s: I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,


s: I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,


s: For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?


s: I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,


s: I advance from the people in their own spirit,


s: Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,


s: I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,


s: (It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the


s: I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,


s: None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,


s: None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain


s: Otherwise there is just no real and permanent grandeur;


s: (Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,


s: Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)


s: Your ambition or business whatever it may be?


s: It is well--against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,


s: But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion's sake,


s: Listen dear son--listen America, daughter or son,


s: For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising


s: Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,


s: Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,


s: Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me,


s: Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,


s: These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.


s: Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,


s: Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,


s: O such themes--equalities! O divine average!


s: Warblings under the sun, usher'd as now, or at noon, or setting,


s: Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,


s: I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and


s: As I have walk'd in Alabama my morning walk,


s: I have paus'd to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and


s: And while I paus'd it came to me that what he really sang for was


s: A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.


s: Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,


s: For those who belong here and those to come,


s: I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,


s: I will not make poems with reference to parts,


s: And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has


s: See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts,


s: All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;


s: How can the real body ever die and be buried?


s: Of your real body and any man's or woman's real body,


s: Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and


s: Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the


s: Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the


s: Indifferently before death and after death.


s: Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!


s: Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?


s: Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?


s: Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!


s: Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!


s: Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!


s: Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and


s: Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!


s: Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land!


s: Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones!


s: The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!


s: O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any


s: Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,


s: Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on


s: Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,


s: Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they


s: Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal,


s: Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.


s: With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.


s: (I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give


s: Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)


s: Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,


s: Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I


s: Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the


s: Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious,


s: A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching,


s: These, my voice announcing--I will sleep no more but arise,


s: You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,


s: fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.


s: See, steamers steaming through my poems,


s: See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing,


s: See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press--see, the electric


s: telegraph stretching across the continent,


s: See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reaching,


s: See, ploughmen ploughing farms--see, miners digging mines--see,


s: See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me


s: well-belov'd, close-held by day and night,


s: O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.


s: O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!


s: O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!


s: For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.


s: I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.


s: I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,


s: Nature without check with original energy.


s: I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,


s: The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the


s: It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,


s: The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and


s: dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,


s: A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,


s: The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising


s: Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?


s: I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the


s: But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.


s: There was never any more inception than there is now,


s: Nor any more youth or age than there is now,


s: And will never be any more perfection than there is now,


s: Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.


s: Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and


s: Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well


s: Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,


s: Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,


s: Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.


s: Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,


s: Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they


s: discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.


s: I am satisfied--I see, dance, laugh, sing;


s: And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,


s: The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,


s: These come to me days and nights and go from me again,


s: Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,


s: Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,


s: Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.


s: Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with


s: I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.


s: Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,


s: Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not


s: Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.


s: I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,


s: And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,


s: And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,


s: And that a kelson of the creation is love,


s: And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,


s: And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,


s: Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,


s: A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,


s: Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see


s: Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,


s: And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,


s: Growing among black folks as among white,


s: Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I


s: And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.


s: It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,


s: It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,


s: Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.


s: O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,


s: What do you think has become of the young and old men?


s: And what do you think has become of the women and children?


s: The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,


s: All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,


s: And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.


s: Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?


s: And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,


s: The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.


s: I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,


s: I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and


s: (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)


s: Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,


s: For me those that have been boys and that love women,


s: For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,


s: For me children and the begetters of children.


s: Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,


s: I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,


s: The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,


s: The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the


s: clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,


s: The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,


s: The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,


s: The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,


s: The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,


s: The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,


s: The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,


s: The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.


s: I am there, I help, I came stretch'd atop of the load,


s: I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,


s: I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,


s: And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.


s: Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,


s: Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,


s: In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,


s: Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd game,


s: The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,


s: The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,


s: I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,


s: Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,


s: Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;


s: Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.


s: She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,


s: She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.


s: Which of the young men does she like the best?


s: Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.


s: Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,


s: You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.


s: An unseen hand also pass'd over their bodies,


s: It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.


s: I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.


s: Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,


s: From the cinder-strew'd threshold I follow their movements,


s: They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.


s: His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over


s: In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as


s: It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.


s: My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and


s: They rise together, they slowly circle around.


s: And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,


s: And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,


s: The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,


s: Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,


s: The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,


s: Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.


s: The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,


s: The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings,


s: I see in them and myself the same old law.


s: The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,


s: They scorn the best I can do to relate them.


s: Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,


s: I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.


