Minstrels latent on the
prairies!
Whitman
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich
green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising delicate, with the perfume strong I
love,
With every leaf a miracle: and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-coloured blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break.
4.
In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song:
Song of the bleeding throat!
Death's outlet song of life--for well, dear brother, I know,
If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou wouldst surely die.
5.
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes, and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the
ground, spotting the greydebris;
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes--passing the endless
grass;
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprising;
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards;
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6.
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women standing,
With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit--with the silent sea of faces,
and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and
solemn;
With all the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs--Where amid these you
journey,
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang;
Here! coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7.
Nor for you, for one, alone;
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring:
For fresh as the morning--thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and
sacred Death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O Death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes!
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, O Death.
8.
O western orb, sailing the heaven!
Now I know what you must have meant, as a month since we walked,
As we walked up and down in the dark blue so mystic,
As we walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night,
As you drooped from the sky low down, as if to my side, while the other
stars all looked on;
As we wandered together the solemn night, for something, I know not what,
kept me from sleep;
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west, ere you went, how
full you were of woe;
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze, in the cool transparent
night,
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black of the
night,
As my soul, in its trouble, dissatisfied, sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded, dropped in the night, and was gone.
9.
Sing on, there in the swamp!
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes--I hear your call;
I hear--I come presently--I understand you;
But a moment I linger--for the lustrous star has detained me;
The star, my comrade departing, holds and detains me.
10.
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern Sea, and blown from the Western Sea, till there on
the prairies meeting:
These, and with these, and the breath of my chant,
I perfume the grave of him I love.
11.
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the grey smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air;
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the
trees prolific;
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river,
with a wind-dapple here and there;
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and
shadows;
And the city at hand, with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life, and the workshops, and the workmen homeward
returning.
12.
Lo! body and soul! this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and
the ships;
The varied and ample land--the South and the North in the
light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.
Lo! the most excellent sun, so calm and haughty;
The violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes;
The gentle, soft-born, measureless light;
The miracle, spreading, bathing all--the fulfilled noon;
The coming eve, delicious--the welcome night, and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13.
Sing on! sing on, you grey-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses--pour your chant from the bushes;
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother--warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid, and free, and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul! O wondrous singer!
You only I hear,. . . yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart;)
Yet the lilac, with mastering odour, holds me.
14.
Now while I sat in the day, and looked forth,
In the close of the day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the
farmer preparing his crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, after the perturbed winds and the storms;
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of
children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides,--and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with
labour,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals
and minutiae of daily usages;
And the streets, how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities
pent--lo! then and there,
Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail;
And I knew Death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of Death.
15.
And the Thought of Death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle, as with companions, and as holding the hands of
companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night, that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me;
The grey-brown bird I know received us Comrades three;
And he sang what seemed the song of Death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the singing of the bird.
And the charm of the singing rapt me,
As I held, as if by their hands, my Comrades in the night;
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
16.
Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death.
Praised be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love--But praise! O praise and praise,
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee--I glorify thee above all;
I bring thee a song that, when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, encompassing Death-strong deliveress!
When it is so--when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee--adornments and feastings for
thee;
And the sights of the open landscape, and the high-spread sky, are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night, in silence, under many a star;
The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave, whose voice I know;
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled Death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song!
Over the rising and sinking waves--over the myriad fields, and the prairies
wide;
Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy, to thee, O Death!
17.
To the tally of my soul
Loud and strong kept up the grey-brown bird,
With pure, deliberate notes, spreading, filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist, and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my Comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
18.
I saw the vision of armies;
And I saw, as in noiseless dreams, hundreds of battle-flags;
Borne through the smoke of the battles, and pierced with missiles, I saw
them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody;
And at last but a few shreds of the flags left on the staffs, (and all in
silence,)
And the staffs all splintered and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men--I saw them;
I saw the debris and debris of all dead soldiers.
But I saw they were not as was thought;
They themselves were fully at rest--they suffered not;
The living remained and suffered--the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
19.
Passing the visions, passing the night;
Passing, unloosing the hold of my Comrades' hands;
Passing the song of the hermit bird, and the tallying song of my soul;
Victorious song, Death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-altering song;
As low and wailing, yet clear, the notes, rising and falling, flooding the
night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting
with joy.
Covering the earth, and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night, I heard from recesses.
20.
Must I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves?
Must I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring?
Must I pass from my song for thee--
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night?
21.
