Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

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Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations!

Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals!

But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man

one flag above all the rest,

A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death,

Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates,

And all that went down doing their duty,

Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old,

A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o’er all brave sailors,

All seas, all ships.

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Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,

Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,

Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,

Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,

Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,

On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,

Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,

Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,

(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)

Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,

Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,

Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,

A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,

That savage trinity warily watching.

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After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,

After the white-gray sails taut to their spars and ropes,

Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,

Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,

Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,

Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,

Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,

Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displaced the surface,

Larger and smaller waves in the spread of the ocean yearnfully flowing,

The wake of the sea-ship after she passes, flashing and frolicsome

under the sun,

A motley procession with many a fleck of foam and many fragments,

Following the stately and rapid ship, in the wake following.

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To get betimes in Boston town I rose this morning early,

Here’s a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.

Clear the way there Jonathan!

Way for the President’s marshal — way for the government cannon!

Way for the Federal foot and dragoons, (and the apparitions

copiously tumbling.)

I love to look on the Stars and Stripes, I hope the fifes will play

Yankee Doodle.

How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!

Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.

A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,

Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

Why this is indeed a show — it has called the dead out of the earth!

The old graveyards of the hills have hurried to see!

Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear!

Cock’d hats of mothy mould — crutches made of mist!

Arms in slings — old men leaning on young men’s shoulders.

What troubles you Yankee phantoms? what is all this chattering of

bare gums?

Does the ague convulse your limbs? do you mistake your crutches for

firelocks and level them?

If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President’s marshal,

If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.

For shame old maniacs — bring down those toss’d arms, and let your

white hair be,

Here gape your great grandsons, their wives gaze at them from the windows,

See how well dress’d, see how orderly they conduct themselves.

Worse and worse — can’t you stand it? are you retreating?

Is this hour with the living too dead for you?

Retreat then — pell-mell!

To your graves — back — back to the hills old limpers!

I do not think you belong here anyhow.

But there is one thing that belongs here — shall I tell you what it

is, gentlemen of Boston?

I will whisper it to the Mayor, he shall send a committee to England,

They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the

royal vault,

Dig out King George’s coffin, unwrap him quick from the

graveclothes, box up his bones for a journey,

Find a swift Yankee clipper — here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper,

Up with your anchor — shake out your sails — steer straight toward

Boston bay.

Now call for the President’s marshal again, bring out the government cannon,

Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession,

guard it with foot and dragoons.

This centre-piece for them;

Look, all orderly citizens — look from the windows, women!

The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that

will not stay,

Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.

You have got your revenge, old buster — the crown is come to its own,

and more than its own.

Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan — you are a made man from

this day,

You are mighty cute — and here is one of your bargains.

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Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,

Like lightning it le’pt forth half startled at itself,

Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats

of kings.

O hope and faith!

O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!

O many a sicken’d heart!

Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.

And you, paid to defile the People — you liars, mark!

Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,

For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his

simplicity the poor man’s wages,

For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh’d at in

the breaking,

Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge,

or the heads of the nobles fall;

The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings.

But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction, and the

frighten’d monarchs come back,

Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,

Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.

Yet behind all lowering stealing, lo, a shape,

Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in

scarlet folds,

Whose face and eyes none may see,

Out of its robes only this, the red robes lifted by the arm,

One finger crook’d pointed high over the top, like the head of a

snake appears.

Meanwhile corpses lie in new-made graves, bloody corpses of young men,

The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are

flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,

And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.

Those corpses of young men,

Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc’d by

the gray lead,

Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality.

They live in other young men O kings!

They live in brothers again ready to defy you,

They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.