Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (54 page)

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns
before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Only themselves understand themselves and the like of
themselves,
As souls only understand souls.

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the
foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than
I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew ‘d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me
intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these,
O me, O life?

That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute
a verse.

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn’d of Nature—of the politics of Nature you
have not learn’d the great amplitude, rectitude,
impartiality,
You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,
And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from
these States.

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous
seducer of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to
be hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and
prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons
upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look
out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

What you give me I cheerfully accept,
A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I
rendezvous with my poems,
A traveler’s lodging and breakfast as I journey through the
States,—why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to
advertise for them?
For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and
woman,
For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts
of the universe.

Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of
the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating
wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward
falling,
Till o‘er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons
loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse
flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.

Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is
Good steadily hastening towards immortality,
And the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself
and become lost and dead.

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding,
And haze and vista, and the far horizon fading away.

Silent and amazed even when a little boy,
I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his
statements,
As contending against some being or influence.

On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner,
He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,
He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs,
With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais’d.

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,
The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the
young.

I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its
mother,
The sleeping mother and babe—hush‘d, I study them long
and long.

Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;
As I stand aloof and look there is to me something profoundly
affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those
who do not believe in men.

A mask, a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form,
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
Falling upon her even when she sleeps.

Of Justice—as if Justice could be any thing but the same ample
law, expounded by natural judges and saviors,
As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to
decisions.

Gliding o‘er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul—not life alone,
Death, many deaths I’ll sing.

Hast never come to thee an hour,
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles,
fashions, wealth?
These eager business aims—books, politics, art, amours,
To utter nothingness?

Of Equality—as if it harm’d me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself—as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.

I see in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great sea.

Locations and times—what is it in me that meets them all,
whenever and wherever, and makes me at home?
Forms, colors, densities, odors—what is it in me that corresponds
with them?

A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and
youths, with offerings.

Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters,
Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North,
your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that
the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for
reasons;
(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent
shoots we all duly awake,
South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely
awake.)

DRUM-TAPS
⁶⁰

First O songs for a prelude,
Lightly strike on the stretch’d tympanum pride and joy in my city,
How she led the rest to arms, how she gave the cue,
How at once with lithe limbs unwaiting a moment she sprang,
(O superb! O Manhattan, my own, my peerless!
O strongest you in the hour of danger, in crisis! O truer than steel!)
How you sprang—how you threw off the costumes of peace with
indifferent hand,
How your soft opera-music changed, and the drum and fife were
heard in their stead,
How you led to the war, (that shall serve for our prelude, songs of
soldiers,)
How Manhattan drum-taps led.

 

Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading,
Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and
turbulent city,
Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth,
With her million children around her, suddenly,
At dead of night, at news from the south,
Incens’d struck with clinch’d hand the pavement.

 

A shock electric, the night sustain’d it,
Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour’d out its myriads.

 

From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the
doorways,
Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming.

To the drum-taps prompt,
The young men falling in and arming,
The mechanics arming, (the trowel, the jack-plane, the black-
smith’s hammer, tost aside with precipitation,)
The lawyer leaving his office and arming, the judge leaving the
court,
The driver deserting his wagon in the street, jumping down,
throwing the reins abruptly down on the horses’ backs,
The salesman leaving the store, the boss, book-keeper, porter, all
leaving;
Squads gather everywhere by common consent and arm,
The new recruits, even boys, the old men show them how to wear
their accoutrements, they buckle the straps carefully,
Outdoors arming, indoors arming, the flash of the musket-
barrels,
The white tents cluster in camps, the arm’d sentries around, the
sunrise cannon and again at sunset,
Arm’d regiments arrive every day, pass through the city, and
embark from the wharves,
(How good they look as they tramp down to the river, sweaty, with
their guns on their shoulders!
How I love them! how I could hug them, with their brown faces
and their clothes and knapsacks cover’d with dust!)
The blood of the city up—arm‘d! arm’d! the cry
everywhere,
The flags flung out from the steeples of churches and from all the
public buildings and stores,
The tearful parting, the mother kisses her son, the son kisses his
mother,
(Loth is the mother to part, yet not a word does she speak to
detain him,)
The tumultuous escort, the ranks of policemen preceding,
clearing the way,
The unpent enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their
favorites,
The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along,
rumble lightly over the stones,
(Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence,
Soon unlimber’d to begin the red business;)
All the mutter of preparation, all the determin’d arming,
The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines,
The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in
earnest, no mere parade now;
War! an arm’d race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no
turning away;
War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm’d race is advancing to
welcome it.

 

 

Mannahatta a-march—and it’s O to sing it well!
It’s O for a manly life in the camp.

 

And the sturdy artillery,
The guns bright as gold, the work for giants, to serve well the guns,
Unlimber them! (no more as the past forty years for salutes for
courtesies merely,
Put in something now besides powder and wadding.)

 

And you lady of ships, you Mannahatta,
Old matron of this proud, friendly, turbulent city,
Often in peace and wealth you were pensive or covertly frown’d
amid all your children,
But now you smile with joy exulting old Mannahatta.

Arm’d year—year of the struggle,
No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year,
Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas
piano,
But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing,
carrying a rifle on your shoulder,
With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with a knife
in the belt at your side,
As I heard you shouting loud, your sonorous voice ringing across
the continent,
Your masculine voice O year, as rising amid the great cities,
Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as one of the workmen,
the dwellers in Manhattan,
Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and
Indiana,
Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait and descending the
Alleghanies,
Or down from the great lakes or in Pennsylvania, or on deck
along the Ohio river,
Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at
Chattanooga on the mountain top,
Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue,
bearing weapons, robust year,
Heard your determin’d voice launch’d forth again and again,
Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp’d
cannon,
I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.

Beat! beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now
with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or
gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you bugles
blow.