Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (87 page)

 

Hot-headed Carolina,
Well may you curl your lip;
With all your bondsmen, bless the destiny
Which brings you no such breed as this.

 

Arise, young North!
Our elder blood flows in the veins of cowards—
The gray-haired sneak, the blanched poltroon,
The feigned or real shiverer at tongues
That nursing babes need hardly cry the less for—
Are they to be our tokens always?
Fight on, band braver than warriors,
Faithful and few as Spartans;
But fear not most the angriest, loudest malice—
Fear most the still and forked fang
That starts from the grass at your feet.

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of
slaves,
Like lightning Europe le‘pt forth,
Sombre, superb and terrible,
As Ahimoth, brother of Death.

 

God, ‘twas delicious!
That brief, tight, glorious grip
Upon the throats of kings.
You liars paid to defile the People,
Mark you now:
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms,
Worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages;
For many a promise sworn by royal lips
And broken, and laughed at in the breaking;
Then, in their power, not for all these,
Did a blow fall in personal revenge,
Or a hair draggle in blood:
The People scorned the ferocity of kings.

 

But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction,
And frightened rulers come back:
Each comes in state, with his train,
Hangman, priest, and tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, and sycophant;
An appalling procession of locusts,
And the king struts grandly again.

 

Yet behind all, lo, a Shape
Vague as the night, draped interminably,
Head, front and form, in scarlet folds;
Whose face and eyes none may see,
Out of its robes only this,
The red robes, lifted by the arm,
One finger pointed high over the top,
Like the head of a snake appears.

 

Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves,
Bloody corpses of young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily,
The bullets of tyrants are flying,
The creatures of power laugh aloud:
And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.

 

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets,
Those hearts pierced by the grey lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem,
Live elsewhere with undying vitality;
They live in other young men, O, kings,
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you;
They were purified by death,
They were taught and exalted.

 

Not a grave of those slaughtered ones,
But is growing its seed of freedom,
In its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds shall carry afar and resow,
And the rain nourish.

 

 

Not a disembodied spirit
Can the weapon of tyrants let loose,
But it shall stalk invisibly over the earth,
Whispering, counseling, cautioning.

 

Liberty, let others despair of thee,
But I will never despair of thee:
Is the house shut? Is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready, be not weary of watching,
He will surely return; his messengers come anon.

POEMS EXCLUDED FROM THE “DEATH-BED” EDITION (1891-1892)
⁸

Great are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,
inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out with you, or sink with you.

 

Great is Youth—equally great is Old Age—great are the Day and
Night;
Great is Wealth—great is Poverty—great is Expression—great is
Silence.

 

 

Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force,
fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace,
force, fascination?

 

Day, full-blown and splendid—Day of the immense sun, action,
ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and
restoring darkness.

Wealth, with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospitality;
But then the Soul’s wealth, which is candor, knowledge, pride,
enfolding love;
(Who goes for men and women showing Poverty richer than
wealth?)

 

Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that
Silence is also expressive,
That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as cold as the
coldest, may be without words.

Great is the Earth, and the way it became what it is;
Do you imagine it has stopt at this? the increase
abandon’d?
Understand then that it goes as far onward from this, as this is
from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases,
before man had appear’d.

 

Great is the quality of Truth in man;
The quality of truth in man supports itself through all
changes,
It is inevitably in the man—he and it are in love, and never leave
each other.

 

 

The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight;
If there be any Soul, there is truth—if there be man or
woman there is truth—if there be physical or moral,
there is truth;
If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth—if there be
things at all upon the earth, there is truth.

 

O truth of the earth! I am determin’d to press my way toward
you;
Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea after
you.

Great is Language—it is the mightiest of the sciences,
It is the fulness, color, form, diversity of the earth, and of men
and women, and of all qualities and processes;
It is greater than wealth—it is greater than buildings, ships,
religions, paintings, music.

 

Great is the English speech—what speech is so great as the English?
Great is the English brood—what brood has so vast a destiny as
the English?
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the
new rule;
The new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice,
equality in the Soul rule.
Great is Law—great are the few old land-marks of the law,
They are the same in all times, and shall not be disturb’d.

Great is Justice!
Justice is not settled by legislators and laws—it is in the Soul;
It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the
attraction of gravity, can;
It is immutable—it does not depend on majorities—majorities or
what not, come at last before the same passionless and exact
tribunal.

