Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

  And listen to the plaudits loud

  To thee that thousands raise?

  “Weak, childish soul! the very place

  That pride has made for folly’s rest;

  What thoughts, with vanity all rife,

  Fill up thy heaving breast!

  “At night, go view the solemn stars

  Those wheeling worlds through time the same—

  How puny seem the widest power,

  The proudest mortal name!

  “Think too, that all, lowly and rich,

  Dull idiot mind and teeming sense,

  Alike must sleep the endless sleep,

  A hundred seasons hence.

  “So, frail one, never more repine,

  Though thou livest on obscure, unknown;

  Though after death unsought may be

  Thy markless resting stone.”

  And as these accents dropped in the youth’s ears,

  He felt him sick at heart; for many a month

  His fancy had amused and charmed itself

  With lofty aspirations, visions fair

  Of what he might be. And it pierced him sore

  To have his airy castles thus dashed down.

  THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF McDONALD CLARKE3

  A Parody

  Not a sigh was heard, not a tear was shed,

  As away to the “tombs” he was hurried,

  No mother or friend held his dying head,

  Or wept when the poet was buried.

  They buried him lonely; no friend stood near,

  (The scoffs of the multitude spurning,)

  To weep o‘er the poet’s sacred bier;

  No bosom with anguish was burning.

  No polish’d coffin enclosed his breast,

  Nor in purple or linen they wound him,

  As a stranger he died; he went to his rest

  With cold charity’s shroud wrapt ‘round him.

  Few and cold were the prayers they said,

  Cold and dry was the cheek of sadness,

  Not a tear of grief baptised his head,

  Nor of sympathy pardon’d his madness.

  None thought, as they stood by his lowly bed,

  Of the griefs and pains that craz’d him;

  None thought of the sorrow that turn’d his head,

  Of the vileness of those who prais’d him.

  Lightly they speak of his anguish and woe,

  And o‘er his cold ashes upbraid him,

  By whatever he was that was evil below,

  Unkindness and cruelty made him.

  Ye hypocrites! stain not his grave with a tear,

  Nor blast the fresh planted willow

  That weeps o‘er his grave; for while he was here,

  Ye refused him a crumb and a pillow.

  Darkly and sadly his spirit has fled,

  But his name will long linger in story;

  He needs not a stone to hallow his bed;

  He’s in Heaven, encircled with glory.

  TIME TO COME

  O, Death! a black and pierceless pall

  Hangs round thee, and the future state;

  No eye may see, no mind may grasp

  That mystery of Fate.

  This brain, which now alternate throbs

  With swelling hope and gloomy fear;

  This heart, with all the changing hues,

  That mortal passions bear—

  This curious frame of human mould,

  Where unrequited cravings play,

  This brain, and heart, and wondrous form

  Must all alike decay.

  The leaping blood will stop its flow;

  The hoarse death-struggle pass; the cheek

  Lay bloomless, and the liquid tongue

  Will then forget to speak.

  The grave will tame me; earth will close

  O‘er cold dull limbs and ashy face;

  But where, O, Nature, where shall be

  The soul’s abiding place?

  Will it e‘en live? for though its light

  Must shine till from the body torn;

  Then, when the oil of life is spent,

  Still shall the taper burn?

  O, powerless is this struggling brain

  To rend the mighty mystery;

  In dark, uncertain awe it waits

  The common doom, to die.

  A SKETCH

  “The trail of the serpent is at times seen in every man’s path.”

  Upon the ocean’s wave-worn shore

  I marked a solitary form,

  Whose brooding look, and features wore

  The darkness of the coming storm!

  And, from his lips, the sigh that broke,

  So long within his bosom nursed,

  In deep and mournful accents spoke,

  Like troubled waves, that shining burst!

  And as he gazed on earth and sea,

  Girt with the gathering night; his soul,

  Wearied and life-worn, longed to flee,

  And rest within its final goal!

  He thought of her whose love had beamed,

  The sunlight of his ripened years;

  But now her gentle memory seemed

  To brim his eye with bitter tears!

  “Oh! thou bless’d Spirit!” thus he sighed—

  “Smile on me from thy realm of rest!

  My dark and doubting spirit guide,

  By conflict torn, and grief oppressed!

  Teach me, in every saddening care,

  To see the chastening hand of Heaven;

  The Soul’s high culture to prepare,

  Wisely and mercifully given!

  “Could I this sacred solace share,

  ‘Twould still my struggling bosom’s moan;

  And the deep peacefulness of prayer,

  Might for thy heavy loss atone!