s: What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,


s: Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,


s: Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,


s: Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,


s: The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,


s: The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane


s: The deacons are ordain'd with cross'd hands at the altar,


s: The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,


s: What is removed drops horribly in a pail;


s: The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their


s: partners, the dancers bow to each other,


s: The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the


s: The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,


s: The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut


s: As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for


s: The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne


s: The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray,


s: The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock


s: The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open'd lips,


s: The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to


s: (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)


s: The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the


s: roof, the masons are calling for mortar,


s: In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;


s: Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in


s: those drain'd by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,


s: The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,


s: And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,


s: And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.


s: I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,


s: Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,


s: Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,


s: Stuff'd with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff


s: One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the


s: A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and


s: A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin


s: Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands


s: A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,


s: A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,


s: Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,


s: A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,


s: Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.


s: I resist any thing better than my own diversity,


s: Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,


s: And am not stuck up, and am in my place.


s: (The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,


s: With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,


s: I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for


s: Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?


s: I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.


s: And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!


s: And to those themselves who sank in the sea!


s: This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,


s: I will not have a single person slighted or left away,


s: The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,


s: The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;


s: There shall be no difference between them and the rest.


s: This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,


s: This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.


s: Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?


s: Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering


s: I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.


s: Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;


s: How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?


s: What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?


s: All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,


s: I do not snivel that snivel the world over,


s: That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.


s: I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.


s: Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?


s: I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.


s: To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,


s: All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.


s: I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,


s: I see that the elementary laws never apologize,


s: (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,


s: If no other in the world be aware I sit content,


s: And if each and all be aware I sit content.


s: My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,


s: I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,


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


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


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


s: We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,


s: Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?


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


s: I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,


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


s: Still nodding night--mad naked summer night.


s: Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!


s: Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt!


s: Prodigal, you have given me love--therefore I to you give love!


s: You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean,


s: I behold from the beach your crooked fingers,


s: I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,


s: Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.


s: Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,


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


s: What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?


s: I moisten the roots of all that has grown.


s: Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?


s: I find one side a balance and the antipedal side a balance,


s: Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,


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


s: This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,


s: And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.


s: It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,


s: That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.


s: I accept Reality and dare not question it,


s: Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!


s: Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,


s: These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas.


s: This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a


s: Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!


s: Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,


s: I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.


s: Less the reminders of properties told my words,


s: Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,


s: Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,


s: Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!


s: And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.


s: I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,


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


s: Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,


s: Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,


s: Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,


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


s: Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,


s: Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.


s: Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,


s: Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.


s: I do not press my fingers across my mouth,


s: I believe in the flesh and the appetites,


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


s: This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.


s: Translucent mould of me it shall be you!


s: Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!


s: Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!


s: You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!


s: Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!


s: My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!


s: Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded


s: Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!


s: Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!


s: Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!


s: You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!


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


s: Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,


s: That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,


s: The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,


s: Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising


s: Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,


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


s: Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,


s: If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.


s: We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,


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


s: My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,


s: Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,


s: Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?


s: Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of


s: Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?


s: The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,


s: I underlying causes to balance them at last,


s: I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.


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


s: With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.


s: I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,


s: I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,


s: The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the


s: I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)


s: It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.


s: A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,


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


s: I hear the train'd soprano (what work with hers is this?)


s: The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,


s: It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them,


s: (Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)


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


s: They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.


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


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


s: Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,


s: Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,


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


s: On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,


s: Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,


s: Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,


s: Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,


s: Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,


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


s: The sentries desert every other part of me,


s: They have left me helpless to a red marauder,


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


s: I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the


s: Parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,


s: They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,


s: They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,


s: The insignificant is as big to me as any,


s: The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.


s: (Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,


s: A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,


s: I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,


s: And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,


s: And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.


s: And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,


s: And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,


s: And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,


s: And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,


s: And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.


s: I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits,


s: And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,


s: And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,


s: But call any thing back again when I desire it.


s: In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,


s: In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,


s: In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,


s: In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador,


s: They do not sweat and whine about their condition,


s: They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,


s: They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,


s: Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of


s: Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.


s: So they show their relations to me and I accept them,


s: They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their


s: Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?


s: Myself moving forward then and now and forever,


s: Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,


s: Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,


s: Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,


s: Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,


s: His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,


s: I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,


s: Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?


s: Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.


s: Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,


s: What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass,


s: What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,


s: My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,


s: I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,


s: Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,


s: Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the


s: Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the


s: Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the


s: Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,


s: Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the


s: beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall;


s: Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and


s: Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the


s: Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous


s: Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat


s: hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,


s: Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,


s: Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,


s: At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license,


s: At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,


s: Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived


s: Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her


s: Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with


s: Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery,


s: Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,


s: Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at


s: Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,


s: Through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon, through the


s: Pleas'd with the homely woman as well as the handsome,


s: Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon,


s: flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,


s: Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,


s: Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,


s: Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the


s: Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,


s: Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,


s: I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,


s: And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green.


