Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape me.

I bring what you much need yet always have,

Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as good,

I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but

offer the value itself.

There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,

It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed, it eludes discussion

and print,

It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,

It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from you than your

hearing and sight are from you,

It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is ever provoked by them.

You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,

You may read the President’s message and read nothing about it there,

Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury

department, or in the daily papers or weekly papers,

Or in the census or revenue returns, prices current, or any accounts

of stock.

3

The sun and stars that float in the open air,

The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is

something grand,

I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,

And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or

bon-mot or reconnoissance,

And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us,

and without luck must be a failure for us,

And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.

The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the

greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things,

The endless pride and outstretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,

The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders

that fill each minute of time forever,

What have you reckon’d them for, camerado?

Have you reckon’d them for your trade or farm-work? or for the

profits of your store?

Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman’s leisure,

or a lady’s leisure?

Have you reckon’d that the landscape took substance and form that it

might be painted in a picture?

Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?

Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations

and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans?

Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?

Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?

Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or

agriculture itself?

Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and

the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?

Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,

I rate them as high as the highest — then a child born of a woman and

man I rate beyond all rate.

We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,

I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,

I am this day just as much in love with them as you,

Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the earth.

We consider bibles and religions divine — I do not say they are not divine,

I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,

It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,

Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth,

than they are shed out of you.

4

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,

The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who

are here for him,

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,

The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you,

Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the

going and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you.

List close my scholars dear,

Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,

Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you,

The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records

reach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,

If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?

The most renown’d poems would be ashes, orations and plays would

be vacuums.

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,

(Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of

the arches and cornices?)

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments,

It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the

beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his

sweet romanza, nor that of the men’s chorus, nor that of the

women’s chorus,

It is nearer and farther than they.

5

Will the whole come back then?

Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is

there nothing greater or more?

Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul?

Strange and hard that paradox true I give,

Objects gross and the unseen soul are one.

House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,

Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing,

shingle-dressing,

Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers,

The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brickkiln,

Coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness,

echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts

looking through smutch’d faces,

Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men

around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the

due combining of ore, limestone, coal,

The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the

bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars

of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped Trail for railroads,

Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house,

steam-saws, the great mills and factories,

Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades or window or door-lintels,

the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb,

The calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire

under the kettle,

The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the

sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the

butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,

The work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker,

Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making,

glazier’s implements,

The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner’s ornaments, the decanter

and glasses, the shears and flat-iron,

The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the

counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the making

of all sorts of edged tools,

The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every thing that is done

by brewers, wine-makers, vinegar-makers,

Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting,

distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking,

electroplating, electrotyping, stereotyping,

Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,

ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,

The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,

Pyrotechny, letting off color’d fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets;

Beef on the butcher’s stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the

butcher in his killing-clothes,

The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the