LG1856	1	I CELEBRATE myself,
LG1856	2	And what I assume you shall assume,
LG1856	3	For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
LG1856	4	I loafe and invite my soul,
LG1856	5	I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
LG1856	6	Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
LG1856	7	I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it,
LG1856	8	The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
LG1856	9	The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,
LG1856	10	It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
LG1856	11	I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked,
LG1856	12	I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
LG1856	13	The smoke of my own breath,
LG1856	14	Echoes, ripples, buzzed whispers, love-root, silk-threadsilk-thread, crotch, vine,
LG1856	15	My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
LG1856	16	The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-colored sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
LG1856	17	The sound of the belched words of my voice, words loosed to the eddies of the wind,
LG1856	18	A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
LG1856	19	The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
LG1856	20	The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
LG1856	21	The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
LG1856	22	Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckoned the earth much?
LG1856	23	Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
LG1856	24	Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
LG1856	25	Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
LG1856	26	You shall possess the good of the earth and sun — there are millions of suns left,
LG1856	27	You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
LG1856	28	You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
LG1856	29	You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.
LG1856	30	I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
LG1856	31	But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
LG1856	32	There was never any more inception than there is now,
LG1856	33	Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
LG1856	34	And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
LG1856	35	Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
LG1856	36	Urge, and urge, and urge,
LG1856	37	Always the procreant urge of the world.
LG1856	38	Out of the dimness opposite equals advance — always substance and increase, always sex,
LG1856	39	Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
LG1856	40	To elaborate is no avail—learned and unlearned feel that it is so.
LG1856	41	Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
LG1856	42	Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
LG1856	43	I and this mystery here we stand.
LG1856	44	Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
LG1856	45	Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
LG1856	46	Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn.
LG1856	47	Showing the best and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age,
LG1856	48	Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
LG1856	49	Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
LG1856	50	Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.
LG1856	51	I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;
LG1856	52	As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day,
LG1856	53	And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels, swelling the house with their plenty,
LG1856	54	Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and scream at my eyes,
LG1856	55	That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
LG1856	56	And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
LG1856	57	Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the con-tentscontents of two, and which is ahead?
LG1856	58	Trippers and askers surround me,
LG1856	59	People I meet—the effect upon me of my early life, of the ward and city I live in, of the nation,
LG1856	60	The latest news, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
LG1856	61	My dinner, dress, associates, looks, work, compli-mentscompliments, dues,
LG1856	62	The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
LG1856	63	The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack of money, or depress-ionsdepressions or exaltations,
LG1856	64	They come to me days and nights and go from me again,
LG1856	65	But they are not the Me myself.
LG1856	66	Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
LG1856	67	Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
LG1856	68	Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
LG1856	69	Looks with its side-curved head, curious what will come next,
LG1856	70	Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
LG1856	71	Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
LG1856	72	I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait.
LG1856	73	I believe in you, my soul—the other I am must not abase itself to you,
LG1856	74	And you must not be abased to the other.
LG1856	75	Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
LG1856	76	Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not cus-tomcustom or lecture, not even the best,
LG1856	77	Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
LG1856	78	I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning,
LG1856	79	You settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me,
LG1856	80	And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
LG1856	81	And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.
LG1856	82	Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth,
LG1856	83	And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
LG1856	84	And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
LG1856	85	And that all the men ever born are also my bro-thersbrothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
LG1856	86	And that a kelson of the creation is love,
LG1856	87	And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields,
LG1856	88	And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
LG1856	89	And mossy scabs of the worm-fence, heaped stones, elder, mullen, pokeweed.
LG1856	90	A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
LG1856	91	How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
LG1856	92	I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
LG1856	93	Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
LG1856	94	A scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropped,
LG1856	95	Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
LG1856	96	Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
LG1856	97	Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
LG1856	98	And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
LG1856	99	Growing among black folks as among white,
LG1856	100	Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
LG1856	101	And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
LG1856	102	Tenderly will I use you, curling grass,
LG1856	103	It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
LG1856	104	It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
LG1856	105	It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
LG1856	106	And here you are the mothers' laps.
LG1856	107	This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
LG1856	108	Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
LG1856	109	Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
LG1856	110	O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
LG1856	111	And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
LG1856	112	I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
LG1856	113	And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
LG1856	114	What do you think has become of the young and old men?
LG1856	115	And what do you think has become of the women and children?
LG1856	116	They are alive and well somewhere,
LG1856	117	The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
LG1856	118	And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
LG1856	119	And ceased the moment life appeared.
LG1856	120	All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses,
LG1856	121	And to die is different from what any one sup-posedsupposed, and luckier.