  Earth, in its wreath of summer flowers,

  And all its varied scenes of joy,

  Its festal halls and echoing bowers,

  No more my darkened thoughts employ.

  “But here, the billow’s heaving breast,

  And the low thunder’s knelling tone,

  Speak of the wearied soul’s unrest,

  Its murmuring, and conflicts lone!

  And yon sweet star, whose golden gleam,

  Pierces the tempest’s gathering gloom,

  In the rich radiance of its beam,

  Tells me of light beyond the tomb!”

  DEATH OF THE NATURE-LOVER

  Not in a gorgeous hall of pride

  Where tears fall thick, and loved ones sigh,

  Wished he, when the dark hour approached

  To drop his veil of flesh, and die.

  Amid the thundercrash of strife,

  Where hovers War’s ensanguined cloud,

  And bright swords flash and banners fly

  Above the wounds, and groans, and blood.

  Not there—not there! Death’s look he’d cast

  Around a furious tiger’s den.

  Rather than in the monstrous sight

  Of the red butcheries of men.

  Days speed: the time for that last look

  Upon this glorious earth has come:

  The Power he served so well vouchsafes

  The sun to shine, the flowers to bloom.

  Just ere the closing of the day,

  His fainting limbs he needs will have

  Borne out into the fresh free air,

  Where sweet shrubs grow, and proud trees wave.

  At distance, o‘er the pleasant fields,

  A bay by misty vapors curled,

  He gazes on, and thinks the haven

  For which to leave a grosser world.

  He sorrows not, but smiles content,

  Dying there in that fragrant place,

  Gazing on blossom, field, and bay,

  As on their Maker’s very face.

  The cloud-arch bending overhead,

  There, at the setting of the sun

 
He bids adieu to earth, and steps

  Down to the World Unknown.

  THE PLAY-GROUND

  When painfully athwart my brain

  Dark thoughts come crowding on,

  And, sick of worldly hollowness,

  My heart feels sad or lone—

  Then out upon the green I walk,

  Just ere the close of day,

  And swift I ween the sight I view

  Clears all my gloom away.

  For there I see young children—

  The cheeriest things on earth—

  I see them play—I hear their tones

  Of loud and reckless mirth.

  And many a clear and flute-like laugh

  Comes ringing through the air;

  And many a roguish, flashing eye,

  And rich red cheek, are there.

  O, lovely, happy children!

  I am with you in my soul;

  I shout—I strike the ball with you—

  With you I race and roll.—

  Methinks white-winged angels,

  Floating unseen the while,

  Hover around this village green,

  And pleasantly they smile.

  O, angels! guard these children!

  Keep grief and guilt away:

  From earthly harm—from evil thoughts

  O, shield them night and day!

  ODE

  To be sung on Fort Greene; 4th of July, 1846. Tune “The Star Spangled Banner.”

  -1-

  O, God of Columbia! O, Shield of the Free!

  More grateful to you than the fanes of old story,

  Must the blood-bedewed soil, the red battle-ground, be

  Where our fore-fathers championed America’s glory!

  Then how priceless the worth of the sanctified earth,

  We are standing on now. Lo! the slopes of its girth

  Where the Martyrs were buried: Nor prayers, tears, or stones,

  Mark their crumbled-in coffins, their white, holy bones!

  -2-

  Say! sons of Long-Island! in legend or song,

  Keep ye aught of its record, that day dark and cheerless—

  That cruel of days—when, hope weak, the foe strong,

  Was seen the Serene One—still faithful, still fearless,

  Defending the worth, of the sanctified earth

  We are standing on now, &c.

  -3-

  Ah, yes! be the answer. In memory still

  We have placed in our hearts, and embalmed there forever!

  The battle, the prison-ship, martyrs and hill,

  —O, may it be preserved till those hearts death shall sever!

  For how priceless the worth, etc.

  -4-

  And shall not the years, as they sweep o‘er and o’er,

  Shall they not, even here, bring the children of ages—

  To exult as their fathers exulted before,

  In the freedom achieved by our ancestral sages?

  And the prayer rise to heaven, with pure gratitude given

  And the sky by the thunder of cannon be riven?

  Yea! yea! let the echo responsively roll

  The echo that starts from the patriot’s soul!

  THE MISSISSIPPI AT MIDNIGHT

  How solemn! sweeping this dense black tide!

  No friendly lights i’ the heaven o‘er us;

  A murky darkness on either side,

  And kindred darkness all before us!

  Now, drawn near the shelving rim,

  Weird-like shadows suddenly rise;

  Shapes of mist and phantoms dim

  Baffle the gazer’s straining eyes.