 

 

For justice are the grand natural lawyers, and perfect judges—is it
in their Souls;
It is well assorted—they have not studied for nothing—the great
includes the less;
They rule on the highest grounds—they oversee all eras, states,
administrations.

 

 

The perfect judge fears nothing—he could go front to front
before God;
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back—life and death shall
stand back—heaven and hell shall stand back.

Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever;
Great is Death—sure as life holds all parts together, Death holds
all parts together.

 

Has Life much purport?—Ah, Death has the greatest purport.

You just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the
rights, life, liberty, equality of man,
Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The
States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, and
read by Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders,—Remember
Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction
toward America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and
men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man, without
hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or
me,
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you
or me.

 

Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the
hundred, or two hundred millions, of equal freemen and
freewomen, amicably joined.
Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a part;
Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea
of caste,
Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.

 

Anticipate the best women;
I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women
are to spread through all These States,
I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless,
just the same as a boy.

 

Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless power,
Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those errors, diseases,
weaknesses, lies, thefts?
Do you see that lost character?—Do you see decay, consumption,
rum-drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?
Do you see death, and the approach of death?

Think of the Soul;
I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul
somehow to live in other spheres;
I do not know how, but I know it is so.

 

Think of loving and being loved;
I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with
such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly
upon you.

 

 

Think of the past;
I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you
and your times.

 

The race is never separated—nor man nor woman escapes;
All is inextricable—things, spirits, Nature, nations, you too—from
precedents you come.

Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers precede them;)
Recall the sages, poets, saviors, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth;
Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons—brother of slaves,
felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas’d persons.

 

Think of the time when you were not yet born;
Think of times you stood at the side of the dying;
Think of the time when your own body will be dying.

 

Think of spiritual results,
Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its
objects pass into spiritual results.

 

Think of manhood, and you to be a man;
Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?

 

Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman;
The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best
womanhood?

Respondez! Respondez!
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled
beyond recall;)
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none
evade!
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking?
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new
distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was
behind advance to the front and speak;
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new
propositions!
Let the old propositions be postponed!
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely
criminal, as well as results!
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know
your destination?)
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with
Souls!
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass still-born to
other spheres!
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass,
a dwarf, to other spheres!
Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another! and
let one line of my poems contradict another!
Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their
tongues be broken! let their eyes be discouraged! let none
descend into their hearts with the fresh lusciousness of love!
(Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private
corruption!
Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness,
mountain-high;
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves around
and upon you, O my days! my lands!
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of the
war, have purified the atmosphere;)
—Let the theory of America still be management, caste,
comparison! (Say! what other theory would you?)
Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say! why
shall they not lead you?)
Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker
than the nights! let slumber bring less slumber than waking
time brings!
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all
made!
Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of
the old man! and let the heart of the old man be exiled from
that of the young man!
Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the
audience! let there be apathy under the stars!
Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one who can
tyrannize, let him tyrannize to his satisfaction!
Let none but infidels be countenanced!
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed,
indecency, impotence, lust, be taken for granted above all! let
writers, judges, governments, households, religions,
philosophies, take such for granted above all!
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!
Let the priest still play at immortality!
Let death be inaugurated!
Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists,
lawyers, and learn’d and polite persons!
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the
mud-fish, the lobster, the mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the
grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of these, be put on a
perfect equality with man and woman!
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of
those who have died of the most filthy of diseases!
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools!
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of
women! and let women among themselves talk and think
obscenely of men!
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked,
monthly, at the peril of our lives! let our bodies be freely
handled and examined by whoever chooses!
Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon
the earth!
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be
mention’d the name of God!
Let there be no God!
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom,
authority, precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance,
unbelief!
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be
put in prison! let those that were prisoners take the keys! Say!
why might they not just as well be transposed?)
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever
bawling! let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the
stands!
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the
Australian, go armed against the murderous stealthiness of
each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good
will!
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and
derided off from the earth!
Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing
mint, spinach, onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as
shows, at a great price for admission!
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers!
let the few seize on what they choose! let the rest gawk,
giggle, starve, obey!
Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived
of their genitals!
Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but still through any of
them, not a single poet, savior, knower, lover!
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away!
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him!
Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding
faith!
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance
on, while seeming lasts! (O seeming! seeming! seeming!)
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they
have been taught!
Let insanity still have charge of sanity!
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds!
Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself!
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel
persons!
Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel!
(Say! which is trodden under heel, after all?)
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors!
let the things themselves still continue unstudied!
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself!