Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  And if each and all be aware I sit content.

  One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,

  And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten

  million years,

  I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

  My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,

  I laugh at what you call dissolution,

  And I know the amplitude of time.

  I am the poet of the body,

  And I am the poet of the soul.

  The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are

  with me,

  The first I graft and increase upon myself.... the latter I

  translate into a new tongue.

  I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,

  And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,

  And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

  I chant a new chant of dilation or pride,

  We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,

  I show that size is only development.

  Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President?

  It is a trifle.... they will more than arrive there every one, and

  still pass on.

  I am he that walks with the tender and growing night;

  I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

  Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing

  night!

  Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars!

  Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night!

  Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth!

  Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!

  Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt!

  Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!

  Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!

  Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my

  sake!

  Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth!

  Smile, for your lover comes!

  Prodigal! you have given me love! .... therefore I to you give

  love!

  O unspeakable passionate love!

  Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!

  We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each

  other.

  You sea! I resign myself to you also.... I guess what you mean,

  I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,

  I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;

  We must have a turn together.... I undress.... hurry me out of

  sight of the land,

  Cushion me soft .... rock me in billowy drowse,

  Dash me with amorous wet.... I can repay you.

  Sea of stretched ground-swells!

  Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!

  Sea of the brine of life! Sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!

  Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!

  I am integral with you.... I too am of one phase and of all phases.

  Partaker of influx and efflux . . . . extoller of hate and conciliation,

  Extoller of amiesh and those that sleep in each others’ arms.

  I am he attesting sympathy;

  Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house

  that supports them?

  I am the poet of commonsense and of the demonstrable and of

  immortality;

  And am not the poet of goodness only.... I do not decline to be

  the poet of wickedness also.

  Washes and razors for foofoos .... for me freckles and a bristling beard.

  What blurt is it about virtue and about vice?

  Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me .... I stand

  indifferent,

  My gait is no faultfinder’s or rejecter’s gait,

  I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

  Did you fear some scrofulai out of the unflagging pregnancy?

  Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and

  rectified?

  I step up to say that what we do is right and what we affirm is

  right.... and some is only the ore of right,

  Witnesses of us .... one side a balance and the antipodal side a

  balance,

  Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,

  Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

  This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

  There is no better than it and now.

  What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a

  wonder,

  The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man

  or an infidel.

  Endless unfolding of words of ages!

  And mine a word of the modern.... a word en masse.

  A word of the faith that never balks,

  One time as good as another time.... here or henceforward it is

  all the same to me.

  A word of reality.... materialism first and last imbuing.

  Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!

  Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;j

  This is the lexicographer or chemist.... this made a grammar of

  the old cartouches,k

  These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown

  seas,

  This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a

  mathematician.

  Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands

  with you,

  The facts are useful and real.... they are not my dwelling.... I

  enter by them to an area of the dwelling.

  I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the

  reminder of life,

  And go on the square for my own sake and for other’s

  sake,

  And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men

  and women fully equipped,

  And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that

  plot and conspire.

  Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,16

  Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and

  breeding,

  No sentimentalist.... no stander above men and women or

  apart from them.... no more modest than immodest.

  Unscrew the locks from the doors!

  Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!17

  Whoever degrades another degrades me .... and whatever is

  done or said returns at last to me,

  And whatever I do or say I also return.

  Through me the afflatusl surging and surging.... through me the current and index.

  I speak the password primeval.... I give the sign of democracy;

  By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their

  counterpart of on the same terms.

  Through me many long dumb voices,

  Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,

  Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,

  Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,

  Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,

  And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of

  the fatherstuff,

  And of the rights of them the others are down upon,

  Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,

  Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.

  Through me forbidden voices,

  Voices of sexes and lusts.... voices veiled, and I remove the veil,

  Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.

&nb
sp; I do not press my finger across my mouth,

  I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and

  heart,

  Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

  I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

  Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of

  me is a miracle.

  Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or

  am touched from;

  The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,

  This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.

  If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of

  my body;

  Translucent mould of me it shall be you,

  Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter,m it shall be you,

  Whatever goes to the tilthn of me it shall be you,

  You my rich blood, your milky stream pale strippings of my life;

  Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you,

  My brain it shall be your occult convolutions,

  Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded

  duplicate eggs, it shall be you,

  Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and brawn it shall be you,

  Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you;

  Sun so generous it shall be you,

  Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you,

  You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,

  Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,

  Broad muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my

  winding paths, it shall be you,

  Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever

  touched, it shall be you.

  I dote on myself.... there is that lot of me, and all so luscious,

  Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.

  I cannot tell how my ankles bend.... nor whence the cause of

  my faintest wish,

  Nor the cause of the friendship I emit.... nor the cause of the

  friendship I take again.

  To walk up my stoop is unaccountable.... I pause to consider if

  it really be,

  That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great authors and

  schools,

  A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

  To behold the daybreak!

  The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,

  The air tastes good to my palate.

  Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently rising,

  freshly exuding,

  Scooting obliquely high and low.

  Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,

  Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

  The earth by the sky staid with.... the daily close of their junction,

  The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head,

  The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

  Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me,

  If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.

  We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,

  We found our own my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.

  My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,

  With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of

  worlds.

  Speech is the twin of my vision.... it is unequal to measure itself.

  It provokes me forever,

  It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough.... why don’t

  you let it out then?

  Come now I will not be tantalized.... you conceive too much of articulation.

  Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?

  Waiting in gloom protected by frost,

  The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,

  I underlying causes to balance them at last,

  My knowledge my live parts.... it keeping tally with the

  meaning of things,

  Happiness.... which whoever hears me let him or her set out in

  search of this day.

  My final merit I refuse you.... I refuse putting from me the best I am.

  Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me,

  I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.

  Writing and talk do not prove me,

  I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,

  With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.

  I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,

  And accrue what I hear into myself.... and let sounds contribute

  toward me.

  I hear the bravuras18 of birds.... the bustle of growing wheat . . . . gossip of flames.... clack of sticks cooking my meals.

  I hear the sound of the human voice.... a sound I love,

  I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses.... sounds of the

  city and sounds out of the city.... sounds of the day and

  night;

  Talkative young ones to those that like them.... the recitative of

  fish-pedlars and fruit-pedlars.... the loud laugh of

  workpeople at their meals,

  The angry base of disjointed friendship.... the faint tones of the

  sick,

  The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips

  pronouncing a death-sentence,

  The heave‘e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves....

  the refrain of the anchor-lifters;

  The ring of alarm-bells.... the cry of fire.... the whirr of swift-

  streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles

  and colored lights,

  The steam-whistle.... the solid roll of the train of approaching

  cars;

  The slow-march played at night at the head of the association,

  They go to guard some corpse.... the flag-tops are draped with

  black muslin.

  I hear the violincello or man’s heart complaint,

  And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset.

  I hear the chorus.... it is a grand-opera.... this indeed is music!

  A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,

  The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

  I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax

  of my love-grip;

  The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,

  It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast,

  It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,

  It sails me .... I dab with bare feet.... they are licked by the

  indolent waves,

  I am exposed.... cut by bitter and poisoned hail,

  Steeped amid honeyed morphine.... my windpipe squeezed in

  the fakes of death,

  Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,

  And that we call Being.

  To be in any form, what is that?

  If nothing lay more developed the quahaugo and its callous shell

  were enough.

  Mine is no callous shell,

  I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,

  They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.19

  I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,

  To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can

  stand.

  Is this then a touch? .... quivering me to a new identity,

  Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,

  Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,

  My flesh and blood playing out lightning, to strike what is hardly

  different from myself,

  On all side
s prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,

  Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,

  Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,

  Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,

  Unbuttoning my clothes and holding me by the bare waist,

  Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture

  fields,

  Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,

  They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges

  of me,

  No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my

  anger,

  Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile,

  Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

  The sentries desert every other part of me,

  They have left me helpless to a red marauder,

  They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

  I am given up by traitors;

  I talk wildly.... I have lost my wits.... I and nobody else am

  the greatest traitor,

  I went myself first to the headland.... my own hands carried me

  there.

  You villain touch! what are you doing? .... my breath is tight in

  its throat;

  Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

  Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed

  touch!

  Did it make you ache so leaving me?

  Parting tracked by arriving.... perpetual payment of the

  perpetual loan,

  Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

  Sprouts take and accumulate.... stand by the curb prolific and

  vital,

  Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.

  All truths wait in all things,

  They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,