A Treasury of Favorite Poems

WALT WHITMAN

One’s Self I Sing

One’s self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

Starting from Paumanok

Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,

Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,

After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,

Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,

Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner in California,

Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring,

Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,

Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,

Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of mighty Niagara,

Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and strong-breasted bull,

Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow, my amaze,

Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the mountain-hawk,

And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars,

Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

Victory, union, faith, identity, time,

The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,

Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.

This then is life,

Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

How curious! how real!

Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

See revolving the globe,

The ancestor-continents away group’d together,

The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus between.

See, vast tracldess spaces,

As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,

Countless masses debouch upon them,

They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.

See, projected through time,

For me an audience interminable.

With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop,

Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,

One generation playing its part and passing on,

Another generation playing its part and passing on in its turn,

With faces turn’d sideways or backward towards me to listen,

With eyes retrospective towards me.

III

Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!

Foremost! century marches! Libertad! masses!

For you a programme of chants.

Chants of the prairies,

Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea,

Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota,

Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence equidistant,

Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.

Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North,

Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring,

Surround them East and West, for they would surround you,

And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you.

I conn’d old times,

I sat studying at the feet of the great masters,

Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?

Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.

Dead poets, philosophs, priests,

Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,

Language -shapers on other shores,

Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate,

I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left wafted hither,

I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it,)

Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves,

Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it,

I stand in my place with my own day here.

Here lands female and male,

Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of materials,

Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow’d,

The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,

The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,

Yes here comes my mistress the soul.

The soul,

Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer than water ebbs and flows.

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems,

And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality,

For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and of immortality.

I will make a song for these States that no one State may under any circumstances be subjected to another State,

And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night between all the States, and between any two of them,

And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with menacing points,

And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;

And a song make I of the One form’d out of all,

The fang’d and glittering One whose head is over all,

Resolute warlike One including and over all,

(However high the head of any else that head is over all.)

I will acknowledge contemporary lands,

I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courteously every city large and small,

And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is heroism upon land and sea,

And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.

I will sing the song of companionship,

I will show what alone must finally compact these,

I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me,

I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me,

I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,

I will give them complete abandonment,

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,

For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?

VII

I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,

I advance from the people in their own spirit,

Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,

I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,

I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—and I say there is in fact no evil,

(Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or to me, as any thing else.)

I too, following many and follow’d by many, inaugurate a religion, I descend into the arena,

(It may be I am destin’d to utter the loudest cries there, the win- ner’s pealing shouts,

Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.)

Each is not for its own sake,

I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion’s sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,

None has ever yet adored or worship’d half enough,

None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is.

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion,

Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur;

(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,

Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)

VIII

What are you doing young man?

Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours?

These ostensible realities, politics, points?

Your ambition or business whatever it may be?

It is well—against such I say not a word, I am their poet also,

But behold! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion’s sake,

For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth,

Any more than such are to religion.

What do you seek so pensive and silent?

What do you need camerado?

Dear son do you think it is love?

Listen dear son—listen America, daughter or son,

It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess, and yet it satisfies, it is great,

But there is something else very great, it makes the whole coincide,

It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and provides for all.

Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion,

The following chants each for its kind I sing.

My comrade!

For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising inclusive and more resplendent,

The greatness of Love and Democracy, and the greatness of Religion.

Melange mine own, the unseen and the seen,

Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,

Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering around me,

Living beings, identities now doubtless near us in the air that we know not of,

Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,

These selecting, these in hints demanded of me.

Not he with a daily kiss onward from childhood kissing me,

Has winded and twisted around me that which holds me to him,

Any more than I am held to the heavens and all the spiritual world,

After what they have done to me, suggesting themes.

O such themes—equalities! O divine average!

Warblings under the sun, usher’d as now, or at noon, or setting,

Strains musical flowing through ages, now reaching hither,

I take to your reckless and composite chords, add to them, and cheerfully pass them forward.

As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,

I have seen where the she-bird the mocking-bird sat on her nest in the briers hatching her brood.

I have seen the he-bird also,

I have paus’d to hear him near at hand inflating his throat and joyfully singing.

And while I paus’d it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only,

Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,

But subtle, clandestine, away beyond, A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born.

