Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

  And I send these words to Paris with my love,

  And I guess some chansonniers there will understand them,

  For I guess there is latent music yet in France, floods of it,

  O I hear already the bustle of instruments, they will soon be

  drowning all that would interrupt them,

  O I think the east wind brings a triumphal and free march,

  It reaches hither, it swells me to joyful madness,

  I will run transpose it in words, to justify it,

  I will yet sing a song for you ma femme.

  MYSELF AND MINE

  Myself and mine gymnastic ever,

  To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim with a gun, to sail a

  boat, to manage horses, to beget superb children,

  To speak readily and clearly, to feel at home among common

  people,

  And to hold our own in terrible positions on land and sea.

  Not for an embroiderer,

  (There will always be plenty of embroiderers, I welcome them also,)

  But for the fibre of things and for inherent men and

  women.

  Not to chisel ornaments,

  But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous

  supreme Gods, that the States may realize them walking and

  talking.

  Let me have my own way,

  Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws,

  Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up

  agitation and conflict,

  I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his face the one that was

  thought most worthy.

  (Who are you? and what are you secretly guilty of all your life?

  Will you turn aside all your life? will you grub and chatter all

  your life?

  And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages,

  reminiscences,

  Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak properly a

  single word?)

  Let others finish specimens, I never finish specimens,

  I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature does, fresh and modern

  continually.

  I give nothing as duties,

  What others give as duties I give as living impulses,

  (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)

  Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of nothing, I arouse

  unanswerable questions,

  Who are they I see and touch, and what about them?

  What about these likes of myself that draw me so close by tender

  directions and indirections?

  I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen

  to my enemies, as I myself do,

  I charge you forever reflect those who would expound me, for I

  cannot expound myself,

  I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me,

  I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free.

  After me, vista!

  O I see life is not short, but immeasurably long,

  I henceforth tread the world chaste, temperate, an early riser, a

  steady grower,

  Every hour the semen of centuries, and still of centuries.

  I must follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth,

  I perceive I have no time to lose.

  YEAR OF METEORS (1859-60)44

  Year of meteors! brooding year!

  I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,

  I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,bd

  I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the

  scaffold in Virginia, be

  (I was at hand, silent I stood with teeth shut close, I watch‘d,

  I stood very near you old man when cool and indifferent, but

  trembling with age and your unheal’d wounds you mounted

  the scaffold;)

  I would sing in my copious song your census returns of the States,

  The tables of population and products, I would sing of your ships

  and their cargoes,

  The proud black ships of Manhattan arriving, some fill’d with

  immigrants, some from the isthmus with cargoes of gold,

  Songs thereof would I sing, to all that hitherward comes would I

  welcome give,

  And you would I sing, fair stripling! welcome to you from me,

  young prince of England! bf(Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds as you pass’d with

  your cortege of nobles?

  There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment;)

  Nor forget I to sing of the wonder, the ship as she swam up my bay,

  Well-shaped and stately the Great Eastern swam up my bay, she

  was 600 feet long, †

  Her moving swiftly surrounded by myriads of small craft I forget

  not to sing;

  Nor the comet that came unannounced out of the north flaring

  in heaven,

  Nor the strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear

  shooting over our heads,

  (A moment, a moment long it sail’d its balls of unearthly light

  over our heads,

  Then departed, dropped in the night, and was gone;)

  Of such, and fitful as they, I sing—with gleams from them would

  I gleam and patch these chants,

  Your chants, O year all mottled with evil and good—year of

  forebodings!

  Year of comets and meteors transient and strange—lo! even here

  one equally transient and strange!

  As I flit through you hastily, soon to fall and be gone, what is this

  chant,

  What am I myself but one of your meteors?

  WITH ANTECEDENTS

  -1-

  With antecedents,

  With my fathers and mothers and the accumulations of past

  ages,

  With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am,

  With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome,

  With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb and the Saxon,

  With antique maritime ventures, laws, artisanship, wars and

  journeys,

  With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle,

  With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the

  crusader, and the monk,

  With those old continents whence we have come to this new

  continent,

  With the fading kingdoms and kings over there,

  With the fading religions and priests,

  With the small shores we look back to from our own large and

  present shores,

  With countless years drawing themselves onward and arrived at

  these years,

  You and me arrived—America arrived and making this year,

  This year! sending itself ahead countless years to come.

  -2-

  O but it is not the years—it is I, it is You,

  We touch all laws and tally all antecedents,

  We are the skald, the oracle, the monk and the knight, we easily

  include them and more,

  We stand amid time beginningless and endless, we stand amid

  evil and good,

  All swings around us, there is as much darkness as light,

  The very sun swings itself and its system of planets around us,

  Its sun, and its again, all swing around us.

  As for me, (torn, stormy, amid these vehement days,)

  I have the idea of all, and am all and believe in all,

  I believe materialism is true and spiritualism is true, I reject no part.

  (Have I forgotten any part? any thing in the past?

  Come to me whoever and whatever, till
I give you recognition.)

  I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews,

  I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god,

  I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without

  exception,

  I assert that all past days were what they must have been,

  And that they could no-how have been better than they were,

  And that to-day is what it must be, and that America is,

  And that to-day and America could no-how be better than they are.