s: I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,


s: My course runs below the soundings of plummets.


s: I help myself to material and immaterial,


s: No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.


s: I anchor my ship for a little while only,


s: I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a


s: pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.


s: I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest,


s: We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,


s: The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my


s: Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin'd city,


s: I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,


s: I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,


s: I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.


s: I understand the large hearts of heroes,


s: The courage of present times and all times,


s: How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the


s: steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,


s: How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and


s: How he saved the drifting company at last,


s: How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the


s: How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the


s: The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence,


s: I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,


s: Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,


s: The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,


s: Agonies are one of my changes of garments,


s: I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the


s: My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.


s: I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken,


s: Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,


s: They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.


s: White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared


s: The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.


s: I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's bombardment,


s: Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.


s: The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim'd shots,


s: The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,


s: Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs,


s: Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves


s: He gasps through the clot Mind not me--mind--the entrenchments.


s: Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,


s: Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,


s: Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,


s: They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv'd writing and


s: seal, gave up their arms and march'd back prisoners of war.


s: They were the glory of the race of rangers,


s: Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,


s: Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,


s: Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,


s: Not a single one over thirty years of age.


s: The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and


s: massacred, it was beautiful early summer,


s: The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.


s: Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,


s: The three were all torn and cover'd with the boy's blood.


s: At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies;


s: Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?


s: Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?


s: Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)


s: Along the lower'd eve he came horribly raking us.


s: We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch'd,


s: My captain lash'd fast with his own hands.


s: We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water,


s: If our colors are struck and the fighting done?


s: Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,


s: The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially


s: They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.


s: He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,


s: His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.


s: Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,


s: Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin,


s: The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully


s: Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh


s: The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,


s: You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!


s: In at the conquer'd doors they crowd! I am possess'd!


s: Embody all presences outlaw'd or suffering,


s: See myself in prison shaped like another man,


s: Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,


s: I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.


s: Somehow I have been stunn'd. Stand back!


s: That I could forget the mockers and insults!


s: That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the


s: That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and


s: I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average


s: Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,


s: Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,


s: Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.


s: The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?


s: Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?


s: Is he some Southwesterner rais'd out-doors? is he Kanadian?


s: Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?


s: The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?


s: Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,


s: Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb'd


s: Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,


s: Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask--lie over!


s: You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.


s: Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,


s: Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,


s: Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,


s: You there, impotent, loose in the knees,


s: Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you,


s: Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,


s: I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,


s: You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.


s: To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,


s: On his right cheek I put the family kiss,


s: And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.


s: On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.


s: (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)


s: To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.


s: Let the physician and the priest go home.


s: I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,


s: By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.


s: I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,


s: Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force,


s: Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,


s: I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,


s: I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,


s: And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.


s: Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;


s: It is middling well as far as it goes--but is that all?


s: Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,


s: Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,


s: Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,


s: Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,


s: With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,


s: Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,


s: Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself,


s: Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,


s: Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves


s: Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,


s: Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white


s: foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;


s: The bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough,


s: Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd,


s: The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the


s: By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,


s: Putting myself here and now to the ambush'd womb of the shadows.


s: My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.


s: Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,


s: Easily written loose-finger'd chords--I feel the thrum of your


s: Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.


s: Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,


s: Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn'd thumb, that


s: Ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides


s: Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,


s: Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.


s: Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,


s: To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,


s: A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.


s: This is the city and I am one of the citizens,


s: The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories,


s: stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.


s: What I do and say the same waits for them,


s: Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.


s: Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,


s: And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.


s: But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;


s: This printed and bound book--but the printer and the


s: In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture--but the host and


s: The sky up there--yet here or next door, or across the way?


s: The saints and sages in history--but you yourself?


s: Sermons, creeds, theology--but the fathomless human brain,


s: And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?


s: I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,


s: My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,


s: Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,


s: Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and


s: Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas admirant,


s: Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing


s: To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting


s: One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like


s: Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,


s: Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,


s: I take my place among you as much as among any,


s: The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,


s: I do not know what is untried and afterward,


s: But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.


s: Each who passes is consider'd, each who stops is consider'd, not


s: It cannot fall the young man who died and was buried,


s: Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,


s: Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with


s: Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,


s: Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish koboo


s: Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.


s: It is time to explain myself--let us stand up.


s: I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.


s: The clock indicates the moment--but what does eternity indicate?


s: We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,


s: There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.


s: Births have brought us richness and variety,


s: And other births will bring us richness and variety.


s: I do not call one greater and one smaller,


s: That which fills its period and place is equal to any.


