Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions
Page 40
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and
in many a bay and by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatack-
roots for knees,av
The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the
workmen busy outside and inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,
bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.
-10-
The shapes arise!
The shape measur‘d, saw’d, jack‘d, join’d, stain‘d,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of
the bride’s bed,
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,
the shape of the babe’s cradle,
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers’ feet,
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the
friendly parents and children,
The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and
woman, the roof over the well-married young man and
woman,
The roof over the supper joyously cook’d by the chaste wife, and
joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day’s
work.
The shapes arise!
The shape of the prisoner’s place in the court-room, and of him
or her seated in the place,
The shape of the liquor-bar lean’d against by the young rum
drinker and the old rum-drinker,
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking foot-
steps,
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome
couple,
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and
losings,
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced
murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion’d arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp’d
crowd, the dangling of the rope.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,
The door passing the dissever’d friend flush’d and in haste,
The door that admits good news and bad news,
The door whence the son left home confident and puff’d up,
The door he enter’d again from a long and scandalous absence,
diseas‘d, broken down, without innocence, without means.
—11—
Her shape arises,
She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and
soil‘d,
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal’d from her,
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,
She is the best belov’d, it is without exception, she has no reason
to fear and she does not fear,
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp’d songs, smutty expressions, are idle to
her as she passes,
She is silent, she is possess’d of herself, they do not offend her,
She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is strong,
She too is a law of Nature—there is no law stronger than she is.
-12-
The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,
Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
Shapes of turbulent manly cities,
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.
SONG OF THE EXPOSITION
—1—
(Ah little recks the laborer,
How near his work is holding him to God,
The loving Laborer through space and time.)
After all not to create only, or found only,
But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,
To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,
Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,
To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,
These also are the lessons of our New World;
While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old
World!
Long and long has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling,
Long has the globe been rolling round.
-2-
Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and Æneas‘, Odysseus’
wanderings,
Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy
Parnassus,
Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa’s gate and on
Mount Moriah,
The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish
castles and Italian collections,
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.
—3—
Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,
Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation,
She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,
I scent the odor of her breath’s delicious fragrance,
I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
Upon this very scene.
The dame of dames! can I believe then
Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them
retain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories,
poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
But that she’s left them all—and here?
Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
The same undying soul of earth‘s, activity’s, beauty‘s, heroism’s
expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her
former themes,
Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s, foundation of to-day’s
Ended, deceas’d through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain,
Silent the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
baffling tombs,
Ended for aye the epics of Asia‘s, Europe’s helmeted warriors,
ended the primitive call of the muses
Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,
Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest
of the holy Graal,
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the
sunrise,
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the turrets that Usk from its
waters reflected,
Arthur vanish’d with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and
Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly like an exhalation;
Pass’d! pass‘d! for us, forever pass’d, that once so mighty world,
now void, inanimate, phantom world,
Embroider‘d, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous
legends, myths,
Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
courtly dames,
Pass’d to its chamel vault, co
ffin’d with crown and armor on,
Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page,
And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme.38
I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigré,
(having it is true in her day, although the same, changed,
journey’d considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for
herself, striding through the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay‘d,
Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay,
She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware!
-4-
But hold—don’t I forget my manners?
To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant
for?) to thee Columbia;
In liberty’s name welcome immortal! clasp hands,
And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.
Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,
And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same,
The same old love, beauty and use the same.
—5—
We do not blame thee elder World, nor really separate ourselves
from thee,
(Would the son separate himself from the father?)
Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs,
through past ages bending, building,
We build to ours to-day.
Mightier than Egypt’s tombs,
Fairer than Grecia‘s, Roma’s temples,
Prouder than Milan’s statued, spired cathedral,
More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps,
We plan even now to raise, beyond them all,
Thy great cathedral sacred industry, no tomb,
A keep for life for practical invention.
As in a waking vision,
E‘en while I chant I see it rise, I scan and prophesy outside and in,
Its manifold ensemble.
Around a palace,aw loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
Earth’s modern wonder, history’s seven outstripping,
High rising tier on tier with glass and iron façades,
Gladdening the sun and sky, enhued in cheerfulest hues,
Bronze, lilac, robin‘s-egg, marine and crimson,
Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner
Freedom,
The banners of the States and flags of every land,
A brood of lofty, fair, but lesser palaces shall cluster.
Somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect
human life be started,
Tried, taught, advanced, visibly exhibited.
Not only all the world of works, trade, products,
But all the workmen of the world here to be represented.
