Walt Whitman - The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,

He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women

as dreams or dots.

For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,

For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,

The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.

Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,

They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,

(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always

ready to fall for Liberty.)

11

For the great Idea,

That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.

Songs of stern defiance ever ready,

Songs of the rapid arming and the march,

The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,

Warlike flag of the great Idea.

(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!

I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,

I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight — O the

hard-contested fight!

The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles — the hurtled balls scream,

The battle-front forms amid the smoke — the volleys pour incessant

from the line,

Hark, the ringing word Charge! — now the tussle and the furious

maddening yells,

Now the corpses tumble curl’d upon the ground,

Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,

Angry cloth I saw there leaping.)

12

Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here in

the States?

The place is august, the terms obdurate.

Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind,

He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe himself,

He shall surely be question’d beforehand by me with many and stern questions.

Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?

Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?

Have you learn’d the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography,

pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and objects?

Have you consider’d the organic compact of the first day of the

first year of Independence, sign’d by the Commissioners, ratified

by the States, and read by Washington at the head of the army?

Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution?

Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them,

and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?

Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the

bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers, teach?

Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?

Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls,

fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the

whole People?

Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?

Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now to

life itself?

Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?

Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?

Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the

last-born? little and big? and for the errant?

What is this you bring my America?

Is it uniform with my country?

Is it not something that has been better told or done before?

Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?

Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness? — Is the good old cause in it?

Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,

literats, of enemies’ lands?

Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?

Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?

Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the Union in

that secession war?

Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?

Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my

strength, gait, face?

Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere

amanuenses?

Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face?

What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago,

Kanada, Arkansas?

Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians

standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese, Western

men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the

promptness of their love?

Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen,

each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist,

infidel, who has ever ask’d any thing of America?

What mocking and scornful negligence?

The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons,

By the roadside others disdainfully toss’d.

13

Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill’d from poems pass away,

The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,

Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of literature,

America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it

or conceal from it, it is impassive enough,

Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,

If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there

is no fear of mistake,

(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr’d till his country

absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb’d it.)

He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results

sweetest in the long run,

The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;

In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-opera,

shipcraft, any craft,

He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original

practical example.

Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the streets,

People’s lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers,

There will shortly be no more priests, I say their work is done,

Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here,

Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb,

Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power;

How dare you place any thing before a man?

14

Fall behind me States!

A man before all — myself, typical, before all.

Give me the pay I have served for,

Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,

I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,

I have given aims to every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid

and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,

Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence

toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,

Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young,

and with the mothers of families,

Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,

stars, rivers,

Dismiss’d whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,

Claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for

others on the same terms,

Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every State,

(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean’d to breathe his last,

This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish’d, rais’d, restored,

To life recalling many a prostrate form;)

I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,

Rejecting none, permitting all.

(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?

Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)

15