s: All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,


s: My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,


s: Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,


s: Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,


s: I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,


s: Immense have been the preparations for me,


s: Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.


s: They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.


s: Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,


s: My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.


s: The long slow strata piled to rest it on,


s: O span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity!


s: Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,


s: Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,


s: Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,


s: And the dark hush promulges as much as any.


s: I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,


s: Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,


s: Outward and outward and forever outward.


s: My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,


s: He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,


s: There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,


s: We should surely bring up again where we now stand,


s: And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.


s: A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do


s: They are but parts, any thing is but a part.


s: See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,


s: Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.


s: My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,


s: The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,


s: The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.


s: I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)


s: I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,


s: I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,


s: But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,


s: My left hand hooking you round the waist,


s: Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,


s: Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,


s: And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,


s: For after we start we never lie by again.


s: You are also asking me questions and I hear you,


s: I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.


s: Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,


s: Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,


s: You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every


s: Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,


s: The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power,


s: Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,


s: Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,


s: skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,


s: And those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun.


s: I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?


s: I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,


s: My words itch at your ears till you understand them.


s: I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house,


s: If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,


s: No shutter'd room or school can commune with me,


s: But roughs and little children better than they.


s: The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,


s: The soldier camp'd or upon the march is mine,


s: The young mother and old mother comprehend me,


s: I have said that the soul is not more than the body,


s: And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,


s: And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,


s: And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own


s: And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,


s: For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,


s: (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and


s: Why should I wish to see God better than this day?


s: To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,


s: I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,


s: I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,


s: And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.


s: I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,


s: And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,


s: (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)


s: I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,


s: O suns--O grass of graves--O perpetual transfers and promotions,


s: If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?


s: Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,


s: Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,


s: Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.


s: I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,


s: Wrench'd and sweaty--calm and cool then my body becomes,


s: I do not know it--it is without name--it is a word unsaid,


s: It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.


s: Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,


s: To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.


s: It is not chaos or death--it is form, union, plan--it is eternal


s: The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.


s: And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.


s: Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?


s: Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,


s: I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.


s: Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?


s: The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab


s: I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,


s: I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.


s: I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,


s: I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.


s: I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,


s: If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.


s: You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,


s: But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,


s: Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,


s: Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,


s: The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,


s: Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,


s: The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,


s: My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for


s: Content with the present, content with the past,


s: Or in front, and I following her just the same.


s: From that of myself without which I were nothing,


s: From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,


s: Singing the bedfellow's song, (O resistless yearning!


s: O for any and each the body correlative attracting!


s: From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,


s: From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,


s: Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it


s: Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,


s: Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,


s: Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,


s: Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,


s: Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,


s: Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,


s: The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,


s: The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,


s: The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back


s: (Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,


s: The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling.


s: O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?


s: What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust


s: From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,


s: From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,


s: From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,


s: From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers


s: From the long sustain'd kiss upon the mouth or bosom,


s: From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting


s: From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood,


s: From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,


s: From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,


s: (Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,)


s: From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,


s: From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,


s: Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,


s: The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,


s: They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,


s: And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?


s: That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.


s: The expression of the face balks account,


s: The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through


s: the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls


s: silently to and from the heave of the water,


s: The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the


s: Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,


s: The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open


s: dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,


s: The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six


s: The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes


s: suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,


s: The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv'd


s: I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,


s: And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.


s: This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,


s: The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and


s: beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness


s: These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,


s: He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were


s: They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,


s: fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,


s: I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough,


s: To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,


s: I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.


s: There is something in staying close to men and women and looking


s: A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,


s: It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,


s: Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what


s: Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response


s: Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all


s: Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.


s: You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.


s: The female contains all qualities and tempers them,


s: She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,


s: She is all things duly veil'd, she is both passive and active,


s: As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,


s: The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,


s: He too is all qualities, he is action and power,


s: The flush of the known universe is in him,


s: Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes


s: (Where else does he strike soundings except here?)


s: The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred,


s: No matter who it is, it is sacred--is it the meanest one in the


s: Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?


s: Each has his or her place in the procession.


s: The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)


s: Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?


s: For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll'd.


s: In it and below it the makings of heroes.


s: Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in


s: They shall be stript that you may see them.


s: Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,


s: The same old blood! the same red-running blood!


s: There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires,


s: This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be


s: In him the start of populous states and rich republics,


s: Have you ever loved the body of a woman?


