Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

  This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands and feet,

  The spear thrust in thy side.

  O star! O ship of France, beat back and baffled long!

  Bear up 0 smitten orb! 0 ship continue on!

  Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself,

  Product of deathly fire and turbulent chaos,

  Forth from its spasms of fury and its poisons,

  Issuing at last in perfect power and beauty,

  Onward beneath the sun following its course,

  So thee 0 ship of France!

  Finish’d the days, the clouds dispel‘d,

  The travail o’er, the long-sought extrication,

  When lo! reborn, high o‘er the European world,

  (In gladness answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours

  Columbia,)

  Again thy star 0 France, fair lustrous star,

  In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever,

  Shall beam immortal.

  THE OX-TAMER

  In a far-away northern county in the placid pastoral region,

  Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous

  tamer of oxen,

  There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to

  break them,

  He will take the wildest steer in the world and break him and

  tame him,

  He will go fearless without any whip where the young bullock

  chafes up and down the yard,

  The bullock’s head tosses restless high in the air with raging

  eyes,

  Yet see you! how soon his rage subsides—how soon this tamer

  tames him;

  See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old,

  and he is the man who has tamed them,

  They all know him, all are affectionate to him;

  See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking;

  Some are buff-color‘d, some mottled, one has a

  white line running along his back, some are

  brindled,

  Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)—see you! the bright

  hides,

  See, the two with stars on their foreheads—see, the round bodies

  and broad backs,

  How straight and square they stand on their legs—what fine

  sagacious eyes!

  How they watch their tamer—they wish him near them—how

  they turn to look after him!

  What yearning expression! how uneasy they are when he moves

  away from them;

  Now I marvel what it can be he appears to them, (books, politics,

  poems, depart—all else departs,)

  I confess I envy only his fascination—my silent, illiterate friend,

  Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life on farms,

  In the northern county far, in the placid pastoral region.

  AN OLD MAN’S THOUGHT OF SCHOOL

  For the Inauguration of a Public School, Camden, New Jersey, 1874

  An old man’s thought of school,

  An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth

  itself cannot.

  Now only do I know you,

  O fair auroral skies—0 morning dew upon the grass!

  And these I see, these sparkling eyes,

  These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,

  Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,

  Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,

  On the soul’s voyage.

  Only a lot of boys and girls?

  Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?

  Only a public school?

  Ah more, infinitely more;

  (As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and

  mortar, these dead floors, windows, rails, you call the church?

  Why this is not the church at all—the church is living, ever living

  souls.”)

  And you America,

  Cast you the real reckoning for your present?

  The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?

  To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.

  WANDERING AT MORN

  Wandering at morn,

  Emerging from the night from gloomy thoughts, thee in my

  thoughts,

  Yearning for thee harmonious Union! thee, singing bird divine!

  Thee coil’d in evil times my country, with craft and black dismay,

  with every meanness, treason thrust upon thee,

  This common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch’d

  feeding its young,

  The singing thrush whose tones of joy and faith ecstatic,

  Fail not to certify and cheer my soul.

  There ponder‘d, felt I,

  If worms, snakes, loathsome grubs, may to sweet spiritual songs be

  turn’d,

  If vermin so transposed, so used and bless’d may be,

  Then may I trust in you, your fortunes, days, my country;

  Who knows but these may be the lessons fit for you?

  From these your future song may rise with joyous trills,

  Destin’d to fill the world.

  ITALIAN MUSIC IN DAKOTA83

  [“The Seventeenth—the finest Regimental Band I ever heard.”]

  Through the soft evening air enwinding all,

  Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,

  In dulcet streams, in flutes’ and cornets’ notes,

  Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial,

  (Yet strangely fitting even here, meanings unknown before,

  Subtler than ever, more harmony, as if born here, related here,

  Not to the city’s fresco’d rooms, not to the audience of the opera

  house,

  Sounds, echoes, wandering strains, as really here at home,

  Sonnambula’s innocent love, trios with Norma’s anguish,

  And thy ecstatic chorus Poliuto;)

  Ray’d in the limpid yellow slanting sundown,

  Music, Italian music in Dakota.

