ,

I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,

adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three

thousand years ago.

4

What do you see Walt Whitman?

Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?

I see a great round wonder rolling through space,

I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,

palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the surface,

I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,

and the sunlit part on the other side,

I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,

I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as

my land is to me.

I see plenteous waters,

I see mountain peaks, I see the sierras of Andes where they range,

I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,

I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,

I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,

I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the

Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecla,

I see Vesuvius and Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the Red

mountains of Madagascar,

I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,

I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,

I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the Atlantic and

Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,

The waters of Hindustan, the China sea, and the gulf of Guinea,

The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki land-lock’d in its

mountains,

The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and

the bay of Biscay,

The clear-sunn’d Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,

The White sea, and the sea around Greenland.

I behold the mariners of the world,

Some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the lookout,

Some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.

I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters in

port, some on their voyages,

Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes

Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,

Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others cape

Lopatka, others Behring’s straits,

Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along Cuba or

Hayti, others Hudson’s bay or Baffin’s bay,

Others pass the straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the

firth of Solway, others round cape Clear, others the Land’s End,

Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,

Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,

Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,

Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,

Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Burampooter

and Cambodia,

Others wait steam’d up ready to start in the ports of Australia,

Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,

Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,

Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.

5

I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,

I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,

I see them in Asia and in Africa.

I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,

I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,

passions, of my race.

I see the long river-stripes of the earth,

I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,

I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River,

the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl,

I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire, the

Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,

I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,

I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po,

I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.

6

I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and

that of India,

I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.

I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in

human forms,

I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles,

sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, llamas, monks, muftis, exhorters,

I see where druids walk’d the groves of Mona, I see the mistletoe

and vervain,

I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods, I see the old

signifiers.

I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of

youths and old persons,

I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil’d

faithfully and long and then died,

I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the

beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb’d Bacchus,

I see Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of feathers on

his head,

I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov’d, saying to the people

Do not weep for me,

This is not my true country, I have lived banish’d from my true

country, I now go back there,

I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.

7

I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and

blossoms and corn,

I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.

I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown

events, heroes, records of the earth.

I see the places of the sagas,

I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,

I see granite bowlders and cliffs, I see green meadows and lakes,

I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,

I see them raised high with stones by the marge of restless oceans,