Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (61 page)

 

(Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age!
But damn that which spends itself with no thought of the stain,
pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing.)

I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore,
I heard the voice arising demanding bards,
By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be
fused into the compact organism of a Nation.

 

To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no
account,
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living
principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of
plants.

Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff
most need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them
the greatest,
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as
their poets shall.

 

(Soul of love and tongue of fire!
Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!
Ah Mother, prolific and full in all besides, yet how long barren,
barren?)

Of these States the poet is the equable man,
Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail
of their full returns,
Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither
more nor less,
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants
checking,
In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty,
building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,
commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,
immortality, government,
In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as good
as the engineer‘s, he can make every word he speaks draw
blood,
The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady
faith,
He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him
absolutely,)
He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling round a
helpless thing,
As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,

In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and
denouement,
He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and
women as dreams or dots.

 

For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
For that, the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders,
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.

 

Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been
always ready to fall for Liberty.)

For the great Idea,
That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.

 

Songs of stern defiance ever ready,
Songs of the rapid arming and the march,
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead the flag we know,
Warlike flag of the great Idea.

 

(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
I stand again in leaden rain your flapping folds saluting,
I sing you over all, flying beckoning through the fight—O the
hard-contested fight!
The cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles—the hurtled balls
scream,
The battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour
incessant from the line,
Hark, the ringing word
Charge!—
now the tussle and the furious
maddening yells,
Now the corpses tumble curl’d upon the ground,
Cold, cold in death, for precious life of you,
Angry cloth I saw there leaping.)

Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here
in the States?
The place is august, the terms obdurate.

 

Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body
and mind,
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe
himself,
He shall surely be question’d beforehand by me with many and
stern questions.
Who are you indeed who would talk or sing to America?
Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?
Have you learn’d the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography,
pride, freedom, friendship of the land? its substratums and
objects?
Have you consider’d the organic compact of the first day of the
first year of Independence, sign’d by the Commissioners,
ratified by the States, and read by Washington at the head
of the army?
Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind
them, and assumed the poems and processes of Democracy?
Are you faithful to things? do you teach what the land and sea, the
bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, heroic angers,
teach?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls,
fierce contentions? are you very strong? are you really of the
whole People?
Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere religion?
Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating now
to life itself?
Have you vivified yourself from the maternity of these States?
Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality?
Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the
last born? little and big? and for the errant?
What is this you bring my America?
Is it uniform with my country?
Is it not something that has been better told or done before?
Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship?
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?—is the good old
cause in it?
Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians,
literats, of enemies’ lands?
Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?
Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the Union
in that secession war?
Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?
Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my
strength, gait, face?
Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not
mere amanuenses?
Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face?
What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities?
Chicago, Kanada, Arkansas?
Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians
standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese,
Western men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy,
and in the promptness of their love?
Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen,
each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel,
who has ever ask’d any thing of America?
What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons,
By the roadside others disdainfully toss’d.

Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distill’d from poems pass
away,
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of
literature,
America justifies itself, give it time, no disguise can deceive it or
conceal from it, it is impassive enough,
Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,
If its poets appear it will in due time advance to meet them, there
is no fear of mistake,
(The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferr’d till his country
absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorb’d it.)

 

He masters whose spirit masters, he tastes sweetest who results
sweetest in the long run,
The blood of the brawn beloved of time is unconstraint;
In the need of songs, philosophy, an appropriate native grand-
opera, shipcraft, any craft,
He or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original
practical example.

 

Already a nonchalant breed, silently emerging, appears on the
streets,
People’s lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers,
There will shortly be no more priests, I say their work is done,
Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual
emergencies here,
Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be
superb,
Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible
power;
How dare you place any thing before a man?

Fall behind me States!
A man before all—myself, typical, before all.

 

Give me the pay I have served for,
Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest,
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
I have given alms to every one that ask‘d, stood up for the stupid
and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others,
Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and
indulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing
known or unknown,
Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the
young, and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees,
stars, rivers,
Dismiss’d whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,
Claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for
others on the same terms,
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from every
State,
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean’d to breathe his
last,
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish’d, rais‘d, restored,
To life recalling many a prostrate form;)
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of
myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.

 

(Say O Mother, have I not to your thought been faithful?
Have I not through life kept you and yours before me?)

I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
It is I who am great or to be great, it is You up there, or any one,
It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments,
theories,
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals.

Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals,
The American compact is altogether with individuals,
The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one
single individual—namely to You.
(Mother! with subtle sense severe, with the naked sword in your
hand,
I saw you at last refuse to treat but directly with individuals.)

Underneath all, Nativity,
I swear I will stand by my own nativity, pious or impious so be it;
I swear I am charm’d with nothing except nativity,
Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity.

 

Underneath all is the Expression of love for men and women,
(I swear I have seen enough of mean and impotent modes of
expressing love for men and women,
After this day I take my own modes of expressing love for men
and women.)

 

I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself,
(Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favor
the audacity and sublime turbulence of the States.)

 

Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments,
ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,
Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (the same
monotonous old song.)

O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,
Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,
Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me,
Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships,
are you and me,
Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,
The war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth
forget), was you and me,
Natural and artificial are you and me,
Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,
Past, present, future, are you and me.

I dare not shirk any part of myself,
Not any part of America good or bad,
Not to build for that which builds for mankind,
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
Not to justify science nor the march of equality,
Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov’d of time.

 

I am for those that have never been master‘d,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never
master.

 

I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,
Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.

 

I will not be outfaced by irrational things,
I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,
I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,
This is what I have learnt from America—it is the amount, and it
I teach again.

 

(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your
breast,
I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams
your dilating form,
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)

I will confront these shows of the day and night,
I will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am not as majestic as they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I will see if I am to be less generous than they,
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have
meaning,
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves,
and I am not to be enough for myself.
I match my spirit against yours you orbs, growths, mountains,
brutes,
Copious as you are I absorb you all in myself, and become the
master myself,
America isolated yet embodying all, what is it finally except
myself?
These States, what are they except myself?

 

I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my
sake,
I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.