Yet each I keep, and all;
The song, the wondrous chant of the grey-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe;
With the lilac tali, and its blossoms of mastering odour;
Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep--for the
dead I loved so well;
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and this for his
dear sake;
Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul,
With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird,
There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.
[Footnote 1: "The evening star, which, as many may remember night after
night, in the early part of that eventful spring, hung low in the west with
unusual and tender brightness. "--JOHN BURROUGHS. ]
_O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! _
(FOR THE DEATH OF LINCOLN. )
1.
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!
The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won.
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But, O heart! heart! heart!
Leave you not the little spot
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells!
Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths; for you the shores a-crowding:
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
O Captain! dear father!
This arm I push beneath you.
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead!
3.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still:
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed and done:
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!
But I, with silent tread,
Walk the spot my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
_PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! _
1.
Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
2.
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
3.
O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
4.
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
5.
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world;
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
6.
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
7.
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;
We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
8.
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
9.
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood
interveined;
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
10.
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult--I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers;
11.
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your
heads all,)
Raise the fanged and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weaponed mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
12.
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
13.
On and on, the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly filled,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
14.
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is filled,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
15.
All the pulses of the world,
Falling in, they beat for us, with the Western movement beat;
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
16.
Life's involved and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers, O pioneers!
17.
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
18.
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
19.
Lo! the darting, bowling orb!
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets;
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
20.
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait
behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
21.
O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
22.
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep--you have done your work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
23.
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
24.
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they locked and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
25.
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our
way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
26.
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the head of the army! --swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
_TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS. _
1.
Earth, round, rolling, compact--suns, moons, animals--all these are words
to be said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances--beings, premonitions, lispings of
the future,
Behold! these are vast words to be said.
Were you thinking that those were the words--those upright lines? those
curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words--the substantial words are in the ground and
sea,
They are in the air--they are in you.
Were you thinking that those were the words--those delicious sounds out of
your friends' mouths?
No; the real words are more delicious than they.
Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped,
natural, gay;
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.
Air, soil, water, fire--these are words;
I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate
with theirs--my name is nothing to them;
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil,
water, fire, know of my name?
A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings,
meanings;
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings
and meanings also.
2.
The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth;
The great masters know the earth's words, and use them more than the
audible words.
Amelioration is one of the earth's words;
The earth neither lags nor hastens;
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump;
It is not half beautiful only--defects and excrescences show just as much
as perfections show.
The earth does not withhold--it is generous enough;
The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either;
They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print;
They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth. I utter and utter:
I speak not; yet, if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you?
To bear--to better; lacking these, of what avail am I?
_Accouche! Accouchez! _
Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?
Will you squat and stifle there?
The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out;
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.
The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself--possesses
still underneath;
Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of
slaves,
Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young
people, accents of bargainers,
Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail.
To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great Mother never fail;
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does
not fail;
Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.
3.
Of the interminable sisters,
Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,
Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,
The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.
With her ample back towards every beholder,
With the fascinations of youth, and the equal fascinations of age,
Sits she whom I too love like the rest--sits undisturbed,
Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes
glance back from it,
Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,
Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.
Seen at hand, or seen at a distance,
Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,
Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a companion,
Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of
those who are with them,
From the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance,
From the open countenances of animals, or from inanimate things,
From the landscape or waters, or from the exquisite apparition of the sky,
From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,
Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same
companions.
Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and
sixty-five resistlessly round the sun;
Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-
five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they.
Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading,
Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, for ever withstanding, passing, carrying,
The Soul's realisation and determination still inheriting;
The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
No baulk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking,
Swift, glad, content, unbereaved, nothing losing,
Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,
The divine ship sails the divine sea.
4.
Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you;
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky;
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.
Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, such as the word of the
past and present, and the word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another--not one!
Not one can grow for another--not one!
The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him;
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him;
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him;
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him;
The love is to the lover, and conies back most to him;
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him--it cannot fail;
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress, not
to the audience;
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the
indication of his own.
5.
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be
complete!
I swear the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains
broken and jagged!
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the
earth!
I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the
theory of the earth!
No politics, art, religion, behaviour, or what not, is of account, unless
it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude, of the
earth.
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds
love!
It is that which contains itself--which never invites, and never refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!
I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings
of the earth;
Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the truths of the earth;
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch.
I swear I see what is better than to tell the best;
It is always to leave the best untold.
When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot,
My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
I become a dumb man.
The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow--all or any is best;
It is not what you anticipated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer;
Things are not dismissed from the places they held before;
The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before;
Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before;
But the Soul is also real,--it too is positive and direct;
No reasoning, no proof has established it,
Undeniable growth has established it.
