Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (63 page)

 

His own parents, he that had father’d him and she that had
conceiv’d him in her womb and birth’d him,
They give this child more of themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.
The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-
table,
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a
wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she
walks by,
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger‘d,
unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty
lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the
yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the
thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious
whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and
specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not
flashes and specks what are they?
The streets themselves and the façades of houses, and goods in
the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves, the huge crossing at
the ferries,
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river
between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of
white or brown two miles off,
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little
boat slack-tow’d astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint
away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies
motionless in,
The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt
marsh and shore mud,
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and
who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders,
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and
heir,
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full
of love.

 

 

Yet a word ancient mother,
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with
forehead between your knees,
O you need not sit there veil’d in your old white hair so
dishevel‘d,
For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead,
The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in
another country,
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave,
The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it,
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country.

By the city dead-house by the gate,
As idly sauntering wending my way from the clangor,
I curious pause, for lo, an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute
brought,
Her corpse they deposit unclaim‘d, it lies on the damp brick
pavement,
The divine woman, her body, I see the body, I look on it alone,
That house once full of passion and beauty, all else I notice not,
Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odors
morbific impress me,
But the house alone—that wondrous house—that delicate fair
house—that ruin!
That immortal house more than all the rows of dwellings ever
built!
Or white-domed capitol with majestic figure surmounted, or all
the old high-spired cathedrals,
That little house alone more than them all—poor, desperate
house!
Fair, fearful wreck—tenement of a soul—itself a soul,
Unclaim’d, avoided house—take one breath from my tremulous
lips,
Take one tear dropt aside as I go for thought of you,
Dead house of love—house of madness and sin, crumbled,
crush‘d,
House of life, erewhile talking and laughing—but ah, poor house,
dead even then,
Months, years, an echoing, garnish’d house—but dead, dead,
dead.

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to
renew me.

 

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards,
grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?

 

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv‘d,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—yet
behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its
graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit
on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow,
the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the
dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those
strata of sour dead.

 

 

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its
tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a
catching disease.

 

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas’d corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual,
sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last.

Courage yet, my brother or my sister!
Keep on—Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;
That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any
number of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any
unfaithfulness,
Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents,
Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is
positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.

(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also,
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)

 

The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance
and retreat,
The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold, garroté, handcuffs, iron necklace and lead
balls do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in distant
lands,
The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with their
own blood,
The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when
they meet;
But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the
infidel enter’d into full possession.
When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor the
second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

 

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are
discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from
that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.

 

Then courage European revolter, revoltress!
For till all ceases neither must you cease.

 

I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for
myself, nor what any thing is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foil‘d,
In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment—for they too
are great.

Did we think victory great?
So it is—but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help‘d, that
defeat is great,
And that death and dismay are great.

Nations ten thousand years before these States, and many times
ten thousand years before these States,
Garner’d clusters of ages that men and women like us grew up
and travel’d their course and pass’d on,
What vast-built cities, what orderly republics, what pastoral tribes
and nomads,
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others,
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions,
What sort of marriage, what costumes, what physiology and
phrenology,
What of liberty and slavery among them, what they thought of
death and the soul,
Who were witty and wise, who beautiful and poetic, who brutish
and undevelop‘d,
Not a mark, not a record remains—and yet all remains.

 

O I know that those men and women were not for nothing, any
more than we are for nothing,
I know that they belong to the scheme of the world every bit as
much as we now belong to it.

 

Afar they stand, yet near to me they stand,
Some with oval countenances learn’d and calm,
Some naked and savage, some like huge collections of insects,
Some in tents, herdsmen, patriarchs, tribes, horsemen,
Some prowling through woods, some living peaceably on farms,
laboring, reaping, filling barns,
Some traversing paved avenues, amid temples, palaces, factories,
libraries, shows, courts, theatres, wonderful monuments.
Are those billions of men really gone?
Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone?
Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us?
Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves?

 

I believe of all those men and women that fill’d the unnamed
lands, every one exists this hour here or elsewhere, invisible
to us,
In exact proportion to what he or she grew from in life, and out of
what he or she did, felt, became, loved, sinn‘d, in life.

 

I believe that was not the end of those nations or any person of
them, any more than this shall be the end of my nation, or of
me;
Of their languages, governments, marriage, literature, products,
games, wars, manners, crimes, prisons, slaves, heroes, poets,
I suspect their results curiously await in the yet unseen world,
counterparts of what accrued to them in the seen world,
I suspect I shall meet them there,
I suspect I shall there find each old particular of those unnamed
lands.

Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d pondering,
On Time, Space, Reality—on such as these, and abreast with
them Prudence.

 

 

The last explanation always remains to be made about
prudence,
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that
suits immortality.

 

The soul is of itself,
All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence,
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in
a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of
death,
But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the
indirect lifetime.

 

 

The indirect is just as much as the direct,
The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the
body, if not more.

 

Not one word or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of
the onanist,
Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning,
betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution,
But has results beyond death as really as before death.

 

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any thing.

 

No specification is necessary, all that a male or female does, that is
vigorous, benevolent, clean, is so much profit to him or her,
In the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole
scope of it forever.

 

Who has been wise receives interest,
Savage, felon, President, judge, farmer, sailor, mechanic, literat,
young, old, it is the same,
The interest will come round—all will come round.