s: If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,


s: O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and


s: women, nor the likes of the parts of you,


s: I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of


s: I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and


s: Man's, woman's, child, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's,


s: father's, young man's, young woman's poems,


s: Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,


s: Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or


s: Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,


s: Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,


s: Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,


s: Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;


s: The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,


s: The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,


s: Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,


s: The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,


s: Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,


s: The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,


s: The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the


s: A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,


s: Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,


s: All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth,


s: Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,


s: I see that they understand me and do not deny me,


s: I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of


s: They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,


s: Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,


s: They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,


s: retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,


s: They are ultimate in their own right--they are calm, clear,


s: I cannot let you go, I would do you good,


s: Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,


s: They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.


s: I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,


s: I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,


s: I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,


s: Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,


s: On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,


s: The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,


s: The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,


s: I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,


s: I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you


s: I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I


s: count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,


s: I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,


s: The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,


s: The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,


s: The hillside whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,


s: The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private


s: untrimm'd bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,


s: Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after


s: another as I happen to call them to me or think of them,


s: The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)


s: The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,


s: Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,


s: Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,


s: The wet of woods through the early hours,


s: The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and


s: The no-form'd stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,


s: The sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd brothers, that only privileged


s: The vex'd corrosion so pensive and so painful,


s: The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest,


s: The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others,


s: The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that


s: The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to


s: sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them,


s: The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen'd


s: The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,


s: And this bunch pluck'd at random from myself,


s: It has done its work--I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.


s: One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!


s: (What is this that frees me so in storms?


s: What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)


s: O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!


s: O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,


s: O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!


s: O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all


s: O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!


s: To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!


s: To have the gag remov'd from one's mouth!


s: To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.


s: O something unprov'd! something in a trance!


s: To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!


s: To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!


s: To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!


s: To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!


s: Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,


s: Whispering I love you, before long I die,


s: I have travel'd a long way merely to look on you to touch you,


s: For I could not die till I once look'd on you,


s: For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.


s: Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,


s: But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,


s: Every day at sundown for your dear sake my love.


s: Lusty, phallic, with the potent original loins, perfectly sweet,


s: Through the new garden the West, the great cities calling,


s: Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,


s: We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,


s: We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,


s: We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,


s: We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,


s: We browse, we are two among the wild herds spontaneous as any,


s: We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,


s: We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,


s: We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,


s: We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic


s: We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,


s: We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,


s: We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling


s: over each other and interwetting each other,


s: O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?


s: Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?


s: Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would


s: Native moments--when you come upon me--ah you are here now,


s: Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,


s: To-day I go consort with Nature's darlings, to-night too,


s: I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,


s: I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,


s: I will be more to you than to any of the rest.


s: Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met


s: Day by day and night by night we were together--all else has long


s: I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,


s: Again we wander, we love, we separate again,


s: Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,


s: I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.


s: I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I


s: Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your long-


s: Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,


s: I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,


s: Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;


s: Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,


s: (But where is what I started for so long ago?


s: Walking forth from the bower refresh'd with sleep,


s: Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,


s: Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,


s: In the growth by margins of pond-waters,


s: Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,


s: From all the standards hitherto publish'd, from the pleasures,


s: Which too long I was offering to feed my soul,


s: Here by myself away from the clank of the world,


s: Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic,


s: No longer abash'd, (for in this secluded spot I can respond as I


s: Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,


s: Projecting them along that substantial life,


s: Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,


s: Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first year,


s: I proceed for all who are or have been young men,


s: Leaves from you I glean, I write, to be perused best afterwards,


s: Tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above me above death,


s: Perennial roots, tall leaves, O the winter shall not freeze you


s: Every year shall you bloom again, out from where you retired you


s: O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell in


s: You are often more bitter than I can bear, you burn and sting me,


s: Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful


s: (I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most,)


s: Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots timid leaves!


s: Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!


s: Come I am determin'd to unbare this broad breast of mine, I have


s: I will sound myself and comrades only, I will never again utter a


s: I will raise with it immortal reverberations through the States,


s: I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will


s: Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating,


s: Give me your tone therefore O death, that I may accord with it,


s: That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,


s: That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,


s: I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,


s: I am not what you supposed, but far different.


s: Who is he that would become my follower?


s: Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?


s: The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,


s: Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,


s: Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,


s: (For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,


s: Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,


s: With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss,


s: For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.


s: Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,


s: Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,


s: Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;


s: For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,


s: But these leaves conning you con at peril,


s: For these leaves and me you will not understand,


s: They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will


s: Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,


s: Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,


s: For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times


s: Therefore release me and depart on your way.


s: Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,


s: I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,


s: For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!


s: For you, for you I am trilling these songs.