  -3-

  In the name of these States and in your and my name, the Past,

  And in the name of these States and in your and my name, the

  Present time.

  I know that the past was great and the future will be great,

  And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time,

  (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man’s sake,

  your sake if you are he,)

  And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the

  centre of all days, all races,

  And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races

  and days, or ever will come.

  A BROADWAY PAGEANT45

  -1-

  Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,

  Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,

  Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,

  Ride to-day through Manhattan.

  Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold,

  In the procession along with the nobles of Niphon, the errandbearers,

  Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks

  marching,

  But I will sing you a song of what I behold Libertad.

  When million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her

  pavements,

  When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar

  I love,

  When the round-mouth’d guns out of the smoke and smell I love

  spit their salutes,

  When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me, and heavenclouds canopy my city with a delicate thin haze,

  When gorgeous the countless straight stems, the forests at the

  wharves, thicken with colors,

  When every ship richly drest carries her flag at the peak,

  When pennants trail and street-festoons hang from the windows,

  When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot

  standers, when the mass is densest,

  When the façades of the houses are alive with people, when eyes

  gaze riveted tens of thousands at a time,

  When the guests from the islands advance, when the pageant

  moves forward visible,

  When the summons is made, when the answer that waited

  thousands of years answers,

  I too arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with

  the crowd, and gaze with them.

  —2—

  Superb-faced Manhattan!

  Comrade Americanos! to us, then at last the Orient comes.

  To us, my city,

  Where our tall-topt marble and iron beauties range on opposite

  sides, to walk in the space between,

  To-day our Antipodesbgcomes.

  The Originatress comes,

  The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race

  of eld,

  Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion,

  Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments,

  With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes,

  The race of Brahma comes.

  See my cantabile !bhthese and more are flashing to us from the

  procession,

  As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine it moves changing

  before us.

  For not the envoys nor the tann’d Japanee from his

  island only,

  Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent itself

  appears, the past, the dead,

  The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable,

  The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,

  The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews,

  the ancient of ancients,

  Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, all of these and more

  are in the pageant-procession.

  Geography, the world, is in it,

  The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast

  beyond,

  The coast you henceforth are facing—you Libertad! from your

  Western golden shores,

  The countries there with their populations, the millions en-masse

  are curiously here,

  The swarming market-places, the temples with idols ranged along

  the sides or at the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama,

  Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and fisherman,

  The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the ecstatic persons, the

  secluded emperors,

  Confucius himself, the great poets and heroes, the warriors, the

  castes, all,

  Trooping up, crowding from all directions, from the Altay

  mountains,

  From Thibet, from the four winding and far-flowing rivers of China,

  From the southern peninsulas and the demi-continental islands

  from Malaysia,

  These and whatever belongs to them palpable show forth to me,

  and are seiz’d by me,

  And I am seiz’d by them, and friendlily held by them,

  Till as here them all I chant, Libertad! for themselves and

  for you.

  For I too raising my voice join the ranks of this pageant,

  I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the pageant,

  I chant the world on my Western sea,

  I chant copious the islands beyond, thick as stars in the sky,

  I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it

  comes to me,

  I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy,

  I chant projected a thousand blooming cities yet in time on those

  groups of sea-islands,

  My sail-ships and steam-ships threading the archipelagoes,

  My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind,

  Commerce opening, the sleep of ages having done its work, races

  reborn, refresh‘d,

  Lives, works resumed—the object I know not—but the old, the

  Asiatic renew’d as it must be,

  Commencing from this day surrounded by the world.

  -3-

  And you Libertad of the world!

  You shall sit in the middle well-pois’d thousands and thousands of

  years,

  As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia come to you,

  As to-morrow from the other side the queen of England sends her

  eldest son to you. bi

  The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed,

  The ring is circled, the journey is done,

  The box-lid is but perceptibly open‘d, nevertheless the perfume

  pours copiously out of the whole box.

  Young Libertad! with the venerable Asia, the all-mother,

  Be considerate with her now and ever hot Libertad, for you

  are all,

  Bend your proud neck to the long-off mother now sending

  messages over the archipelagoes to you,

  Bend your proud neck low for once, young Libertad.

  Were the children straying westward so long? so wide the

  tramping?

  Were the precedent dim ages debouching westward from Paradise

  so long?

  Were the centuries steadily footing it that
way, all the while

  unknown, for you, for reasons?

  They are justified, they are accomplish‘d, they shall now be turn’d

  the other way also, to travel toward you thence,

  They shall now also march obediently eastward for your sake

  Libertad.

  SEA-DRIFT46

  OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING47

  Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

  Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,

  Out of the Ninth-monthbjmidnight,

  Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child

  leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

  Down from the shower’d halo,

  Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they

  were alive,

  Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

  From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

  From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and

  fallings I heard,

  From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if

  with tears,

  From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the

  mist,

  From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

  From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

  From the word48 stronger and more delicious than any,

  From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

  As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

  Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

  A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

  Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

  I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

  Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

  A reminiscence sing.

  Once Paumanok,

  When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was

  growing,

  Up this seashore in some briers,

  Two feather’d guests from Alabama, two together,

  And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,

  And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand,