Leaves of Grass

by WHITMAN, WALT

• ISBN13: 9780553211160
• ISBN10: 0553211161
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1983-06-01
• Publisher: Bantam Classics

Summary

This revised Norton Critical Edition contains the most complete and authoritative collection of Whitman's work available in a paperback student edition. The text of Leaves of Grass is again that of the indispensable "Reader's Comprehensive Edition," edited by Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, which is accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. New to this edition is the full text of the celebrated 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass, as well as generous excerpts from Whitman's two prose masterpieces, Democratic Vistas and Specimen Days.

Author Biography

Before the age of thirty-six there was no sign that Walt Whitman would become even a minor literary figure, let alone the major poetic voice of an emerging America. Born in 1819 on Long Island, he was the second son of a carpenter and contractor. His formal schooling ended at age eleven, when he was apprenticed to a printer in Brooklyn. He became a journeyman printer in 1835 and spent the next two decades as a printer, free-lance writer, and editor in New York. In 1855, at his own expense, he published the twelve long poems, without titles, that make up the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The book, with its unprecedented mixture of the mystical and the earthy, was received with puzzlement or silence, except by America's most distinguished writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whitman lost no time in preparing a second edition, adding "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and nineteen other new poems in 1856. With the third edition (1860), the book had tripled in size. Whitman would go on adding to it and revising it for the rest of his life. Whitman's poetry slowly achieved a wide readership in America and in England. He was praised by Swinburne and Tennyson, and visited by Oscar Wilde. He suffered a stroke in 1873 and spent the remainder of his life in Camden, New Jersey. His final edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in 1892, the year of his death.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xvii
Justin Kaplan
INSCRIPTIONS
One's-Self I Sing	1	(1)
As I Ponder'd in Silence	1	(1)
In Cabin'd Ships at Sea	2	(1)
To Foreign Lands	3	(1)
To a Historian	3	(1)
To Thee Old Cause	3	(1)
Eidolons	4	(2)
For Him I Sing	6	(1)
When I Read the Book	6	(1)
Beginning My Studies	7	(1)
Beginners	7	(1)
To The States	7	(1)
On Journeys through the States	7	(1)
To a Certain Cantatrice	8	(1)
Me Imperturbe	8	(1)
Savantism	8	(1)
The Ship Starting	9	(1)
I Hear America Singing	9	(1)
What Place Is Besieged?	9	(1)
Still Though the One I Sing	10	(1)
Shut Not Your Doors	10	(1)
Poets to Come	10	(1)
To You	10	(1)
Thou Reader	11	(63)
Starting from Paumanok	11	(11)
Song of Myself	22	(52)
CHILDREN OF ADAM
To the Garden the World	74	(1)
From Pent-up Aching Rivers	74	(2)
I Sing the Body Electric	76	(7)
A Woman Waits for Me	83	(2)
Spontaneous Me	85	(2)
One Hour to Madness and Joy	87	(1)
Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd	87	(1)
Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals	88	(1)
We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd	88	(1)
O Hymen! O Hymenee!	89	(1)
I Am He that Aches with Love	89	(1)
Native Moments	89	(1)
Once I Pass'd through a Populous City	90	(1)
I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ	90	(1)
Facing West from California's Shores	90	(1)
As Adam Early in the Morning	91	(1)
CALAMUS
In Paths Untrodden	92	(1)
Scented Herbage of My Breast	92	(2)
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand	94	(1)
For You O Democracy	95	(1)
These I Singing in Spring	96	(1)
Not Heaving from My Ribb'd Breast Only	97	(1)