XII

Democracy! near at hand to you a throat is now inflating itself and joyfully singing.

Ma femme! for the brood beyond us and of us,

For those who belong here and those to come,

I exultant to be ready for them will now shake out carols stronger and haughtier than have ever yet been heard upon earth.

I will make the songs of passion to give them their way,

And your songs outlaw’d offenders, for I scan you with kindred eyes, and carry you with me the same as any.

I will make the true poem of riches,

To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward and is not dropt by death; I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the bard of personality,

And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of the other,

And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin’d to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future,

And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to beautiful results,

And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,

And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact,

And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts,

But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble,

And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to all days,

And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul,

Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.

XIII

Was somebody asking to see the soul?

See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;

How can the real body ever die and be buried?

Of your real body and any man’s or woman’s real body,

Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners , and 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!

XIV

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 southwest 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 Pennsylvania!!! the Virginian! the double Carolinian! 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.

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.

XVI

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.

XVII

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.

XVIII

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.

XIX

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.

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!

Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!

On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,

And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,

The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,

The similitudes of the past and those of the future,

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river,

The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,

The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,

The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,

A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,

Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling- back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

III

It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow,

I was refresh’d, Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,

Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,

Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow,

Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,

Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,

Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,

Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of

my head in the sunlit water,

Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,

Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,

Look’d toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,

Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,

Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,

The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,

The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants,

The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,

The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,

The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,

The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening, The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks,

On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank’d on each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,

On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night,

Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.

These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,

I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,

The men and women I saw were all near to me,

Others the same—others who look back on me because I look’d forward to them,

(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

What is it then between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not,

I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,

I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,

I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,

In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,

In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,

I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,

I too had receiv’d identity by my body,

That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my body.

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,

The dark threw its patches down upon me also,

The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious,

My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,

I am he who knew what it was to be evil, I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,

Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,

Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,

Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,

The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,

The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,

Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,

Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,

Was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,

Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat, Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told them a word, Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,

Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,

The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,

Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

VII

Closer yet I approach you,

What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance,

I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?

Who knows but I am enjoying this?

Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?

VIII

Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm’d Manhattan?

River and sunset and scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide?

The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter?

What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?

What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face?

Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then do we not?

What I promis’d without mentioning it, have you not accepted?

What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is accomplish’d, is it not?

Flow on, river! flow with the flood -tide, and ebb with the ebb- \tide!

Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!

Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!

Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!

Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!

Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!

Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!

Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name!

Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!

Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!

Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you;

Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;

Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;

Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you!

Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one’s head, in the sunlit water! Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d schooners, sloops, lighters!

Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower’d at sunset!

Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,

You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,

About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas,

Thrive, cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,

Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,

Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,

We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate hence-forward,

Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,

We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us,

We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,

You furnish your parts toward eternity,

Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love.

O powerful western fallen star!

O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!

O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!

O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.

III

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d 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-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig with its flower I break.

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,

It thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,

Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,

Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,

Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,

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.

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,

With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,

With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d 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 pour’d 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.

VII

(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.)

VIII

O western orb sailing the heaven,

Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,

As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,

As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,

As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,)

As we wander’d 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 how full you were of woe,

As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,

As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,

As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,

Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.

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 detain’d me,

The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.

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’ll perfume the grave of him I love.

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 gray 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.

XII

Lo, body and soul—this land,

My own 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 cover’d 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 fulfill’d noon,

The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,

Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

XIII

Sing on, sing on you gray-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 odor holds me.

XIV

Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,

In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,

In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d 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 sail’d,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,

And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,

And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,

Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,

Appear’ d the cloud, appear ‘d the long black trail,

And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.

Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,

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 receiv’d me,

The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,

And he sang the carol 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 carol of the bird.

And the charm of the carol 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.

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! praise! 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 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 feast ings for thee,

And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,

And life and the fields t 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-pack d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.

To the tally of my soul,

Loud and strong kept up the gray-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.

And I saw askant the armies,

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,

Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,

And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)

And the staffs all splinter’d 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 the slain soldiers of the war,

But I saw they were not as was thought,

They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,

The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,

And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,

And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

XVI

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,

Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,

I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.

I cease 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.

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,

The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,

And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,

With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,

With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,

Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to 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,

There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, 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!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

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 ribbon’d wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, 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 mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.