Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (16 page)

 

Parting tracked by arriving.... perpetual payment of the
perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

 

Sprouts take and accumulate.... stand by the curb prolific and
vital,
Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.

 

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?

 

Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

 

Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.

 

A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or
woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each
other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it
becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,
And the pismire
^p
is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the
egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’ œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the
farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

 

I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and
fruits and grains and esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call any thing close again when I desire it.

 

In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying
low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razorbilled auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly.... I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

 

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals.... they are
so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied.... not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

 

So they show their relations to me and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself.... they evince them plainly in
their possession.

 

I do not know where they got those tokens,
I must have passed that way untold times ago and negligently
dropt them,
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous and the like of these among them;
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that shall be my amie,
Choosing to go with him on brotherly terms.

 

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my
caresses,
Head high in the forehead and wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness.... ears finely
cut and flexibly moving.

 

His nostrils dilate.... my heels embrace him.... his well built limbs tremble with pleasure.... we speed around and return.

 

I but use you a moment and then I resign you stallion . . . . and
do not need your paces, and outgallop them,
And myself as I stand or sit pass faster than you.

Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I
guessed at;
What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,
What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed .... and again
as I walked the beach under the paling stars of the
morning.

 

My ties and ballasts leave me .... I travel .... I sail .... my
elbows rest in the sea-gaps,
I skirt the sierras .... my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

 

By the city’s quadrangular houses .... in log-huts, or camping
with lumbermen,
Along the ruts of the turnpike .... along the dry gulch and rivulet
bed,
Hoeing my onion-patch, and rows of carrots and parsnips ....
crossing savannas .... trailing in forests,
Prospecting .... gold-digging .... girdling the trees of a new
purchase,
Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand .... hauling my boat down
the shallow river;
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead ....
where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock .... where
the otter is feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey .... where
the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-tail;
Over the growing sugar .... over the cottonplant .... over the
rice in its low moist field;
Over the sharp-peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and
slender shoots from the gutters;
Over the western persimmon .... over the longleaved corn and
the delicate blue-flowered flax;
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and a buzzer
there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the
breeze;
Scaling mountains .... pulling myself cautiously up .... holding
on by low scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of
the brush;
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheatlot,
Where the bat flies in the July eve .... where the great goldbug
drops through the dark;
Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to
the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous
shuddering of their hides,
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, and andirons straddle
the hearth-slab, and cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
Where triphammers crash .... where the press is whirling its
cylinders;
²⁰
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of
its ribs;
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft .... floating in it
myself and looking composedly down;
Where the life-car is drawn on the slipnoose .... where the heat
hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calves and never forsakes
them,
Where the steamship trails hindways its long pennant of smoke,
Where the ground-shark’s fin cuts like a black chip out of the
water,
Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, and the dead are corrupting
below;
Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the
regiments;
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;
Upon a door-step .... upon the horse-block of hard wood
outside,
Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs or a good game
of base-ball,
²¹
At he-festivals with blackguard jibes and ironical license and
bull-dances and drinking and laughter,
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown sqush ....
sucking the juice through a straw,
At apple-peelings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
At musters and beach-parties and friendly bees and huskings and
house-raisings;
Where the mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgles, and cackles
and screams and weeps,
Where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, and the dry-stalks are
scattered, and the brood cow waits in the hovel,
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, and the stud
to the mare, and the cock is treading the hen,
Where the heifers browse, and the geese nip their food with short
jerks;
Where the sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and
lonesome prairie,
Where the herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square
miles far and near;
Where the hummingbird shimmers .... where the neck of the
longlived swan is curving and winding;
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the slappy shore and laughs
her near-human laugh;
Where beehives range on a gray bench in the garden half-hid by
the high weeds;
Where the band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground
with their heads out;
Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery;
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees;
Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh
at night and feeds upon small crabs;
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon;
Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree
over the well;
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
Through the salt-lick or orange glade .... or under conical firs;
Through the gymnasium .... through the curtained saloon ....
through the office or public hall;
Pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign .... pleased
with the new and old,
Pleased with women, the homely as well as the handsome,
Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks
melodiously,
Pleased with the primitive tunes of the choir of the whitewashed
church,
Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist
preacher, or any preacher .... looking seriously at the camp
meeting;
Looking in at the shop-windows in Broadway the whole
forenoon .... pressing the flesh of my nose to the thick plate
glass,
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the
clouds;
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends and I in the
middle;
Coming home with the bearded and dark-cheeked bush-boy ....
riding behind him at the drape of the day;
Far from the settlements studying the print of animals’ feet, or the
moccasin print;
By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
By the coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure;
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any,
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him;
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me
a long while,
Walking the old hills of Judea with the beautiful gentle god by my
side;
Speeding through space .... speeding through heaven and the
stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring and the
diameter of eighty thousand miles,
Speeding with tailed meteors .... throwing fire-balls like the rest,
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its
belly:
Storming enjoying planning loving cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.

I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product,
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

 

I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul,
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

 

I help myself to material and immaterial,
No guard can shut me off, no law can prevent me.

 

I anchor my ship for a little while only,
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.

 

I go hunting polar furs and the seal .... leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff .... clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

 

I ascend to the foretruck .... I take my place late at night in the
crow’s nest .... we sail through the arctic sea .... it is plenty
light enough,
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful
beauty,
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them .... the
scenery is plain in all directions,
The white-topped mountains point up in the distance .... I fling
out my fancies toward them;
We are about approaching some great battlefield in which we are
soon to be engaged,
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment .... we pass
with still feet and caution;
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruined city ....
the blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living
cities of the globe.

 

I am a free companion .... I bivouac
^q
by invading watchfires.