Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (13 page)

 

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 remembrancer 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 hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,
^c
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 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.

 

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 any one 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 sweetheart 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 the 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.
¹⁰

 

 

The blab of the pave.... the tires of carts and sluff of bootsoles
and talk of the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The carnival of sleighs, the clinking and shouted jokes and pelts
of snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites.... the fury of roused mobs,
The flap of the curtained litter—the sick man inside, borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd—the policeman with his star quickly working
his passage to the centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
The souls moving along . . . . are they invisible while the least
atom of the stones is visible?
What groans of overfed or half-starved who fall on the flags
sunstruck or in fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home
and give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here.... what
howls restrained by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the resonance of them.... I come again and
again.

 

The big doors of the country-barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow:
I am there.... I help.... I came stretched atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts.... one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the crossbeams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the freshkilled game,
Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by
my side.

 

The Yankee clipper is under her three skysails .... she cuts the
sparkle and scud,
My eyes settle the land.... I bend at her prow or shout joyously
from the deck.

 

The boatmen and clamdiggers arose early and stopped for me,
I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good
time,
You should have been with us that day round the chowder
kettle.

 

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far
west.... the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near by crosslegged and dumbly
smoking.... they had moccasins to their feet and large thick
blankets hanging from their shoulders;
On a bank lounged the trapper.... he was dressed mostly in
skins.... his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck,
One hand rested on his rifle . . . . the other hand held firmly the
wrist of the red girl,
She had long eyelashes.... her head was bare.... her coarse
straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and
reached to her feet.

 

The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey
and weak,
And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and
bruised feet,

And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him
some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his
awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and
ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and passed
north,
I had him sit next me at table.... my firelock leaned in the
corner.

 

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly,
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.

 

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the
window.

 

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

 

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

 

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

 

The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams passed all over their bodies.

 

An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

 

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to
the sun.... they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and
bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
¹¹

 

The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.
¹²

 

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge.... they are all out.... there is a great
heat in the fire.

 

From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers roll—overhand so slow—overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

 

The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses.... the block
swags underneath on its tied-over chain,
The negro that drives the huge dray of the stoneyard .... steady
and tall he stands poised on one leg on the stringpiece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over
his hipband,
His glance is calm and commanding.... he tosses the slouch of
his hat away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache.... falls on the
black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.

 

I behold the picturesque giant and love him.... and I do not
stop there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving.... backward as well
as forward slueing,
To niches aside and junior bending.

 

Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade, what is that you
express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and
daylong ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
.... I believe in those winged purposes,
And acknowledge the red yellow and white playing within me,
And consider the green and violet and the tufted crown
intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not
something else,
And the mocking bird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet
trills pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

 

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.

 

The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the housesill,
the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.

 

The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

 

I am enamoured of growing outdoors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wielders of axes and
mauls, of the drivers of horses,
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

 

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill,
Scattering it freely forever.

The pure contralto sings in the organloft,
The carpenter dresses his plank.... the tongue of his foreplane
whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their
thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whaleboat, lance and harpoon are
ready,
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big
wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats
and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,
He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s
bedroom;
^d
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his
case,
He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the
manuscript;
The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand.... the drunkard nods by
the barroom stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves.... the policeman travels his
beat.... the gatekeeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon . . . . I love him
though I do not know him;
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young.... some lean
on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman and takes his position
and levels his piece;