Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,

No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,

No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully

to you,

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing

the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,

These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense

and interminable as they,

These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent

dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,

Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,

passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,

whatever you are promulges itself,

Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing

is scanted,

Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are

picks its way.

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A great year and place

A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s

heart closer than any yet.

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea,

Heard over the waves the little voice,

Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing, amid the

roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling buildings,

Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from the single

corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away in the tumbrils,

Was not so desperate at the battues of death — was not so shock’d at

the repeated fusillades of the guns.

Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?

Could I wish humanity different?

Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?

Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

O Liberty! O mate for me!

Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch

them out in case of need,

Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy’d,

Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,

Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.

Hence I sign this salute over the sea,

And I do not deny that terrible red birth and baptism,

But remember the little voice that I heard wailing, and wait with

perfect trust, no matter how long,

And from to-day sad and cogent I maintain the bequeath’d cause, as

for all lands,

And I send these words to Paris with my love,

And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,

For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,

O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be

drowning all that would interrupt them,

O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,

It reaches hither, it swells me to Joyful madness,

I will run transpose it in words, to justify

I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.

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Myself and mine gymnastic ever,

To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a

boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children,

To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common people,

And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.

Not for an embroiderer,

(There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,)

But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and women.

Not to chisel ornaments,

But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous

supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking and talking.

Let me have my own way,

Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws,

Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation

and conflict,

I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was

thought most worthy.

(Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?

Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all

your life?

And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences,

Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a single word?)

Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,

I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern

continually.

I give nothing as duties,

What others give as duties I give as living impulses,

(Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse

unanswerable questions,

Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?

What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender

directions and indirections?

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but

listen to my enemies, as I myself do,

I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I cannot

expound myself,

I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,

I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

After me, vista!

O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,

I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a

steady grower,

Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,

I perceive I have no time to lose.

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Year of meteors! brooding year!

I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,

I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,

I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the

scaffold in Virginia,

(I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch’d,

I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but trembling

with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted the scaffold;)

I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,

The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships

and their cargoes,

The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with

immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,

Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would welcome give,

And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me, young

prince of England!

(Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with your

cortege of nobles?

There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)

Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,

Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she was

600 feet long,

Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget not

to sing;

Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring in heaven,

Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting

over our heads,

(A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over

our heads,

Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)

Of such, and fitful as they, I sing — with gleams from them would

gleam and patch these chants,

Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good — year of forebodings!

Year of comets and meteors transient and strange — lo! even here one