Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,

Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14

Allons! through struggles and wars!

The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?

What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?

Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things that

from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth

something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,

He going with me must go well arm’d,

He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies,

desertions.

15

Allons! the road is before us!

It is safe — I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well — be not

detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the

shelf unopen’d!

Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!

Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!

Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the

court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!

Clouds of the west — sun there half an hour high — I see you also face

to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious

you are to me!

On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning

home, are more curious to me than you suppose,

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more

to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,

The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every

one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,

The similitudes of the past and those of the future,

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on

the walk in the street and the passage over the river,

The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,

The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,

The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the

heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half

an hour high,

A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others

will see them,

Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the

falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

3

It avails not, time nor place — distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many

generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the

bright flow, I was refresh’d,

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift

current, I stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the

thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,

Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air

floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,

Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left

the rest in strong shadow,

Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,

Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,

Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,

Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my

head in the sunlit water,

Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,

Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,

Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,

Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,

Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,

The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,

The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender

serpentine pennants,

The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses,

The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,

The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,

The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the

frolic-some crests and glistening,

The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the

granite storehouses by the docks,

On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on

each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,

On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning

high and glaringly into the night,

Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow

light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.

4

These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,

I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,

The men and women I saw were all near to me,

Others the same — others who look back on me because I look’d forward

to them,

(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not — distance avails not, and place avails not,

I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,

I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the

waters around it,

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,

In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,

In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,

I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,

I too had receiv’d identity by my body,

That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I

should be of my body.

6

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,

The dark threw its patches down upon me also,

The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,

My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,

I am he who knew what it was to be evil,

I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,

Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,

Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,

Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,

The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.

The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,

Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,

Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as