Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (76 page)

 

I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen‘d,
I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.

 

I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one,
(So long!)
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste,
affectionate, compassionate, fully arm’d.

I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its
translation.

 

I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded,
I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.

 

O thicker and faster—(
So long!
)
O crowding too close upon me,
I foresee too much, it means more than I thought,
It appears to me I am dying.

 

Hasten throat and sound your last,
Salute me—salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.

 

Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,
At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,
Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
Curious envelop’d messages delivering,
Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping,
Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never
daring,
To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving,
To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set
promulging,
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection
me more clearly explaining,
To young men my problems onering—no dallier I—I the muscle
of their brains trying,
So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,
Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making
me really undying,)
The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I
have been incessantly preparing.

 

What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended
with unshut mouth?
Is there a single final farewell?
My songs cease, I abandon them,
From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely
to you.

 

Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this touches a man,
(Is it night? are we here together alone?)
It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.

 

O how your fingers drowse me,
Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the
tympans of my ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot,
Delicious, enough.

 

Enough O deed impromptu and secret,
Enough O gliding present—enough O summ‘d-up past.

 

Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,
I give it especially to you, do not forget me,
I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,
I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras
ascending, while others doubtless await me,
An unknown sphere more real than I dream‘d, more direct, darts
awakening rays about me,
So long!
Remember my words, I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

 

Holding a butterfly—64). years old, 1883, photo taken at Ocean Grove,
New Jersey, by Phillips & Taylor. Courtesy of the Library of Congress,
Charles E. Feinberg Collection. Saunders #48.

FIRST ANNEX

SANDS AT SEVENTY
¹¹⁴

My city’s fit and noble name resumed,
Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,
A rocky founded island-shores where ever gayly dash the coming,
going, hurrying sea waves.

Sea beauty! stretch’d and basking!
One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,
steamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle—mighty
hulls dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water—healthy air and soil!
Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!

I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that inbound urge and
urge of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.

635

To those who’ve fail‘d, in aspiration vast,
To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers—to over-ardent travelers—to pilots
on their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition—I’d rear a
laurel-cover’d monument,
High, high above the rest—To all cut off before their time,
Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench’d by an early death.

A carol closing sixty-nine—a
résumé—
a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled Flag
I love,
Your aggregate retain’d entire—Of north, south, east and west,
your items all;
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my
breast,
The body wreck‘d, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet
extinct,
The undiminish’d faith—the groups of loving friends.

Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived
through the fight;
But the bravest press’d to the front and fell unnamed,
unknown.

This latent mine—these unlaunch’d voices—passionate
powers,
Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,
(Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)
These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,
Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,
Within the pallid slivers slumbering.

As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,
Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering
ennui,
May filter in my daily songs.

Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty
books,
Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?
But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous
warble,
Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,
Is it not just as great, O soul?

Approaching, nearing, curious,
Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?
Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?
Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,
Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping,
screeching?

Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy
bones,
Once living men—once resolute courage, aspiration,
strength,
The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.

Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—innocent, golden,
calm as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear‘d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

How sweet the silent backward tracings!
The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation of old times
resumed—their loves, joys, persons, voyages.

The appointed winners in a long-stretch’d game;
The course of Time and nations—Egypt, India, Greece and
Rome;
The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,
Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,
Garner’d for now and thee—To think of it!
The heirdom all converged in thee!

After the dazzle of day is gone,
Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;
After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,
Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer—a pulse of
thought,
To memory of Him—to birth of Him.
(Publish’d Feb. 12, 1888.)

Apple orchards, the trees all cover’d with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon
sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs
really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

Steaming the northern rapids—(an old St. Lawrence
reminiscence,
A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,
Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)
^bt
Again ‘tis just at morning—a heavy haze contends with
daybreak,
Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me—I press through
foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch me,
Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman
Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,
Homer with all his wars and warriors—Hector, Achilles, Ajax,
Or Shakspere’s woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—
Tennyson’s fair ladies,
Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme,
delight of singers;
These, these, O sea, all these I’d gladly barter,
Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,
Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,
And leave its odor there.