  River fiends, with malignant faces!

  Wild and wide their arms are thrown,

  As if to clutch in fatal embraces

  Him who sails their realms upon.

  Then, by the trick of our own swift motion,

  Straight, tall giants, an army vast,

  Rank by rank, like the waves of ocean,

  On the shore march stilly past.

  How solemn! the river a trailing pall,

  Which takes, but never again gives back;

  And moonless and starless the heavens’ arch’d wall,

  Responding an equal black!

  Oh, tireless waters! like Life’s quick dream,

  Onward and onward ever hurrying—

  Like Death in this midnight hour you seem,

  Life in your chill drops greedily burying!

  SONG FOR CERTAIN CONGRESSMEN4

  We are all docile dough-faces,

  They knead us with the fist,

  They, the dashing southern lords,

  We labor as they list;

  For them we speak—or hold our tongues,

  For them we turn and twist.

  We join them in their howl against

  Free soil and “abolition,”

  That firebrand—that assassin knife—

  Which risk our land’s condition,

  And leave no peace of life to any

  Dough-faced politician.

  To put down “agitation,” now,

  We think the most judicious;

  To damn all “northern fanatics,”

  Those “traitors” black and vicious;

  The “reg‘lar party usages”

  For us, and no “new issues.”

  Things have come to a pretty pass,

  When a trifle small as this,

  Moving and bartering nigger slaves,

  Can open an abyss,

  With jaws a-gape for “the two great parties;”

  A pretty thought, I wis!

  Principle—freedom!—fiddlesticks!

  We know not where they’re found.

  Rights of the masses—progress!—bah!

  Words that tickle and sound;

  But claiming to rule o‘er “practical men”

  Is very different ground.

  Beyond all such we know a term

  Charming to ears and eyes,

  With it we’ll stab young Freedom,

  And do it in disguise;

  Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces

  That term is “compromise.”

  And what if children, growing up,

  In future seasons read

  The thing we do? and heart and tongue

  Accurse us for the deed?

  The future cannot touch us;

  The present gain we heed.

  Then, all together, dough-faces!

  Let’s stop the exciting clatter,

  And pacify slave-breeding wrath

  By yielding all the matter;

  For otherwise, as sure as guns,

  The Union it will shatter.

  Besides, to tell the honest truth

  (For us an innovation,)

  Keeping in with the slave power

  Is our personal salvation;

  We’ve very little to expect

  From t’ other part of the nation.

  Besides it’s plain at Washington

  Who likeliest wins the race,

  What earthly chance has “free soil”

  For any good fat place?

  While many a daw has feather’d his nest,

  By his creamy and meek dough-face.

  Take heart, then, sweet companions,

  Be steady, Scripture Dick!

  Webster, Cooper, Walker,

  To your allegiance stick!

  With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix,

  Stand up through thin and thick!

  We do not ask a bold brave front;

  We never try that game;

  ‘Twould bring the storm upon our heads,

  A huge mad storm of shame;

  Evade it, brothers—“compromise”

  Will answer just the same. PAUMANOK

  BLOOD-MONEY5

  “Guilty of the body and the blood of Christ”

  -1-

  Of olden time, when it came to pass

  That the beautiful god, Jesus, sho
uld finish his work on earth,

  Then went Judas, and sold the divine youth,

  And took pay for his body.

  Curs’d was the deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand

  grew dry;

  And darkness frown’d upon the seller of the like of God,

  Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her,

  and heaven refused him,

  He hung in the air, self-slaughter’d.

  The cycles, with their long shadows, have stalk’d silently

  forward,

  Since those ancient days—many a pouch enwrapping

  meanwhile

  Its fee, like that paid for the son of Mary.

  And still goes one, saying,

  “What will ye give me, and I will deliver this man unto you?”

  And they make the covenant, and pay the pieces of silver.

  -2-

  Look forth, deliverer,

  Look forth, first-born of the dead,

  Over the tree-tops of Paradise;

  See thyself in yet-continued bonds,

  Toilsome and poor, thou bear‘st man’s form again,

  Thou art reviled, scourged, put into prison,

  Hunted from the arrogant equality of the rest;

  With staves and swords throng the willing servants of

  authority,

  Again they surround thee, mad with devilish spite;

  Toward thee stretch the hands of a multitude, like vultures’

  talons,

  The meanest spit in thy face, they smite thee with their

  palms;

  Bruised, bloody, and pinion’d is thy body,

  More sorrowful than death is thy soul.

  Witness of anguish, brother of slaves,

  Not with thy price closed the price of thine image:

  And still Iscariot plies his trade.