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances	97	(1)
The Base of All Metaphysics	98	(1)
Recorders Ages Hence	99	(1)
When I Heard at the Close of the Day	99	(1)
Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?	100	(1)
Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone	100	(1)
Not Heat Flames up and Consumes	101	(1)
Trickle Drops	101	(1)
City of Orgies	102	(1)
Behold This Swarthy Face	102	(1)
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing	102	(1)
To a Stranger	103	(1)
This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful	103	(1)
I Hear It Was Charged against Me	104	(1)
The Prairie-Grass Dividing	104	(1)
When I Peruse the Conquer'd Fame	105	(1)
We Two Boys Together Clinging	105	(1)
A Promise to California	105	(1)
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me	106	(1)
No Labor-Saving Machine	106	(1)
A Glimpse	106	(1)
A Leaf for Hand in Hand	106	(1)
Earth, My Likeness	107	(1)
I Dream'd in a Dream	107	(1)
What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?	107	(1)
To the East and to the West	107	(1)
Sometimes with One I Love	108	(1)
To a Western Boy	108	(1)
Fast-Anchor'd Eternal O Love!	108	(1)
Among the Multitude	108	(1)
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come	109	(1)
That Shadow My Likeness	109	(1)
Full of Life Now	109	(74)
Salut au Monde!	109	(10)
Song of the Open Road	119	(9)
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry	128	(5)
Song of the Answerer	133	(4)
Our Old Feuillage	137	(5)
A Song of Joys	142	(6)
Song of the Broad-Axe	148	(10)
Song of the Exposition	158	(9)
Song of the Redwood-Tree	167	(3)
A Song for Occupations	170	(7)
A Song of the Rolling Earth	177	(5)
Youth, Day, Old Age and Night	182	(1)
BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Song of the Universal	183	(2)
Pioneers! O Pioneers!	185	(3)
To You	188	(2)
France, The 18th Year of these States	190	(1)
Myself and Mine	191	(2)
Year of Meteors (1859-60)	193	(1)
With Antecedents	194	(6)
A Broadway Pageant	196	(4)
SEA-DRIFT
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking	200	(5)
As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life	205	(3)
Tears	208	(1)
To the Man-of-War-Bird	208	(1)
Aboard at a Ship's Helm	209	(1)
On the Beach at Night	209	(1)
The World below the Brine	210	(1)
On the Beach at Night Alone	211	(1)
Song for All Seas, All Ships	211	(1)
Patroling Barnegat	212	(1)
After the Sea-Ship	213	(1)
BY THE ROADSIDE
A Boston Ballad---1854	214	(2)
Europe, The 72d and 73d Years of These States	216	(1)
A Hand-Mirror	217	(1)
Gods	217	(1)
Germs	218	(1)
Thoughts	218	(1)
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer	219	(1)
Perfections	219	(1)
O Me! O Life!	219	(1)
To a President	220	(1)
I Sit and Look Out	220	(1)
To Rich Givers	220	(1)
The Dalliance of the Eagles	221	(1)
Roaming in Thought	221	(1)
A Farm Picture	221	(1)
A Child's Amaze	221	(1)
The Runner	222	(1)
Beautiful Women	222	(1)
Mother and Babe	222	(1)
Thought	222	(1)
Visor'd	222	(1)
Thought	222	(1)
Gliding o'er All	223	(1)
Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour	223	(1)
Thought	223	(1)
To Old Age	223	(1)
Locations and Times	223	(1)
Offerings	223	(1)
To the States, To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad	224	(1)
DRUM-TAPS
First O Songs for a Prelude	225	(2)
Eighteen Sixty-One	227	(1)
Beat! Beat! Drums!	228	(1)
From Paumanok Starting I Fly like a Bird	228	(1)
Song of the Banner at Daybreak	229	(6)
Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps	235	(2)
Virginia---The West	237	(1)
City of Ships	237	(1)
The Centenarian's Story	238	(4)
Cavalry Crossing a Ford	242	(1)
Bivouac On a Mountain Side	242	(1)
An Army Corps on the March	242	(1)
By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame	243	(1)
Come Up from the Fields Father	243	(2)
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night	245	(1)
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown	246	(1)