LG1856	122	Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
LG1856	123	I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.
LG1856	124	I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe, and am not contained be-tweenbetween my hat and boots,
LG1856	125	And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good,
LG1856	126	The earth good, and the stars good, and their ad-junctsadjuncts all good.
LG1856	127	I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
LG1856	128	I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself;
LG1856	129	They do not know how immortal, but I know.
LG1856	130	Every kind for itself and its own—for me mine, male and female,
LG1856	131	For me those that have been boys and that love women,
LG1856	132	For me the man that is proud, and feels how it stings to be slighted,
LG1856	133	For me the sweetheart and the old maid—for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,
LG1856	134	For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
LG1856	135	For me children and the begetters of children.
LG1856	136	Who need be afraid of the merge?
LG1856	137	Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded,
LG1856	138	I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no,
LG1856	139	And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and can never be shaken away.
LG1856	140	The little one sleeps in its cradle,
LG1856	141	I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand.
LG1856	142	The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
LG1856	143	I peeringly view them from the top.
LG1856	144	The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
LG1856	145	It is so—I witnessed the corpse—there the pistol had fallen.
LG1856	146	The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders,
LG1856	147	The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogat-inginterrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
LG1856	148	The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
LG1856	149	The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of roused mobs,
LG1856	150	The flap of the curtained litter, the sick man in-sideinside, borne to the hospital,
LG1856	151	The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
LG1856	152	The excited crowd, the policeman with his star, quickly working his passage to the centre of the crowd,
LG1856	153	The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
LG1856	154	The souls moving along—are they invisible, while the least of the stones is visible?
LG1856	155	What groans of over-fed or half-starved who fall sun-struck, or in fits,
LG1856	156	What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to babes,
LG1856	157	What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrained by decorum,
LG1856	158	Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
LG1856	159	I mind them or the resonance of them—I come and I depart.
LG1856	160	The big doors of the country-barn stand open and ready,
LG1856	161	The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
LG1856	162	The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
LG1856	163	The armfuls are packed to the sagging mow;
LG1856	164	I am there, I help, I came stretched atop of the load,
LG1856	165	I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other;
LG1856	166	I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
LG1856	167	And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps.
LG1856	168	Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt,
LG1856	169	Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee,
LG1856	170	In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
LG1856	171	Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-killed game,
LG1856	172	Soundly falling asleep on the gathered leaves, my dog and gun by my side.
LG1856	173	The Yankee clipper is under her three sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud,
LG1856	174	My eyes settle the land—I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.
LG1856	175	The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopped for me,
LG1856	176	I tucked my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time,
LG1856	177	You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
LG1856	178	I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far-west—the bride was a red girl,
LG1856	179	Her father and his friends sat near, cross-legged and dumbly smoking—they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders,
LG1856	180	On a bank lounged the trapper, he was dressed mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck,
LG1856	181	One hand rested on his rifle, the other hand held firmly the wrist of the red girl,
LG1856	182	She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reached to her feet.
LG1856	183	The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
LG1856	184	I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood-pile,
LG1856	185	Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
LG1856	186	And went where he sat on a log, and led him in and assured him,
LG1856	187	And brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet,
LG1856	188	And gave him a room that entered from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
LG1856	189	And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
LG1856	190	And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
LG1856	191	He staid with me a week before he was recuper-atedrecuperated and passed north,
LG1856	192	I had him sit next me at table—my fire-lock leaned in the corner.
LG1856	193	Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
LG1856	194	Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly,
LG1856	195	Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome.
LG1856	196	She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
LG1856	197	She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds of the window.
LG1856	198	Which of the young men does she like the best?
LG1856	199	Ah, the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
LG1856	200	Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
LG1856	201	You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
LG1856	202	Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
LG1856	203	The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
LG1856	204	The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair,
LG1856	205	Little streams passed all over their bodies.
LG1856	206	An unseen hand also passed over their bodies,
LG1856	207	It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
LG1856	208	The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
LG1856	209	They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
LG1856	210	They do not think whom they souse with spray.
LG1856	211	The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall in the mar-ketmarket,
LG1856	212	I loiter, enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.
LG1856	213	Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
LG1856	214	Each has his main-sledge—they are all out — there is a great heat in the fire.
LG1856	215	From the cinder-strewed threshold I follow their movements,
LG1856	216	The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
LG1856	217	Overhand the hammers roll, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
LG1856	218	They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.
