Leaves of Grass Page #15

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

								

  Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and
      clear his decks.

  The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially
      the main-top,
  They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

  Not a moment's cease,
  The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.

  One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.

  Serene stands the little captain,
  He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,
  His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

  Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.

       36
  Stretch'd and still lies the midnight,
  Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
  Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the
      one we have conquer'd,
  The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a
      countenance white as a sheet,
  Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin,
  The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully
      curl'd whiskers,
  The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below,
  The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
  Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh
      upon the masts and spars,
  Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
  Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
  A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,
  Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by
      the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,
  The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
  Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long,
      dull, tapering groan,
  These so, these irretrievable.

       37
  You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
  In at the conquer'd doors they crowd! I am possess'd!
  Embody all presences outlaw'd or suffering,
  See myself in prison shaped like another man,
  And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

  For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
  It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.

  Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd to him
      and walk by his side,
  (I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat
      on my twitching lips.)

  Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried
      and sentenced.

  Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,
  My face is ash-color'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.

  Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
  I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

       38
  Enough! enough! enough!
  Somehow I have been stunn'd. Stand back!
  Give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,
  I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

  That I could forget the mockers and insults!
  That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the
      bludgeons and hammers!
  That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and
      bloody crowning.

  I remember now,
  I resume the overstaid fraction,
  The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,
  Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

  I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average
      unending procession,
  Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,
  Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,
  The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.

  Eleves, I salute you! come forward!
  Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

       39
  The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
  Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

  Is he some Southwesterner rais'd out-doors? is he Kanadian?
  Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?
  The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?

  Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
  They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

  Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb'd
      head, laughter, and naivete,
  Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
  They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
  They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of
      the glance of his eyes.

       40
  Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask--lie over!
  You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

  Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
  Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

  Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
  And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
  And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

  Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
  When I give I give myself.

  You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
  Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you,
  Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
  I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
  And any thing I have I bestow.

  I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
  You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

  To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
  On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
  And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

  On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.
  (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

  To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.
  Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
  Let the physician and the priest go home.

  I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
  O despairer, here is my neck,
  By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.

  I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
  Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force,
  Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

  Sleep--I and they keep guard all night,
  Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
  I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
  And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.

       41
  I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
  And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

  I heard what was said of the universe,
  Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
  It is middling well as far as it goes--but is that all?

  Magnifying and applying come I,
  Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
  Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,
  Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
  Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,
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