Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom but grows seed for freedom,

in its turn to bear seed,

Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,

But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.

Liberty, let others despair of you — I never despair of you.

Is the house shut? is the master away?

Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,

He will soon return, his messengers come anon.

Table of Contents

Hold it up sternly — see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?)

Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth,

No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step,

Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step,

A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,

Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,

Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,

Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,

Words babble, hearing and touch callous,

No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;

Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,

Such a result so soon — and from such a beginning!

Table of Contents

Lover divine and perfect Comrade,

Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,

Be thou my God.

Thou, thou, the Ideal Man,

Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,

Complete in body and dilate in spirit,

Be thou my God.

O Death, (for Life has served its turn,)

Opener and usher to the heavenly mansion,

Be thou my God.

Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,

(To break the stagnant tie — thee, thee to free, O soul,)

Be thou my God.

All great ideas, the races’ aspirations,

All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,

Be ye my Gods.

Or Time and Space,

Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous,

Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,

Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,

Be ye my Gods.

Table of Contents

Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts,

The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars,

The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped,

Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants,

whatever they may be,

Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects,

Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand

provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and

half enclose with my hand,

That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all.

Table of Contents

Of ownership — as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter

upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself;

Of vista — suppose some sight in arriere through the formative chaos,

presuming the growth, fulness, life, now attain’d on the journey,

(But I see the road continued, and the journey ever continued;)

Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has become

supplied — and of what will yet be supplied,

Because all I see and know I believe to have its main purport in

what will yet be supplied.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much

applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Table of Contents

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,

As souls only understand souls.

Table of Contents

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,

and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the

struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see

around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring — What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here — that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Table of Contents

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,

You have not learn’d of Nature — of the politics of Nature you have

not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality,

You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,

And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from

these States.

Table of Contents

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all

oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with

themselves, remorseful after deeds done,

I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,

neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer

of young women,

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be

hid, I see these sights on the earth,

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and

prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who

shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon

laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these — all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent.

Table of Contents

What you give me I cheerfully accept,

A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I

rendezvous with my poems,

A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as journey through the States, —

why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them?

For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman,

For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of

the universe.

Table of Contents

Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)

Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,

The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,

A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,

Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,

She hers, he his, pursuing.