6.
This is a poem for the sayers of words--these are hints of meanings,
These are they that echo the tones of souls, and the phrases of souls;
If they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then?
If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then?
I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the
best!
I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
7.
Say on, sayers!
Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
Work on--it is materials you bring, not breaths;
Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost!
It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use;
When the materials are all prepared, the architects shall appear.
I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them
and lead them;
I swear to you they will understand you and justify you;
I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and
encloses all, and is faithful to all;
I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you--they shall perceive
that you are not an iota less than they;
I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them.
_VOICES. _
1.
Now I make a leaf of Voices--for I have found nothing mightier than they
are,
And I have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place.
2.
O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around
the globe.
All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practised and perfect organ? Where is the developed Soul?
For I see every word uttered thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,
impossible on less terms.
I see brains and lips closed--tympans and temples unstruck,
Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose,
Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering,
for ever ready, in all words.
_WHOSOEVER. _
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear those supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles,
follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs-out of commerce, shops, law, science, work,
farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling,
eating, drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
Oh! I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but
you.
I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you--you have not done justice to yourself;
None but have found you imperfect--I only find no imperfection in you;
None but would subordinate you--I only am he who will never consent to
subordinate you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what
waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all,
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of
gold-coloured light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-
coloured light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it streams,
effulgently flowing for ever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are--you have slumbered upon yourself all your
life;
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what
is their return?
The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed
routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they
do not conceal you from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk
others, they do not baulk me.
The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature
death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you;
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to
you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the
songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame compared to you;
These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--you are immense and
interminable as they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion,
dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you
are promulgates itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is
scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its
way.
_BEGINNERS. _
How they are provided for upon the earth, appearing at intervals;
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to any--What a paradox appears
their age;
How people respond to them, yet know them not;
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times;
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great
purchase.
_TO A PUPIL. _
1.
Is reform needed? Is it through you?
The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you need to
accomplish it.
You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion,
clean and sweet?
Do you not see how it would serve to have such a Body and Soul that, when
you enter the crowd, an atmosphere of desire and command enters
with you, and every one is impressed with your personality?
2.
O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
Go, dear friend! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure
yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness,
elevatedness;
Rest not, till you rivet and publish yourself of your own personality.
LINKS.
1.
Think of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to
live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.
2.
Think of loving and being loved;
I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such
things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you.
3.
Think of the past;
I warn you that, in a little while, others will find their past in you and
your times.
The race is never separated--nor man nor woman escapes;
All is inextricable--things, spirits, nature, nations, you too--from
precedents you come.
Recall the ever-welcome defiers (the mothers precede them);
Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons--brother of slaves, felons,
idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.
4.
Think of the time when you was not yet born;
Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will be dying.
Think of spiritual results:
Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects
pass into spiritual results.
Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;
The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
womanhood?
_THE WATERS. _
The world below the brine.
Forests at the bottom of the sea--the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds--the thick tangle, the
openings, and the pink turf,
Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold--the play
of light through the water,
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks--coral, gluten, grass, rushes--and the
aliment of the swimmers,
Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to
the bottom:
The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with
his flukes,
The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy
sea-leopard, and the sting-ray.
Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes--sight in those ocean-depths--
breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do.
The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by
beings like us, who walk this sphere:
The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres.
_TO THE STATES. _
TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD. [1]
Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your
Arctic freezings! )
Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the
President?
Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for
reasons.
With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly
awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will
surely awake.
[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor,
succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;--1845 to 1857. ]
_TEARS. _
Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears;
On the white shore dripping, dripping, sucked in by the sand;
Tears--not a star shining--all dark and desolate;
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head:
--O who is that ghost? --that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouched there on the sand?
Streaming tears--sobbing tears--throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach;
O wild and dismal night-storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!
O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated
pace;
But away, at night, as you fly, none looking--O then the unloosened ocean
Of tears! tears! tears!
_A SHIP. _
1.
Aboard, at the ship's helm,
A young steersman, steering with care.
A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell--O a warning bell, rocked by the waves.
O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell's admonition,
The bows turn,--the freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her grey
sails;
The beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away
gaily and safe.
2.
But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!
O ship of the body--ship of the soul--voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.
_GREATNESS. _
1.
Great are the myths--I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve--I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,
inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out with you, or sink with you.
Great is Youth--equally great is Old Age--great are the Day and Night;
Great is Wealth--great is Poverty--great is Expression--great is Silence.