  While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm,

  Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,

  Acknowledging rapport however far remov‘d,

  (As some old root or soil of earth its last-born flower or fruit,)

  Listens well pleas’d.

  WITH ALL THY GIFTS

  With all thy gifts America,

  Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,

  Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee—with these and like of

  these vouchsafed to thee,

  What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem

  never solving,)

  The gift of perfect women fit for thee—what if that gift of gifts

  thou lackest?

  The towering feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion,

  fit for thee?

  The mothers fit for thee?

  MY PICTURE-GALLERY

  In a little house keep I pictures suspended, it is not a fix’d house,

  It is round, it is only a few inches from one side to the other;

  Yet behold, it has room for all the shows of the world, all

  memories!

  Here the tableaus of life, and here the groupings of death;

  Here, do you know this? this is cicerone himself,

  With finger rais’d he points to the prodigal pictures.

  THE PRAIRIE STATES

  A newer garden of creation, no primal solitude,

  Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,

  With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,

  By all the world contributed—freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s

  society,

  The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulatio
ns,

  To justify the past.

  PROUD MUSIC OF THE STORM 84

  —1—

  Proud music of the storm,

  Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies,

  Strong hum of forest tree-tops—wind of the mountains,

  Personified dim shapes—you hidden orchestras,

  You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert,

  Blending with Nature’s rhythmus all the tongues of nations;

  You chords left as by vast composers—you choruses,

  You formless, free, religious dances—you from the Orient,

  You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts,

  You sounds from distant guns with galloping cavalry,

  Echoes of camps with all the different bugle-calls,

  Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me

  powerless,

  Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you

  seiz’d me?

  -2-

  Come forward 0 my soul, and let the rest retire,

  Listen, lose not, it is toward thee they tend,

  Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,

  For thee they sing and dance 0 soul.

  A festival song,

  The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march,

  With lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill’d to the brim with

  love,

  The red-flush’d cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full

  of friendly faces young and old,

  To flutes’ clear notes and sounding harps’ cantabile.

  Now loud approaching drums,

  Victoria! see‘st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?

  the rout of the baffled?

  Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?

  (Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony,

  The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken’d ruins, the embers of

  cities,

  The dirge and desolation of mankind.)

  Now airs antique and mediaeval fill me,

  I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals,

  I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love,

  I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages.

  Now the great organ sounds,

  Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,

  On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend,

  All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know,

  Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol

  and play, the clouds of heaven above,)

  The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,

  Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest,

  And with it every instrument in multitudes,

  The players playing, all the world’s musicians,

  The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration,

  All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,

  The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,

  And for their solvent setting earth’s own diapason,

  Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,

  A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold

  renewer,

  As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,

  The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering

  done,

  The journey done, the journeyman come home,

  And man and art with Nature fused again.

  Tutti! for earth and heaven;

  (The Almighty leader now for once has signal’d with his wand.)

  The manly strophe of the husbands of the world,

  And all the wives responding.

  The tongues of violins,

  (I think 0 tongues ye tell this heart, that cannot tell itself,

  This brooding yearning heart, that cannot tell itself.)

  -3-

  Ah from a little child,

  Thou knowest soul how to me all sounds became music,

  My mother’s voice in lullaby or hymn,

  (The voice, 0 tender voices, memory’s loving voices,

  Last miracle of all, 0 dearest mother‘s, sister’s, voices;)

  The rain, the growing corn, the breeze among the long-leav’d corn,

  The measur’d sea-surf beating on the sand,

  The twittering bird, the hawk’s sharp scream,

  The wild-fowl’s notes at night as flying low migrating north or

  south,

  The psalm in the country church or mid the clustering trees, the

  open air camp-meeting,

  The fiddler in the tavern, the glee, the long-strung sailor-song,

  The lowing cattle, bleating sheep, the crowing cock at dawn.