s: These I singing in spring collect for lovers,


s: (Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and


s: partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)


s: Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I


s: Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,


s: Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,


s: Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,


s: And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,


s: (O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again


s: And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this


s: Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)


s: And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,


s: And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,


s: These I compass'd around by a thick cloud of spirits,


s: Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,


s: Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,


s: Not in my wilful and savage soul's volition,


s: Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,


s: Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,


s: Not in husky pantings through clinch'd teeth,


s: Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,


s: Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!


s: Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,


s: That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,


s: That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,


s: May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,


s: To me these and the like of these are curiously answer'd by my


s: I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity


s: But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,


s: He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.


s: A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,


s: As base and finale too for all metaphysics.


s: Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,


s: And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having


s: I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,


s: See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,


s: Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I


s: But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,


s: refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,


s: When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,


s: laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,


s: And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way


s: O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food


s: nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well,


s: And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly


s: Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?


s: Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant


s: Roots and leaves themselves alone are these,


s: Love-buds put before you and within you whoever you are,


s: If you become the aliment and the wet they will become flowers,


s: Waited, sailing gracefully, to drop where they may;


s: Not these, O none of these more than the flames of me, consuming,


s: Any more than my soul is borne through the open air,


s: Wafted in all directions O love, for friendship, for you.


s: Candid from me falling, drip, bleeding drops,


s: From wounds made to free you whence you were prison'd,


s: From my face, from my forehead and lips,


s: Saturate them with yourself all ashamed and wet,


s: Glow upon all I have written or shall write, bleeding drops,


s: Let it all be seen in your light, blushing drops.


s: Offering response to my own--these repay me,


s: Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.


s: Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,


s: This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,


s: My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;


s: And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship's deck give a


s: We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea,


s: We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.


s: All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,


s: And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,


s: It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,


s: (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)


s: Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,


s: I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,


s: All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,


s: You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,


s: I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours


s: I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,


s: I am to see to it that I do not lose you.


s: This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone,


s: attached to them as I do to men in my own lands,


s: O I know we should be brethren and lovers,


s: (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the


s: And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large


s: Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,


s: The institution of the dear love of comrades.


s: The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing,


s: I demand of it the spiritual corresponding,


s: Demand the most copious and close companionship of men,


s: Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings,


s: Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,


s: Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and


s: Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty


s: When I peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories of


s: mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,


s: Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,


s: Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,


s: Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.


s: No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,


s: For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you,


s: Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,


s: Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them,


s: And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.


s: Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage for America,


s: Nor literary success nor intellect; nor book for the book-shelf,


s: But a few carols vibrating through the air I leave,


s: Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove


s: late of a winter night, and I unremark'd seated in a corner,


s: Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and


s: A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and


s: There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,


s: You on the Mississippi and on all the branches and bayous of


s: You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs!


s: You twain! and all processions moving along the streets!


s: I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to


s: Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,


s: I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.


s: I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,


s: What think you I take my pen in hand to record?


s: The battle-ship, perfect-model'd, majestic, that I saw pass the


s: The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that


s: To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,


s: (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,


s: Yet out of that I have written these songs.)


s: Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;


s: Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,


s: Fast-anchor'd eternal O love! O woman I love!


s: Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,


s: I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,


s: I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,


s: Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me.


s: I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,


s: And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.


s: But among my lovers and caroling these songs,


s: O I never doubt whether that is really me.


s: I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,


s: To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,


s: When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,


s: Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,


s: Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!


s: Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next,


s: Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.


s: What climes? what persons and cities are here?


s: Who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering?


s: Who are the girls? who are the married women?


s: Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about


s: What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?


s: What are the mountains call'd that rise so high in the mists?


s: What myriads of dwellings are they fill'd with dwellers?


s: Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,


s: Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends,


s: Stretch'd in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above


s: Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,


s: Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.


s: I hear the workman singing and the farmer's wife singing,


s: I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,


s: I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to


s: I hear continual echoes from the Thames,


s: I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,


s: I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,


s: adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three


s: Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?


s: I see a great round wonder rolling through space,


s: I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,


s: I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,


s: I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the


s: Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecla,


s: I see Vesuvius and Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the Red


s: I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,


s: I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,


s: I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the Atlantic and


s: Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes


s: Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others cape


s: Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along Cuba or


s: Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,


s: Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,


s: Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,


s: Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,


s: Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Burampooter


s: Others wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of Australia,


s: I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,


s: I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,


s: I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,


s: I see the long river-stripes of the earth,


s: I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire, the


s: I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,


s: I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.


s: I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in


s: I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of


s: I see where the strong divine young man the Hercules toil'd


s: I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the


s: This is not my true country, I have lived banish'd from my true


s: I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and


s: I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.


