Read Ebook: Leaves of Grass by Whitman Walt

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Ebook has 1839 lines and 134970 words, and 37 pages

LEAVES OF GRASS

Come, said my soul, Such verses for my Body let us write, That should I after return, Or, long, long hence, in other spheres, There to some group of mates the chants resuming, Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on, Ever and ever yet the verses owning--as, first, I here and now Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

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.

As I Ponder'd in Silence

As I ponder'd in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands, As to me directing like flame its eyes, With finger pointing to many immortal songs, And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said, Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it so, then I answer'd, I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, the field the world, For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, I above all promote brave soldiers.

In Cabin'd Ships at Sea

Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts, Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said, The sky o'erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet, We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here, And this is ocean's poem.

Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny, You not a reminiscence of the land alone, You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith, Consort to every ship that sails, sail you! Bear forth to them folded my love, Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves, Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea, This song for mariners and all their ships.

To Foreign Lands

I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

To a Historian

You who celebrate bygones, Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races, the life that has exhibited itself, Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and priests, I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself in his own rights, Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be, I project the history of the future.

To Thee Old Cause

To thee old cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee, These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee.

Thou orb of many orbs! Thou seething principle! thou well-kept, latent germ! thou centre! Around the idea of thee the war revolving, With all its angry and vehement play of causes, These recitatives for thee,--my book and the war are one, Merged in its spirit I and mine, as the contest hinged on thee, As a wheel on its axis turns, this book unwitting to itself, Around the idea of thee.

Eidolons

I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean eidolons.

Put in thy chants said he, No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in, Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all, That of eidolons.

Ever the dim beginning, Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, Ever the summit and the merge at last, Eidolons! eidolons!

Ever the mutable, Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering, Ever the ateliers, the factories divine, Issuing eidolons.

Lo, I or you, Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown, We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build eidolons.

The ostent evanescent, The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long, Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils, To fashion his eidolon.

Of every human life, The whole or large or small summ'd, added up, In its eidolon.

The old, old urge, Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles, From science and the modern still impell'd, The old, old urge, eidolons.

The present now and here, America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl, Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing, To-day's eidolons.

These with the past, Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea, Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages, Joining eidolons.

Densities, growth, facades, Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees, Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave, Eidolons everlasting.

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic, The visible but their womb of birth, Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape, The mighty earth-eidolon.

All space, all time, Fill'd with eidolons only.

The noiseless myriads, The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, The true realities, eidolons.

Not this the world, Nor these the universes, they the universes, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor, Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics, Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The entities of entities, eidolons.

Unfix'd yet fix'd, Ever shall be, ever have been and are, Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

The prophet and the bard, Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet, Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them, God and eidolons.

And thee my soul, Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations, Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet, Thy mates, eidolons.

Thy body permanent, The body lurking there within thy body, The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself, An image, an eidolon.

Thy very songs not in thy songs, No special strains to sing, none for itself, But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, A round full-orb'd eidolon.

For Him I Sing

For him I sing, I raise the present on the past, With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws, To make himself by them the law unto himself.

When I Read the Book

When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?

Beginning My Studies

Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

Beginners

How they are provided for upon the earth, 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 the States

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