Here shall you trace in flowing operation,
In every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilization,
Materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by
magic,
The cotton shall be pick’d almost in the very field,
Shall be dried, clean‘d, ginn’d, baled, spun into thread and cloth
before you,
You shall see hands at work at all the old processes and all the
new ones,
You shall see the various grains and how flour is made and then
bread baked by the bakers,
You shall see the crude ores of California and Nevada passing on
and on till they become bullion,
You shall watch how the printer sets type, and learn what a
composing-stick is,
You shall mark in amazement the Hoe press whirling its
cylinders, shedding the printed leaves steady and fast,
The photograph, model, watch, pin, nail, shall be created
before you.
In large calm halls, a stately museum shall teach you the infinite
lessons of minerals,
In another, woods, plants, vegetation shall be illustrated—in
another animals, animal life and development.
One stately house shall be the music house,
Others for other arts—learning, the sciences, shall all be here,
None shall be slighted, none but shall here be honor‘d, help’d,
exampled.
-6-
(This, this and these, America, shall be your pyramids and obelisks,
Your Alexandrian Pharos, gardens of Babylon,
Your temple at Olympia.)
The male and female many laboring not,
Shall ever here confront the laboring many,
With precious benefits to both, glory to all,
To thee America, and thee eternal Muse.
And here shall ye inhabit powerful Matrons!
In your vast state vaster than all the old,
Echoed through long, long centuries to come,
To sound of different, prouder songs, with stronger themes,
Practical, peaceful life, the people’s life, the People themselves,
Lifted, illumin‘d, bathed in peace—elate, secure in peace.
—7—
Away with themes of war! away with war itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show
of blacken‘d, mutilated corpses!
That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-
tongued wolves, not reasoning men,
And in its stead speed industry’s campaigns,
With thy undaunted armies, engineering,
Thy pennants labor, loosen’d to the breeze,
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear.
Away with old romance!39
Away with novels, plots and plays of foreign courts,
Away with love-verses sugar’d in rhyme, the intrigues, amours of
idlers,
Fitted for only banquets of the night where dancers to late music
slide,
The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,
With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers.
To you ye reverent sane sisters,ax
I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art,
To exalt the present and the real,
To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and
trade,
To sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be
baffled,
To manual work for each and all, to plough, hoe, dig,
To plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers,
For every man to see to it that he really do something, for every
woman too;
To use the hammer and the saw, (rip, or cross-cut,)
To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,
To invent a little, something ingenious, to aid the washing,
cooking, cleaning,
And hold it no disgrace to take a hand at them themselves.
I say I bring thee Muse to-day and here,
All occupations, duties broad and close,
Toil, healthy toil and sweat, endless, without cessation,
The old, old practical burdens, interests, joys,
The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,
The house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings,
Food and its preservation, chemistry applied to it,
Whatever forms the average, strong, complete, sweet-blooded
man or woman, the perfect longeve personality,
&nbs
p; And helps its present life to health and happiness, and shapes its
soul,
For the eternal real life to come.
With latest connections, works, the inter-transportation of the
world,
Steam-power, the great express lines, gas, petroleum,
These triumphs of our time, the Atlantic’s delicate cable,
The Pacific railroad, the Suez canal, the Mont Cenis and
Gothard and Hoosac tunnels, the Brooklyn bridge,40
This earth all spann’d with iron rails, with lines of steamships
threading every sea,
Our own rondure, the current globe I bring.
—8—
And thou America,
Thy offspring towering e‘er so high, yet higher, Thee above all
towering,
With Victory on thy left, and at thy right hand Law;
Thou Union holding all, fusing, absorbing, tolerating all,
Thee, ever thee, I sing.
Thou, also thou, a World,
With all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant,
Rounded by thee in one—one common orbic language,
One common indivisible destiny for All.
And by the spells which ye vouchsafe to those your ministers in
earnest,
I here personify and call my themes, to make them pass
before ye.
Behold, America! (and thou, ineffable guest and sister!)
For thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands;
Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains,
As in procession coming.
Behold, the sea itself,
And on its limitless, heaving breast, the ships;
See, where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the
green and blue,
See, the steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of
port,
See, dusky and undulating, the long pennants of smoke.
Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west,
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen,
Wielding all day their axes.
Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels, thy oarsmen,
How the ash writhes under those muscular arms!
There by the furnace, and there by the anvil,
Behold thy sturdy blacksmiths swinging their sledges,