s: I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown


s: I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,


s: I see granite bowlders and cliffs, I see green meadows and lakes,


s: graves might rise up through the mounds and gaze on the tossing


s: billows, and be refresh'd by storms, immensity, liberty, action.


s: I see the Bolivian ascending mount Sorata,


s: I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.


s: I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,


s: I see the seal-seeker in his boat poising his lance,


s: I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge drawn by dogs,


s: I see the porpoise-hunters, I see the whale-crews of the south


s: I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland--I


s: mark the long winters and the isolation.


s: I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Constantinople,


s: I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.


s: I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,


s: I look on chisell'd histories, records of conquering kings,


s: dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks,


s: I see at Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd,


s: swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,


s: I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the


s: side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.


s: I see all the menials of the earth, laboring,


s: I see the defective human bodies of the earth,


s: I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,


s: I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,


s: And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.


s: You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!


s: You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!


s: You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!


s: You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!


s: You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle shooting


s: You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!


s: Each of us here as divinely as any is here.


s: You Hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair'd hordes!


s: You own'd persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!


s: You dwarf'd Kamtschatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!


s: You haggard, uncouth, untutor'd Bedowee!


s: You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!


s: You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Feejeeman!


s: I do not prefer others so very much before you either,


s: I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.


s: You vapors, I think I have risen with you, moved away to distant


s: continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,


s: I think I have blown with you you winds;


s: You waters I have finger'd every shore with you,


s: I raise high the perpendicular hand, I make the signal,


s: Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,


s: The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.


s: Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,


s: Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,


s: Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,


s: Strong and content I travel the open road.


s: I do not want the constellations any nearer,


s: I know they are very well where they are,


s: I know they suffice for those who belong to them.


s: (Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,


s: I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,


s: I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,


s: I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)


s: You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all


s: I believe that much unseen is also here.


s: Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,


s: You air that serves me with breath to speak!


s: You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!


s: You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined


s: You rows of houses! you window-pierc'd facades! you roofs!


s: You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!


s: You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!


s: You doors and ascending steps! you arches!


s: You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!


s: yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,


s: The earth expanding right hand and left hand,


s: The picture alive, every part in its best light,


s: The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is


s: O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?


s: Do you say Venture not--if you leave me you are lost?


s: Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,


s: I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all


s: I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,


s: Listening to others, considering well what they say,


s: Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,


s: can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me


s: I will recruit for myself and you as I go,


s: I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,


s: I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,


s: Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,


s: Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.


s: Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,


s: (Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,


s: Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all


s: Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,


s: Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,


s: Here is a man tallied--he realizes here what he has in him,


s: Only the kernel of every object nourishes;


s: Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?


s: Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?


s: Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?


s: The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower'd gates,


s: Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?


s: Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious


s: What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?


s: What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?


s: What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what


s: The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,


s: I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,


s: Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.


s: Here rises the fluid and attaching character,


s: (The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day


s: Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the


s: Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!


s: Traveling with me you find what never tires.


s: However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we must


s: Allons! the inducements shall be greater,


s: We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper


s: Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,


s: Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;


s: From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.


s: He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,


s: Only those may come who come in sweet and determin'd bodies,


s: (I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,


s: I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,


s: You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,


s: You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,


s: You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly


s: You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those


s: What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with


s: Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!


s: Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,


s: Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,


s: years each emerging from that which preceded it,


s: Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,


s: Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,


s: Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass'd, content,


s: Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,


s: To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,


s: To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights


s: Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,


s: To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,


s: however long but it stretches and waits for you,


s: To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,


s: To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without


s: To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant


s: villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and


s: the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,


s: them, to gather the love out of their hearts,


s: To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave


s: All parts away for the progress of souls,


s: Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,


s: Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,


s: Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!


s: Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!


s: It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.


s: Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,


s: No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,


s: In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,


s: The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.


s: What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?


s: something to make a greater struggle necessary.


s: My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,


s: Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the


s: I give you my love more precious than money,


s: I give you myself before preaching or law;


s: Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?


s: Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?


s: Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!


s: And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more


s: The similitudes of the past and those of the future,


s: The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,


s: The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,


s: Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the


s: Others will see the islands large and small;


s: Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the


s: falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.


s: It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,


s: I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many


s: Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,


s: Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift


s: Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the


s: thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.


s: I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old,


s: Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air


s: floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,


s: Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,


s: Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,


s: Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,


s: Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,


s: Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,


s: The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender


s: The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the


s: The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the


s: These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,


s: (The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)


s: What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?


