Leaves of Grass Page #12

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

								

  I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
  They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

  I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
  To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

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  Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
  Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
  Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
  My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
      different from myself,
  On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
  Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
  Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
  Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
  Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
  Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
  Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
  They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,
  No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
  Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,
  Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

  The sentries desert every other part of me,
  They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
  They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

  I am given up by traitors,
  I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the
      greatest traitor,
  I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

  You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,
  Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.

       29
  Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch!
  Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

  Parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,
  Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

  Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,
  Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.

       30
  All truths wait in all things,
  They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
  They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
  The insignificant is as big to me as any,
  (What is less or more than a touch?)

  Logic and sermons never convince,
  The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

  (Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
  Only what nobody denies is so.)

  A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
  I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
  And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
  And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
  And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it
      becomes omnific,
  And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.

       31
  I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,
  And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg
      of the wren,
  And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
  And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
  And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
  And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
  And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

  I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits,
      grains, esculent roots,
  And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
  And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
  But call any thing back again when I desire it.

  In vain the speeding or shyness,
  In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
  In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones,
  In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
  In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
  In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
  In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
  In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
  In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador,
  I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

       32
  I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
      self-contain'd,
  I stand and look at them long and long.

  They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
  They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
  They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
  Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
      owning things,
  Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
      years ago,
  Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

  So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
  They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their
      possession.

  I wonder where they get those tokens,
  Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

  Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
  Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
  Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
  Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
  Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.

  A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
  Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
  Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
  Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

  His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
  His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.

  I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
  Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
  Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

       33
  Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,
  What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass,
  What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,
  And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

  My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,
  I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,
  I am afoot with my vision.

  By the city's quadrangular houses--in log huts, camping with lumber-men,
  Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
  Weeding my onion-patch or hosing rows of carrots and parsnips,
      crossing savannas, trailing in forests,
  Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,
  Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the
      shallow river,
  Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the
      buck turns furiously at the hunter,
  Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the
      otter is feeding on fish,
  Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
  Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the
      beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall;
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