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim	247	(1)
As Toilsome I wander'd Virginia's Woods	247	(1)
Not the Pilot	248	(1)
Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me	248	(1)
The Wound-Dresser	248	(3)
Long, Too Long America	251	(1)
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun	251	(2)
Dirge for Two Veterans	253	(1)
Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice	254	(1)
I Saw Old General at Bay	255	(1)
The Artilleryman's Vision	255	(1)
Ethiopia Saluting the Colors	256	(1)
Not Youth Pertains to Me	257	(1)
Race of Veterans	257	(1)
World Take Good Notice	257	(1)
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy	258	(1)
Look Down Fair Moon	258	(1)
Reconciliation	258	(1)
How Solemn as One by One	258	(1)
As I Lay with My head in Your Lap Camerado	259	(1)
Delicate Cluster	259	(1)
To a Certain Civilian	260	(1)
Lo, Victress on the Peaks	260	(1)
Spirit Whose Work Is Done	260	(1)
Adieu to a Soldier	261	(1)
Turn O Libertad	262	(1)
To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod	262	(2)
MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd	264	(7)
O Captain! My Captain!	271	(1)
Hush'd Be the Camps To-day	272	(1)
This Dust Was Once the Man	272	(15)
By Blue Ontario's Shore	273	(13)
Reversals	286	(1)
AUTUMN RIVULETS
As Consequent, Etc	287	(1)
The Return of the Heroes	288	(4)
There Was a Child Went Forth	292	(2)
Old Ireland	294	(1)
The City Dead-House	295	(1)
This Compost	296	(1)
To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire	297	(2)
Unnamed Lands	299	(1)
Song of Prudence	300	(3)
The Singer in the Prison	303	(1)
Warble for Lilac-Time	304	(1)
Outlines for a Tomb	305	(2)
Out from Behind This Mask	307	(1)
Vocalism	308	(1)
To Him That Was Crucified	309	(1)
You Felons on Trial in Courts	310	(1)
Laws for Creations	310	(1)
To a Common Prostitute	311	(1)
I Was Looking a Long While	311	(1)
Thought	312	(1)
Miracles	312	(1)
Sparkles from the Wheel	313	(1)
To a Pupil	314	(1)
Unfolded Out of the Folds	314	(1)
What Am I After All	315	(1)
Kosmos	315	(1)
Others May Praise What They Like	316	(1)
Who Learns My Lesson Complete?	316	(1)
Tests	317	(1)
The Torch	317	(1)
O Star of France (1870-71)	318	(1)
The Ox-Tamer	319	(1)
An Old Man's Thought of School	320	(1)
Wandering at Morn	321	(1)
Italian Music in Dakota	321	(1)
With All Thy Gifts	322	(1)
My Picture-Gallery	322	(1)
The Prairie States	322	(1)
Proud Music of the Storm	323	(29)
Passage to India	328	(8)
Prayer of Columbus	336	(2)
The Sleepers	338	(8)
Transpositions	346	(1)
To Think of Time	346	(6)
WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
Darest Thou Now O Soul	352	(1)
Whispers of Heavenly Death	352	(1)
Chanting the Square Deific	353	(2)
Of Him I Love Day and Night	355	(1)
Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours	355	(1)
As If a Phantom Caress'd Me	356	(1)
Assurances	356	(1)
Quicksand Years	357	(1)
That Music Always Round Me	357	(1)
What Ship Puzzled at Sea	358	(1)
A Noiseless Patient Spider	358	(1)
O Living Always, Always Dying	358	(1)
To One Shortly to Die	359	(1)
Night on the Prairies	359	(1)
Thought	360	(1)
The Last Invocation	361	(1)
As I Watch'd the Ploughman Ploughing	361	(1)
Pensive and Faltering	361	(7)
Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood	361	(6)
A Paumanok Picture	367	(1)
FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT
Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling	368	(1)
Faces	369	(3)
The Mystic Trumpeter	372	(3)
To a Locomotive in Winter	375	(1)
O Magnet-South	376	(1)
Mannahatta	377	(1)
All Is Truth	378	(1)
A Riddle Song	379	(1)
Excelsior	380	(1)
Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats	380	(1)
Thoughts	381	(1)
Mediums	381	(1)
Weave In, My Hardy Life	382	(1)
Spain, 1873-74	382	(1)
By Broad Potomac's Shore	383	(1)
From Far Dakota's Canons	383	(1)
Old War-Dreams	384	(1)
Thick-Sprinkled Bunting	385	(1)
What Best I See in Thee	385	(1)