s: I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the


s: I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,


s: In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,


s: That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I


s: It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,


s: The dark threw its patches down upon me also,


s: The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,


s: I am he who knew what it was to be evil,


s: I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,


s: Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,


s: Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,


s: Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,


s: The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me.


s: I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born.


s: Who was to know what should come home to me?


s: Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than


s: River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood-tide?


s: The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the


s: Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?


s: What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted?


s: What the study could not teach--what the preaching could not


s: Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!


s: Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be


s: Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet


s: Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any


s: Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'd


s: Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset!


s: Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at


s: nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!


s: You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,


s: Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,


s: Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.


s: Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.


s: A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother,


s: How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother?


s: face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand and his


s: Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape,


s: The profound earth and its attributes and the unquiet ocean, (so


s: He puts to-day out of himself with plasticity and love,


s: He places his own times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and


s: sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest


s: never shame them afterward, nor assume to command them.


s: What can be answer'd he answers, and what cannot be answer'd he


s: The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.


s: He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,


s: Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,


s: No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and


s: The English believe he comes of their English stock,


s: Whoever he looks at in the traveler's coffee-house claims him,


s: The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,


s: The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see


s: themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,


s: Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs,


s: Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts,


s: His insight and power encircle things and the human race,


s: The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,


s: (Not every century nor every five centuries has contain'd such a


s: The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible


s: names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,


s: The name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer,


s: sweet-singer, night-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer,


s: All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,


s: The words of true poems do not merely please,


s: Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health,


s: The words of the true poems give you more than poems,


s: They do not seek beauty, they are sought,


s: Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing,


s: To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless


s: Always Florida's green peninsula--always the priceless delta of


s: Louisiana--always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas,


s: Always California's golden hills and hollows, and the silver


s: mountains of New Mexico--always soft-breath'd Cuba,


s: White drift spooning ahead where the ship in the tempest dashes,


s: visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming,


s: In lower latitudes in warmer air in the Carolinas the large black


s: Below, the red cedar festoon'd with tylandria, the pines and


s: The waving drapery on the live-oak trailing long and low,


s: Thirty or forty great wagons, the mules, cattle, horses, feeding


s: Carolina's coast, the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery, the


s: large sweep-seines, the windlasses on shore work'd by horses, the


s: Deep in the forest in piney woods turpentine dropping from the


s: incisions in the trees, there are the turpentine works,


s: In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence,


s: joyfully welcom'd and kiss'd by the aged mulatto nurse,


s: On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under


s: There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous


s: moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree;


s: Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an


s: excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all


s: bear bunches of flowers presented by women;


s: The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the


s: Mississippi, he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eyes around;


s: California life, the miner, bearded, dress'd in his rude costume,


s: in passing meets solitary just aside the horse-path;


s: Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, the American Soul, with


s: In arriere the peace-talk with the Iroquois the aborigines, the


s: calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and indorsement,


s: The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward


s: The setting out of the war-party, the long and stealthy march,


s: All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, attitudes of these States,


s: shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air,


s: The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects, the fall traveler


s: southward but returning northward early in the spring,


s: The city wharf, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New


s: The departing ships when the sailors heave at the capstan;


s: Evening--me in my room--the setting sun,


s: The setting summer sun shining in my open window, showing the


s: swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre


s: of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift


s: shadows in specks on the opposite wall where the shine is;


s: individuality of the States, each for itself--the moneymakers,


s: Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever,


s: The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity,


s: Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow flapping, with the


s: myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida,


s: Otherways there atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande,


s: Saskatchawan or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing


s: Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I with


s: parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and


s: Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing


s: themselves, the body of the flock feed, the sentinels outside


s: move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time


s: reliev'd by other sentinels--and I feeding and taking turns


s: fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives--and I, plunging at the


s: Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more


s: inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand


s: diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands


s: are inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY;


s: Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains,


s: Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you


s: Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!


s: Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.


s: O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!


s: O the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!


s: It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,


s: I will have thousands of globes and all time.


s: O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive!


s: To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.


s: O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!


s: The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh


s: The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool


s: I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!


s: The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.


s: O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in


s: The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the


s: O the of increase, growth, recuperation,


s: O to go back to the place where I was born,


s: To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,


s: Is the tide out? I Join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,


s: Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon,


s: My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no


s: one else so well as they love to be with me,


s: By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.


s: I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are


s: wooden pegs in the 'oints of their pincers,


s: Something far away from a puny and pious life!


s: Something unproved! something in a trance!


s: Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)


s: The furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running.