Leaves of Grass Page #10

Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Although the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and re-writing Leaves of Grass, revising it multiple times until his death. This resulted in vastly different editions over four decades—the first, a small book of twelve poems and the last, a compilation of over 400.

• Poetry

								

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

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

  All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
  Else it were time lost listening to me.

  I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
  That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

  Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity
      goes to the fourth-remov'd,
  I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

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

  Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with
      doctors and calculated close,
  I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

  In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
  And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

  I know I am solid and sound,
  To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
  All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

  I know I am deathless,
  I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
  I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
      stick at night.

  I know I am august,
  I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
  I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
  (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
      after all.)

  I exist as I am, that is enough,
  If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
  And if each and all be aware I sit content.

  One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
  And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
      million years,
  I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

  My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
  I laugh at what you call dissolution,
  And I know the amplitude of time.

       21
  I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
  The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
  The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
      into new tongue.

  I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
  And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
  And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.

  I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
  We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
  I show that size is only development.

  Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
  It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and
      still pass on.

  I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
  I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

  Press close bare-bosom'd night--press close magnetic nourishing night!
  Night of south winds--night of the large few stars!
  Still nodding night--mad naked summer night.

  Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!
  Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
  Earth of departed sunset--earth of the mountains misty-topt!
  Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
  Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
  Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
  Far-swooping elbow'd earth--rich apple-blossom'd earth!
  Smile, for your lover comes.

  Prodigal, you have given me love--therefore I to you give love!
  O unspeakable passionate love.

  Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight!
  We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

       22
  You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean,
  I behold from the beach your crooked fingers,
  I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
  We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,
  Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
  Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.

  Sea of stretch'd ground-swells,
  Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
  Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
  Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
  I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all phases.

  Partaker of influx and efflux I, extoller of hate and conciliation,
  Extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms.

  I am he attesting sympathy,
  (Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that
      supports them?)

  I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet
      of wickedness also.

  What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
  Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent,
  My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
  I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

  Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
  Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be work'd over and rectified?

  I find one side a balance and the antipedal side a balance,
  Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
  Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

  This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
  There is no better than it and now.

  What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such wonder,
  The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

       23
  Endless unfolding of words of ages!
  And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.

  A word of the faith that never balks,
  Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.

  It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,
  That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.

  I accept Reality and dare not question it,
  Materialism first and last imbuing.

  Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
  Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,
  This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of
      the old cartouches,
  These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas.
  This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a
      mathematician.

  Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!
  Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,
  I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.

  Less the reminders of properties told my words,
  And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,
  And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and
      women fully equipt,
  And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that
      plot and conspire.

       24
  Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
  Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
  No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
  No more modest than immodest.

  Unscrew the locks from the doors!
  Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

  Whoever degrades another degrades me,
  And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

  Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current
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