Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (45 page)

Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
For the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as
the delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.

 

What do you think endures?
Do you think a great city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or
the best built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d‘œuvres of
engineering, forts, armaments?

 

Away! these are not to be cherish’d for themselves,
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for
them,
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.

 

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole
world.

The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d
wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,
Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the anchor-
lifters of the departing,
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling
goods from the rest of the earth,
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place
where money is plentiest,
Nor the place of the most numerous population.

 

Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and
bards,
Where the city stands that is belov’d by these, and loves them in
return and understands them,
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words
and deeds,
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending
audacity of elected persons,

Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle
of death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of
inside authority,
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,
Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to
depend on themselves,
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same
as the men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same
as the men;
Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
There the great city stands.

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!
How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a
man’s or woman’s look!

 

All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;
A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the
universe,
When he or she appears materials are overaw‘d,
The dispute on the soul stops,
The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn’d back, or laid
away.

 

What is your money-making now? what can it do now?
What is your respectability now?
What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books,
now?
Where are your jibes of being now?
Where are your cavils about the soul now?

A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for
all the forbidding appearance,
There is the mine, there are the miners,
The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish‘d, the
hammers-men are at hand with their tongs and hammers,
What always served and always serves is at hand.

 

Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,
Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere
the Greek,
Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,
Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient
Hindustanee,
Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose
relics remain in Central America,
Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars
and the druids,
Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-cover’d
hills of Scandinavia,
Served those who time out of mind made on the granite
walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean
waves,
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the pastoral
tribes and nomads,
Served the long distant Kelt, served the hardy pirates of the
Baltic,
Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of
Ethiopia,
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the
making of those for war,
Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea,
For the mediæaval ages and before the mediaeval ages,
Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.

I see the European headsman,
He stands mask‘d, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong
naked arms,
And leans on a ponderous axe.

 

(Whom have you slaughter’d lately European headsman?
Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)

 

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,
I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown’d ladies, impeach’d ministers,
rejected kings,
Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.

 

I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,
The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,
(Mind you O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)

 

I see the blood wash’d entirely away from the axe,
Both blade and helve are clean,
They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasp no
more the necks of queens.

 

I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,
I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe
upon it,
I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own
race, the newest, largest race.

(America! I do not vaunt my love for you,
I have what I have.)

 

The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid utterances,
They tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house,
library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,
wedge, rounce,
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor
or sick,
Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.

 

The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that
neighbors them,
Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or
Kennebec,
Dwellers in cabins among the California mountains or by the
little lakes or on the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande friendly
gatherings, the characters and fun,
Dwellers along the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down by
the Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through
the ice.

 

The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,
Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river
craft,
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and
in many a bay and by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatack-
roots for knees,
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The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the
workmen busy outside and inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,
bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.

The shapes arise!
The shape measur‘d, saw’d, jack‘d, join’d, stain‘d,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of
the bride’s bed,
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,
the shape of the babe’s cradle,
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers’ feet,
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the
friendly parents and children,
The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and
woman, the roof over the well-married young man and
woman,
The roof over the supper joyously cook’d by the chaste wife, and
joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day’s
work.

 

The shapes arise!
The shape of the prisoner’s place in the court-room, and of him
or her seated in the place,
The shape of the liquor-bar lean’d against by the young rum
drinker and the old rum-drinker,
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking foot-
steps,
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome
couple,
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and
losings,
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced
murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion’d arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp’d
crowd, the dangling of the rope.

 

The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,
The door passing the dissever’d friend flush’d and in haste,
The door that admits good news and bad news,
The door whence the son left home confident and puff’d up,
The door he enter’d again from a long and scandalous absence,
diseas‘d, broken down, without innocence, without means.

Her shape arises,
She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and
soil‘d,
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal’d from her,
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,
She is the best belov’d, it is without exception, she has no reason
to fear and she does not fear,
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp’d songs, smutty expressions, are idle to
her as she passes,
She is silent, she is possess’d of herself, they do not offend her,
She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is strong,
She too is a law of Nature—there is no law stronger than she is.

The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,
Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
Shapes of turbulent manly cities,
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.

(Ah little recks the laborer,
How near his work is holding him to God,
The loving Laborer through space and time.)

 

After all not to create only, or found only,
But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,
To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,
Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,
To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,
These also are the lessons of our New World;
While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old
World!
Long and long has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling,
Long has the globe been rolling round.

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,
Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,
That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and Æneas‘, Odysseus’
wanderings,
Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy
Parnassus,
Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on Jaffa’s gate and on
Mount Moriah,
The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish
castles and Italian collections,
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain
awaits, demands you.

Responsive to our summons,
Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,
Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation,
She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,
I scent the odor of her breath’s delicious fragrance,
I mark her step divine, her curious eyes a-turning, rolling,
Upon this very scene.

 

The dame of dames! can I believe then
Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them
retain her?
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories,
poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her?
But that she’s left them all—and here?

 

Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
The same undying soul of earth‘s, activity’s, beauty‘s, heroism’s
expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her
former themes,
Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s, foundation of to-day’s
Ended, deceas’d through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain,
Silent the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
baffling tombs,
Ended for aye the epics of Asia‘s, Europe’s helmeted warriors,
ended the primitive call of the muses
Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,
Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest
of the holy Graal,
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the
sunrise,
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the turrets that Usk from its
waters reflected,
Arthur vanish’d with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and
Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly like an exhalation;
Pass’d! pass‘d! for us, forever pass’d, that once so mighty world,
now void, inanimate, phantom world,
Embroider‘d, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous
legends, myths,
Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
courtly dames,
Pass’d to its chamel vault, coffin’d with crown and armor on,
Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page,
And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme.
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