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MYSELF
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, | |
| And what I assume you shall assume, | |
| For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. | |
| I loaf and invite my soul, | |
| I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. | 5 |
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| My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air, | |
| Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, | |
| I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, | |
| Hoping to cease not till death. | |
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| Creeds and schools in abeyance, | 10 |
| Retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, | |
| I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, | |
| Nature without check with original energy. | |
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LEAVES OF GRASS
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; | |
| How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. | 15 |
| I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. | |
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| Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, | |
| A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, | |
| Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? | |
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| Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. | 20 |
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| Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, | |
| And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, | |
| Growing among black folks as among white, | |
| Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. | |
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| And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. | 25 |
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| Tenderly will I use you curling grass, | |
| It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, | |
| It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, | |
| It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps, | |
| And here you are the mothers’ laps. | 30 |
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| This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, | |
| Darker than the colorless beards of old men, | |
| Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. | |
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| O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, | |
| And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. | 35 |
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| I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, | |
| And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. | |
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| What do you think has become of the young and old men? | |
| And what do you think has become of the women and children? | |
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| They are alive and well somewhere, | 40 |
| The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, | |
| And if ever there was it led forward life and does not wait at the end to arrest it, | |
| And ceased the moment life appeared. | |
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| All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, | |
| And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. | 45 |
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| 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. | |
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| One world is away 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, | 50 |
| I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. | |
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| My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite, | |
| I laugh at what you call dissolution, | |
| And I know the amplitude of time. | |
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HEROES
I UNDERSTAND the large hearts of heroes, | 55 |
| The courage of present times and all times, | |
| How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm, | |
| How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, | |
| And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you; | |
| How he followed with them and tacked with them three days and would not give it up, | 60 |
| How he saved the drifting company at last, | |
| How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their prepared graves, | |
| How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved men; | |
| All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, | |
| I am the man, I suffered, I was there. | 65 |
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| Agonies are one of my changes of garments, | |
| I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, | |
| My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. | |
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| I am the mashed fireman with breast-bone broken, | |
| Tumbling walls buried me in their debris, | 70 |
| Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades, | |
| I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels; | |
| They have cleared the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth. | |
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| I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake, | |
| Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy, | 75 |
| White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their firecaps, | |
| The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. | |
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| Distant and dead resuscitate, | |
| They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself. | |
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| I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort’s bombardment, | 80 |
| I am there again. | |
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| Again the long roll of the drummers, | |
| Again the attacking cannon, mortars, | |
| Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive. | |
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| I take part, I see and hear the whole, | 85 |
| The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aimed shots, | |
| The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip, | |
| Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs, | |
| The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion, | |
| The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. | 90 |
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| Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand, | |
| He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments. | |
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| Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight? | |
| Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? | |
| List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me. | 95 |
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| Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he) | |
| His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be; | |
| Along the lowered eve he came horribly raking us. | |
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| We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touched, | |
| My captain lashed fast with his own hands. | 100 |
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| We had received some eighteen pound shots under the water, | |
| On our lower gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. | |
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| Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark, | |
| Ten o’clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported, | |
| The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. | 105 |
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| The transit to and from the magazine is now stopped by the sentinels, | |
| They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. | |
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| Our frigate takes fire, | |
| The other asks if we demand quarter? | |
| If our colors are struck and the fighting done? | 110 |
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| Now I laugh content for I hear the voice of my little captain, | |
| We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting. | |
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| Only three guns are in use, | |
| One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy’s mainmast, | |
| Two well served with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. | 115 |
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| The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top, | |
| They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. | |
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| Not a moment’s cease, | |
| The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine. | |
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| One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. | 120 |
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| 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. | |
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| Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us. | |
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INFINITY
>MY feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, | 125 |
| On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, | |
| All below duly travelled, and still I mount and mount. | |
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| Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, | |
| Afar down I see the huge first Nothing I know I was even there, | |
| I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, | 130 |
| And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. | |
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| Long I was hugged close—long and long. | |
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| Immense have been the preparations for me, | |
| Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. | |
| Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, | 135 |
| For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, | |
| They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. | |
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| Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, | |
| My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. | |
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| For it the nebula cohered to an orb, | 140 |
| The long slow strata piled to rest it on, | |
| Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, | |
| Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. | |
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| All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me, | |
| Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. | 145 |
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| Old age superbly rising! O welcome, in effable grace of dying days! | |
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| Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself, | |
| And the dark hush promulges as much as any. | |
| I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, | |
| And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems. | 150 |
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| Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, | |
| Outward and outward and forever outward. | |
| My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels, | |
| He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, | |
| And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them. | 155 |
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| There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage, | |
| If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run, | |
| We should surely bring up again where we now stand, | |
| And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther. | |
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| A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient, | 160 |
| They are but parts, anything is but a part. | |
| See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, | |
| Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. | |
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| My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, | |
| The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms, | 165 |
| The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there. | |
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