Spirit That Form'd This Scene	386	(1)
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days	386	(1)
A Clear Midnight	387	(1)
SONGS OF PARTING
As the Time Draws Nigh	388	(1)
Years of the Modern	388	(1)
Ashes of Soldiers	389	(2)
Thoughts	391	(1)
Song at Sunset	392	(3)
As at Thy Portals Also Death	395	(1)
My Legacy	395	(1)
Pensive on Her Dead Gazing	395	(1)
Camps of Green	396	(1)
The Sobbing of the Bells	397	(1)
As They Draw to a Close	397	(1)
Joy, Shipmate, Joy!	398	(1)
The Untold Want	398	(1)
Portals	398	(1)
These Carols	398	(1)
Now Finale to the Shore	399	(1)
So Long!	399	(3)
FIRST ANNEX: SANDS AT SEVENTY
Mannahatta	402	(1)
Paumanok	402	(1)
From Montauk Point	402	(1)
To Those Who've Fail'd	402	(1)
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine	403	(1)
The Bravest Soldiers	403	(1)
A Font of Type	403	(1)
As I Sit Writing Here	403	(1)
My Canary Bird	404	(1)
Queries to My Seventieth Year	404	(1)
The Wallabout Martyrs	404	(1)
The First Dandelion	404	(1)
America	405	(1)
Memories	405	(1)
To-day and Thee	405	(1)
After the Dazzle of Day	405	(1)
Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809	405	(1)
Out of May's Shows Selected	406	(1)
Halcyon Days	406	(1)
Fancies at Navesink	406	(3)
(The Pilot in the Mist---Had I the Choice---You Tides with Ceaseless Swell---Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning---And Yet Not You Alone---Proudly the Flood Comes In---By That Long Scan of Waves---Then Last of All)
Election Day, November, 1884	409	(1)
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!	409	(1)
Death of General Grant	410	(1)
Red Jacket (from Aloft)	411	(1)
Washington's Monument, February, 1885	411	(1)
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine	412	(1)
Broadway	412	(1)
To Get the Final Lilt of Songs	412	(1)
Old Salt Kossabone	413	(1)
The Dead Tenor	413	(1)
Continuities	414	(1)
Yonnondio	414	(1)
Life	415	(1)
``Going Somewhere''	415	(1)
Small the Theme of My Chant	415	(1)
True Conquerors	416	(1)
The United States to Old World Critics	416	(1)
The Calming Thought of All	416	(1)
Thanks in Old Age	417	(1)
Life and Death	417	(1)
The Voice of the Rain	417	(1)
Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here	418	(1)
While Not the Past Forgetting	418	(1)
The Dying Veteran	419	(1)
Stronger Lessons	419	(1)
A Prairie Sunset	419	(1)
Twenty Years	420	(1)
Orange Buds by Mail from Florida	420	(1)
Twilight	421	(1)
You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me	421	(1)
Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone	421	(1)
The Dead Emperor	421	(1)
As the Greek's Signal Flame	422	(1)
The Dismantled Ship	422	(1)
Now Precedent Songs, Farewell	422	(1)
An Evening Lull	423	(1)
Old Age's Lambent Peaks	423	(1)
After the Supper and Talk	423	(2)
SECOND ANNEX: GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
Preface Note to 2d Annex	425	(1)
Sail Out for Good, Eidolon Yacht!	426	(1)
Lingering Last Drops	427	(1)
Good-Bye my Fancy	427	(1)
On, On the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!	427	(1)
My 71st Year	428	(1)
Apparitions	428	(1)
The Pallid Wreath	428	(1)
An Ended Day	429	(1)
Old Age's Ship & Crafty Death's	429	(1)
To the Pending Year	429	(1)
Shakspere-Bacon's Cipher	430	(1)
Long, Long Hence	430	(1)
Bravo, Paris Exposition!	431	(1)
Interpolation Sounds	431	(1)
To the Sun-set Breeze	432	(1)
Old Chants	432	(1)
A Christmas Greeting	433	(1)
Sounds of the Winter	434	(1)
A Twilight Song	434	(1)
When The Full-Grown Poet Came	435	(1)
Osceola	435	(1)
A Voice from Death	436	(1)
A Persian Lesson	437	(1)
The Commonplace	438	(1)
``The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete''	438	(1)
Mirages	438	(1)
L. of G.'s Purport	439	(1)
The Unexpress'd	440	(1)
Grand Is the Seen	440	(1)
Unseen Buds	440	(1)
Good-Bye my Fancy!	441	(16)
A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads	442	(15)
Glossary	457	(2)
Bibliography	459	(2)
Index of Titles and First Lines	461

