Leaves of Grass Page #5

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

								

      pass to fitting spheres,
  Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the
      moment of death.

  Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the
      meaning, the main concern,
  Any more than a man's substance and life or a woman's substance and
      life return in the body and the soul,
  Indifferently before death and after death.

  Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and
      includes and is the soul;
  Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
      of it!

       14
  Whoever you are, to you endless announcements!

  Daughter of the lands did you wait for your poet?
  Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth and indicative hand?
  Toward the male of the States, and toward the female of the States,
  Exulting words, words to Democracy's lands.

  Interlink'd, food-yielding lands!
  Land of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice!
  Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple
      and the grape!
  Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of
      those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus!
  Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
  Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west
      Colorado winds!
  Land of the eastern Chesapeake! land of the Delaware!
  Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan!
  Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and
      Connecticut!
  Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!
  Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land!
  Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones!
  The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd!
  The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and
      the inexperienced sisters!
  Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the
      compact!
  The Pennsylvanian! the Virginian! the double Carolinian!
  O all and each well-loved by me! my intrepid nations! O I at any
      rate include you all with perfect love!
  I cannot be discharged from you! not from one any sooner than another!
  O death! O for all that, I am yet of you unseen this hour with
      irrepressible love,
  Walking New England, a friend, a traveler,
  Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples on
      Paumanok's sands,
  Crossing the prairies, dwelling again in Chicago, dwelling in every town,
  Observing shows, births, improvements, structures, arts,
  Listening to orators and oratresses in public halls,
  Of and through the States as during life, each man and woman my neighbor,
  The Louisianian, the Georgian, as near to me, and I as near to him and her,
  The Mississippian and Arkansian yet with me, and I yet with any of them,
  Yet upon the plains west of the spinal river, yet in my house of adobie,
  Yet returning eastward, yet in the Seaside State or in Maryland,
  Yet Kanadian cheerily braving the winter, the snow and ice welcome to me,
  Yet a true son either of Maine or of the Granite State, or the
      Narragansett Bay State, or the Empire State,
  Yet sailing to other shores to annex the same, yet welcoming every
      new brother,
  Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they
      unite with the old ones,
  Coming among the new ones myself to be their companion and equal,
      coming personally to you now,
  Enjoining you to acts, characters, spectacles, with me.

       15
  With me with firm holding, yet haste, haste on.
  For your life adhere to me,
  (I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give
      myself really to you, but what of that?
  Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

  No dainty dolce affettuoso I,
  Bearded, sun-burnt, gray-neck'd, forbidding, I have arrived,
  To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe,
  For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them.

       16
  On my way a moment I pause,
  Here for you! and here for America!
  Still the present I raise aloft, still the future of the States I
      harbinge glad and sublime,
  And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

  The red aborigines,
  Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds
      and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,
  Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee,
      Kaqueta, Oronoco,
  Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,
  Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the
      water and the land with names.

       17
  Expanding and swift, henceforth,
  Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick and audacious,
  A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching,
  A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests,
  New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

  These, my voice announcing--I will sleep no more but arise,
  You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,
      fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

       18
  See, steamers steaming through my poems,
  See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing,
  See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flat-boat,
      the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village,
  See, on the one side the Western Sea and on the other the Eastern Sea,
      how they advance and retreat upon my poems as upon their own shores,
  See, pastures and forests in my poems--see, animals wild and tame--see,
      beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass,
  See, in my poems, cities, solid, vast, inland, with paved streets,
      with iron and stone edifices, ceaseless vehicles, and commerce,
  See, the many-cylinder'd steam printing-press--see, the electric
      telegraph stretching across the continent,
  See, through Atlantica's depths pulses American Europe reaching,
      pulses of Europe duly return'd,
  See, the strong and quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing
      the steam-whistle,
  See, ploughmen ploughing farms--see, miners digging mines--see,
      the numberless factories,
  See, mechanics busy at their benches with tools--see from among them
      superior judges, philosophs, Presidents, emerge, drest in
      working dresses,
  See, lounging through the shops and fields of the States, me
      well-belov'd, close-held by day and night,
  Hear the loud echoes of my songs there--read the hints come at last.

       19
  O camerado close! O you and me at last, and us two only.
  O a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly!
  O something ecstatic and undemonstrable! O music wild!
  O now I triumph--and you shall also;
  O hand in hand--O wholesome pleasure--O one more desirer and lover!
  O to haste firm holding--to haste, haste on with me.

BOOK III

Song of Myself

       1
  I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
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