The Poetry of Walt Whitman
From Leaves of GrassThere Was a Child Went Forth
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or
pity or love or dread, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of
the day....or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass, and white and red morningglories, and white and red
clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the
mare's foal, and the cow's calf, and the noisy brood of the
barnyard or by the mire of the pondside..and the fish
suspending themselves so curiously below there..and the
beautiful curious liquid..and the water-plants with their
graceful flat heads..all became part of him.
And the field-sprouts of April and May, became part of him...
wintergrain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of
the eculent roots of the garden,
And the appletrees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward
....and woodberries..and the commonest weeds by the road;
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the
tavern whence he had lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school..and
the friendly boys that passed..and the quarrelsome boys
..and the tidy and freshcheeked girls..and the barefoot
negro boy and girl,
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.
His own parents..he that propelled the fatherstuff at night,
and fathered him..and she that conceived him in her womb
and birthed him....they gave this child more of themselves
than that,
They gave him afterward every day....they and of them became
part of him.
The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supertable,
The mother with mild words....clean her cap and gown....a
wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by:
The father, strong, selfsufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture....
the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsayed.... the sense of what is real
....the thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of daytime and the doubts of nighttime...the curious
whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so....Or is it all flashes and specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets..if they are not
flashes and specks what are they?
The streets themselves, and the fascades of houses....the goods in
the windows,
Vehicles..teams..the tiered wharves, and the huge crossing at
the ferries;
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset....the river
between,
Shadows..aureola and mist..light falling on roofs and gables
of white or brown, three miles off,
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide..the little
boat slacktowed astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves and quickbroken crests and slapping;
The strata of colored clouds....the long bar of maroontint away
solitary by itself....the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's edge, the flying seacrow, the frangrance of saltmarsh
and shoremud;
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who
now goes and will always go forth every day,
And these become of him or her that peruses them now.
Who Learns My Lesson Complete
Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss and journeyman and apprentice?....churchman and atheist?
The stupid and the wise thinker....parents and offspring...
merchant and clerk and porter and customer....editor,
author, artist and schoolboy?
Draw nigh and commence,
It is no lesson....it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another....and every one to another still.
The great laws take and effuse without argument,
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits....I do not halt and make salaams.
I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of
things,
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
I cannot say to any person what I hear....I cannot say it to myself
....it is very wonderful.
It is no little matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so
exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt or the
untruth of a single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,
nor ten decillions of years,
Nor plannned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans
and builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me or any one else.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal,
I know it is wonderful....but my eyesight is equally wonderful
....and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally
wonderful.
And how I was not palpable once but am now....and was born
on the last day of May 1819....and passed from a babe in
the creeping trance of three summers and three winters to
articulate and walk....are all equally wonderful.
And that I grew six feet high....and that I have become a man
thirty-six years old in 1855....and that I am here anyhow-
are all equally wonderful;
And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each
other, is every bit as wonderful:
And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
And that I can remind you, and you thin them and know them to
be true is just as wonderful,
And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth is
equally wonderful,
And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
wonderful.
Come I shoud like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that
is not just as wonderful,
And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday
morning and Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.
LEAVES OF GRASS [Song of Myself]
I CELEBRATE MYSELF,
And what I assume you shall assume,
for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease.... observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes.... the shelves are crowded
with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume....it has no taste of the
distillation....it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever....I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, and buzzed whispers....loveroot, silkthread,
crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration....the beating of my heart....
the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
darkcolored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belched words of my voice....words loosed to
the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses...a few embraces...a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the tress as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hillsides,
The feeling of health...the full-noon trill...the song of me
rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the
earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun....there are millions
of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand....nor look
through eyes of the dead....nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
I have heard what the talkers were talking....the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance....Always substance
and increase,
Always a knit of identity....always distinction....always a breed
of life.
To elaborate is no avail....Learned and unlearned feel that it
is so.
Sure as the most certain sure....plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clean and sweet is my soul....and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.
Lack one lacks both....and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst, age vexus age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less
familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied....I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As God comes a loving bedfellow and sleeps at my side all night and
close on the peep of the day,
And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels bulging the house
with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptance and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and
which is ahead?
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet....the effect upon me of my early life....of the
ward and city I live in....of the nation,
The latest news....discoveries, inventions, societies....authors
old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks-or of myself...or ill-doing....
or loss or lack of money....or depressions or exaltations,
They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looks with its sidecurved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments....I witness and wait.
I believe in you my soul....the other I am must not abase itself
to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass....loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want....not custom or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my barestript heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and know-
edge that pass all the art and arguments of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers....and the
women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped with stones, and elder
and mullen and pokeweed.
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.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff
woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and rememberancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child....the produced babe of the
vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglypic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as amoung whites,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
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 and from women, and from
offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.
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.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.
I wish I could transplate 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.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
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.
All goes onward and outward....and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe
....and am not contained between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.
I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself;
They do not know how immortal, but I know.
Every kind for itself and its own....for me mine male and female,
For me all that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweethearts and the old maid....for me mothers and
the mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.
Who need be afraid of the merge?
Undrape....you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless....and can never
be shaken away.
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.
The youngster and the redfaced girl turn aside up he bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top
The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
It is so....I witnessed the corpse....there the pistol had fallen.
The blab of the pave....the tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles
and talk of the promenaders,