  All songs of current lands come sounding round me,

  The German airs of friendship, wine and love,

  Irish ballads, merry jigs and dances, English warbles,

  Chansons of France, Scotch tunes, and o‘er the rest,

  Italia’s peerless compositions.

  Across the stage with pallor on her face, yet lurid passion,

  Stalks Norma brandishing the dagger in her hand.

  I see poor crazed Lucia’s eyes’ unnatural gleam,

  Her hair down her back falls loose and dishevel’d.

  I see where Ernani walking the bridal garden,

  Amid the scent of night-roses, radiant, holding his bride by the hand,

  Hears the infernal call, the death-pledge of the horn.

  To crossing swords and gray hairs bared to heaven,

  The clear electric base and baritone of the world,

  The trombone duo, Libertad forever!

  From Spanish chestnut trees’ dense shade,

  By old and heavy convent walls a wailing song,

  Song of lost love, the torch of youth and life quench’d in despair,

  Song of the dying swan, Fernando’s heart is breaking.

  Awaking from her woes at last retriev’d Amina sings,

  Copious as stars and glad as morning light the torrents of

  her joy.

  (The teeming lady comes,

  The lustrious orb, Venus contralto, the blooming mother,

  Sister of loftiest gods, Alboni’s self I hear.)

  —4—

  I hear those odes, symphonies, operas,

  I hear in the William Tell the music of an arous’d and angry

  people,

  I hear Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert,

  Gounod’s Faust, or Mozart’s Don Juan.

  I hear the dance-music of all nations,

  The waltz, some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss,

  The bolero to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets.

  I see religious dances old and new,

  I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre,

  I see the crusaders marching bearing the cross on high, to the

  martial clang of cymbals,

  I hear dervishes monotonously chanting, interspers’d with frantic

  shouts, as they spin around turning always towards Mecca,

  I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs,

  Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks

  dancing,

  I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies,

  I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet.

  I see again the wild old Corybantian dance, the performers

  wounding each other,

  I see the Roman youth to the shrill sound of flageolets throwing

  and catching their weapons,

  As they fall on their knees and rise again.

  I hear from the Mussulman mosque the muezzin calling,

  I see the worshippers within, nor form nor sermon, argument nor

  word,

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nbsp; But silent, strange, devout, rais‘d, glowing heads, ecstatic faces.

  I hear the Egyptian harps of many strings,

  The primitive chants of the Nile boatmen,

  The sacred imperial hymns of China,

  To the delicate sounds of the king, (the stricken wood and stone,)

  Or to Hindu flutes and the fretting twang of the vina,

  A band of bayaderes.

  —5—

  Now Asia, Africa leave me, Europe seizing inflates me,

  To organs huge and bands I hear as from vast concourses of voices,

  Luther’s strong hymn Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott,

  Rossini’s Stabat Mater dolorosa,

  Or floating in some high cathedral dim with gorgeous color’d

  windows,

  The passionate Agnus Dei or Gloria in Excelsis.

  Composers! mighty maestros!

  And you, sweet singers of old lands, soprani, tenori, bassi!

  To you a new bard caroling in the West,

  Obeisant sends his love.

  (Such led to thee 0 soul,

  All senses, shows and objects, lead to thee,

  But now it seems to me sound leads o‘er all the rest.)

  I hear the annual singing of the children in St. Paul’s

  cathedral,

  Or, under the high roof of some colossal hall, the symphonies,

  oratorios of Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn,

  The Creation in billows of godhood laves me.

  Give me to hold all sounds, (I madly struggling cry,)

  Fill me with all the voices of the universe,

  Endow me with their throbbings, Nature’s also,

  The tempests, waters, winds, operas and chants, marches and

  dances,

  Utter, pour in, for I would take them all!

  -6-

  Then I woke softly,

  And pausing, questioning awhile the music of my dream,

  And questioning all those reminiscences, the tempest in its fury,

  And all the songs of sopranos and tenors,

  And those rapt oriental dances of religious fervor,