Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (49 page)

 

Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.

 

Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and
states,
Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.

Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air.

 

From imperfection’s murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of heaven’s glory.

 

To fashion‘s, custom’s discord,
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard,
From some far shore the final chorus sounding.

 

O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth.

And thou America,
For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality,
For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.

Thou too surroundest all,
Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad
and new,
To the ideal tendest.

 

The measur’d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,
Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
All eligible to all.

 

All, all for immortality,
Love like the light silently wrapping all,
Nature’s amelioration blessing all,
The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain,
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.

 

Give me 0 God to sing that thought,
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
Health, peace, salvation universal.

 

Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of
danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there
beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch
^bb
upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the
mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the
high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the con-
tinental blood intervein‘d,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all
the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love
for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mis
tress, (bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive,
weapon’d mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or
falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us
urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead
quickly fill‘d,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never
stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour
come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap
is fill‘d,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement
beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all
for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the appari
tions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in
embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and
you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have
done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and
tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the
studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and
bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged
nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause
oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

 

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call -hark! how loud and clear I
hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet
and hands,
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
suffering, dying.

 

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my
poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than
you.

 

 

O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted
nothing but you.

 

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in
you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never
consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

 

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure
of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-
color’d light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its
nimbus of gold-color’d light,
From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it
streams, effulgently flowing forever.

 

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon
yourself all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
mockeries, what is their return?)

 

The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or from
yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if
these balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed,
premature death, all these I part aside.

 

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in
you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in
you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

 

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like
carefully to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing
the songs of the glory of you.

 

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are im
mense and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of
apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or
mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
passion, dissolution.

 

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided,
nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
picks its way.

A great year and place,
A harsh discordant natal scream out-sounding, to touch the
mother’s heart closer than any yet.
^bc

 

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern sea,
Heard over the waves the little voice,
Saw the divine infant where she woke mournfully wailing,
amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling
buildings,
Was not so sick from the blood in the gutters running, nor from
the single corpses, nor those in heaps, nor those borne away
in the tumbrils,
Was not so desperate at the battues of death—was not so shock’d
at the repeated fusillades of the guns.

 

Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?
Could I wish humanity different?

Could I wish the people made of wood and stone?
Or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

 

O Liberty! O mate for me!
Here too the blaze, the grape-shot and the axe, in reserve, to fetch
them out in case of need,
Here too, though long represt, can never be destroy‘d,
Here too could rise at last murdering and ecstatic,
Here too demanding full arrears of vengeance.