Excerpts

INSCRIPTIONS



One's-Self I Sing

One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.



Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.



Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.



As I Ponder'd in Silence



As I ponder'd in silence,

Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,

A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,

Terrible in beauty, age, and power,

The genius of poets of old lands,

As to me directing like flame its eyes,

With finger pointing to many immortal songs,

And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?

And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,

The making of perfect soldiers.



Be it so, then I answer'd,

I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any,

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering,

(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world,

For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers.



In Cabin'd Ships at Sea



In cabin'd ships at sea,

The boundless blue on every side expanding,

With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,

Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,

Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,

She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night,

By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,

In full rapport at last.



Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts,

Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,

The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,

We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,

The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,

The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,

The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,

And this is ocean's poem.



Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,

You not a reminiscence of the land alone,

You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith,

Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!

Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it here in every leaf;)

Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves,

Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea,

This song for mariners and all their ships.



To Foreign Lands



I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World,

And to define America, her athletic Democracy,

Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.



To a Historian



You who celebrate bygones,

Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself,

Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests,

I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself in his own rights,

Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great pride of man in himself,)

Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,

I project the history of the future.



To Thee Old Cause



To thee old cause!

Thou peerless, passionate, good cause,

Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea,

Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands,

After a strange sad war, great war for thee,

(I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee,)

These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.



(A war O soldiers not for itself alone,

Far, far more stood silently waiting behind, now to advance in this book.)



Thou orb of many orbs!

Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre!

Around the idea of thee the war revolving,

With all its angry and vehement play of causes,

(With vast results to come for thrice a thousand years,)

These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one,

Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee,

As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself,

Around the idea of thee.



Eidolons



I met a seer,

Passing the hues and objects of the world,

The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,

To glean eidolons.



Put in thy chants said he,

No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,

Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,

That of eidolons.



Ever the dim beginning,

Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,

Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)

Eidolons! eidolons!



Ever the mutable,

Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,

Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,

Issuing eidolons.



Lo, I or you,

Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,

We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,

But really build eidolons.



The ostent evanescent,

The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,

Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,

To fashion his eidolon.



Of every human life,

(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)

The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,

In its eidolon.



The old, old urge,

Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,

From science and the modern still impell'd,

The old, old urge, eidolons.



The present now and here,

America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,

Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,

To-day's eidolons.



These with the past,

Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,

Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,

Joining eidolons.



Densities, growth, facades,

Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,

Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,

Eidolons everlasting.



Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,

The visible but their womb of birth,

Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,

The mighty earth-eidolon.



All space, all time,

(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,

Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)

Fill'd with eidolons only.



The noiseless myriads,

The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,

The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,

The true realities, eidolons.



Not this the world,

Nor these the universes, they the universes,

Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,

Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,

Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,

Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,

The entities of entities, eidolons.



Unfix'd yet fix'd,

Ever shall be, ever have been and are,

Sweeping the present to the infinite future,

Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.



The prophet and the bard,

Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,

Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,

God and eidolons.



And thee my soul,

Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,

Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,

Thy mates, eidolons.



Thy body permanent,

The body lurking there within thy body,

The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,

An image, an eidolon.



Thy very songs not in thy songs,

No special strains to sing, none for itself,

But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,

A round full-orb'd eidolon.



For Him I Sing



For him I sing,

I raise the present on the past,

(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)

With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,

To make himself by them the law unto himself.



When I Read the Book



When I read the book, the biography famous,

And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?

And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?

(As if any man really knew aught of my life,

Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,

Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections

I seek for my own use to trace out here.)



Beginning My Studies



Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,

The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,

The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,

I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,

But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.



Beginners



How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)

How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,

How they inure to themselves as much as to any--what a paradox appears their age,

How people respond to them, yet know them not,

How there is something relentless in their fate all times,

How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,

And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.



To The States



To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little,

Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,

Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty.



On Journeys through the States



On journeys through the States we start,

(Ay through the world, urged by these songs,

Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)

We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.



We have watch'd the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,

And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the seasons, and effuse as much?

We dwell a while in every city and town,

We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the Mississippi, and the Southern States,

We confer on equal terms with each of the States,

We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to

hear,

We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the body and the soul,

Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,

And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,

And may be just as much as the seasons.



To a Certain Cantatrice



Here, take this gift,

I was reserving it for some hero, speaker, or general,

One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and freedom of the race,

Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel;

But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any.



Me Imperturbe



Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,

Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,

Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,

Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought,

Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland,

A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.



Savantism



Thither as I look I see each result and glory retracing itself and nestling close, always obligated,

Thither hours, months, years--thither trades, compacts, establishments, even the most minute,

Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates;

Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant,

As a father to his father going takes his children along with him.



The Ship Starting



Lo, the unbounded sea,

On its breast a ship starting, spreading all sails, carrying even her moonsails,

The pennant is flying aloft as she speeds she speeds so stately--

below emulous waves press forward,

They surround the ship with shining curving motions and foam.



I Hear America Singing



I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.



What Place Is Besieged?



What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?

Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,

And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,

And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.



Still Though the One I Sing



Still though the one I sing,

(One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,

I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!)



Shut Not Your Doors



Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,

For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring,

Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,

A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,

But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.



Poets to Come



Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me.



I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,

Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you.



To You



Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?

---

Excerpted from Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856 by Walt Whitman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.