Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

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Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good

steadily hastening towards immortality,

And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself

and become lost and dead.

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Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,

A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,

And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.

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Silent and amazed even when a little boy,

I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his statements,

As contending against some being or influence.

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On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner,

He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,

He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,

With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais’d.

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Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,

The young are beautiful — but the old are more beautiful than the young.

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I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother,

The sleeping mother and babe — hush’d, I study them long and long.

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Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;

As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly

affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who

do not believe in men.

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A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,

Concealing her face, concealing her form,

Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,

Falling upon her even when she sleeps.

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Of justice — as If could be any thing but the same ample law,

expounded by natural judges and saviors,

As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.

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Gliding o’er all, through all,

Through Nature, Time, and Space,

As a ship on the waters advancing,

The voyage of the soul — not life alone,

Death, many deaths I’ll sing.

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Hast never come to thee an hour,

A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,

fashions, wealth?

These eager business aims — books, politics, art, amours,

To utter nothingness?

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Of Equality — as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and

rights as myself — as if it were not indispensable to my own

rights that others possess the same.

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I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as

it pours in the great sea.

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Locations and times — what is it in me that meets them all, whenever

and wherever, and makes me at home?

Forms, colors, densities, odors — what is it in me that corresponds

with them?

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A thousand perfect men and women appear,

Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and

youths, with offerings.

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Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?

What deepening twilight-scum floating atop of the waters,

Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?

What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,

your arctic freezings!)

Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that

the President?

Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for

reasons;

(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we

all duly awake,

South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

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First O songs for a prelude,

Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city,

How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,

How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,

(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!

O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)

How you sprang — how you threw off the costumes of peace with

indifferent hand,

How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were heard

in their stead,

How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of

soldiers,)

How Manhattan drum-taps led.

Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,

Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and

turbulent city,

Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,

With her million children around her, suddenly,

At dead of night, at news from the south,

Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement.

A shock electric, the night sustain’d it,

Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads.

From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways,

Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.

To the drum-taps prompt,

The young men falling in and arming,

The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the blacksmith’s

hammer, tost aside with precipitation,)

The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the court,

The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down, throwing

the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs,

The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all leaving;

Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,

The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear their

accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,

Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-barrels,

The white tents cluster in camps, the arm’d sentries around, the

sunrise cannon and again at sunset,

Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and embark

from the wharves,

(How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with

their guns on their shoulders!

How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces and

their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!)

The blood of the city up-arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere,

The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the

public buildings and stores,

The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his mother,

(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to detain him,)

The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding, clearing the way,

The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites,

The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along,

rumble lightly over the stones,

(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,

Soon unlimber’d to begin the red business;)

All the mutter of preparation, all the determin’d arming,