LG1856	219	The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain,
LG1856	220	The negro that drives the huge dray of the stone-yardstoneyard, steady and tall he stands poised on one leg on the string-piece,
LG1856	221	His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band,
LG1856	222	His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead,
LG1856	223	The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache, falls on the black of his polish'd and perfect limbs.
LG1856	224	I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there,
LG1856	225	I go with the team also.
LG1856	226	In me the caresser of life wherever moving, back-wardbackward as well as forward slueing,
LG1856	227	To niches aside and junior bending.
LG1856	228	Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade! what is that you express in your eyes?
LG1856	229	It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
LG1856	230	My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck, on my distant and day-long ramble,
LG1856	231	They rise together, they slowly circle around;
LG1856	232	I believe in those winged purposes,
LG1856	233	And acknowledge, red, yellow, white, playing within me,
LG1856	234	And consider green and violet, and the tufted crown, intentional,
LG1856	235	And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
LG1856	236	And the mocking-bird in the swamp never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
LG1856	237	And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.
LG1856	238	The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
LG1856	239	Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
LG1856	240	The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close,
LG1856	241	I find its purpose and place up there toward the November sky.
LG1856	242	The sharp-hoofed moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
LG1856	243	The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
LG1856	244	The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread wings,
LG1856	245	I see in them and myself the same old law.
LG1856	246	The press of my foot to the earth springs a hun-dredhundred affections,
LG1856	247	They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
LG1856	248	I am enamoured of growing outdoors,
LG1856	249	Of men that live among cattle, or taste of the ocean or woods,
LG1856	250	Of the builders and steerers of ships, of the wield-erswielders of axes and mauls, of the drivers of horses,
LG1856	251	I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
LG1856	252	What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
LG1856	253	Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
LG1856	254	Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
LG1856	255	Not asking the sky to come down to my good-will,
LG1856	256	Scattering it freely forever.
LG1856	257	The pure contralto sings in the organ-loft,
LG1856	258	The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
LG1856	259	The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,
LG1856	260	The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
LG1856	261	The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,
LG1856	262	The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
LG1856	263	The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar,
LG1856	264	The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
LG1856	265	The farmer stops by the bars of a Sunday and looks at the oats and rye,
LG1856	266	The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a con-firmedconfirmed case,
LG1856	267	He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;
LG1856	268	The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
LG1856	269	He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript;
LG1856	270	The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table,
LG1856	271	What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
LG1856	272	The quadroon girl is sold at the stand—the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove,
LG1856	273	The machinist rolls up his sleeves—the police-manpoliceman travels his beat—the gate-keeper marks who pass,
LG1856	274	The young fellow drives the express-wagon — I love him though I do not know him,
LG1856	275	The half-breed straps on his light boots to com-petecompete in the race,
LG1856	276	The western turkey-shooting draws old and young —some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
LG1856	277	Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
LG1856	278	The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
LG1856	279	The woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the over-seeroverseer views them from his saddle,
LG1856	280	The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other,
LG1856	281	The youth lies awake in the cedar-roofed garret, and harks to the musical rain,
LG1856	282	The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
LG1856	283	The reformer ascends the platform, he spouts with his mouth and nose,
LG1856	284	The company returns from its excursion, the darkey brings up the rear and bears the well-riddledwell-riddled target,
LG1856	285	The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth, is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale,
LG1856	286	The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-galleryexhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent side-ways,
LG1856	287	The deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers,
LG1856	288	The young sister holds out the skein, the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
LG1856	289	The one-year wife is recovering and happy, a week ago she bore her first child,
LG1856	290	The clean-haired Yankee girl works with her sew-ing-machinesewing-machine, or in the factory or mill,
LG1856	291	The nine months' gone is in the parturition cham-berchamber, her faintness and pains are advancing,
LG1856	292	The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer —the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the note-book—the sign-painter is lettering with red and gold,
LG1856	293	The canal-boy trots on the tow-path—the book-keeperbookkeeper counts at his desk—the shoemaker waxes his thread,
LG1856	294	The conductor beats time for the band, and all the performers follow him,
LG1856	295	The child is baptised—the convert is making the first professions,
LG1856	296	The regatta is spread on the bay—how the white sails sparkle!
LG1856	297	The drover watches his drove, he sings out to them that would stray,
LG1856	298	The pedlar sweats with his pack on his back, the purchaser higgles about the odd cent,
LG1856	299	The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype,
LG1856	300	The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-handminutehand of the clock moves slowly,
LG1856	301	The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-openedjust-opened lips,
LG1856	302	The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
LG1856	303	The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
LG1856	304	(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths, nor jeer you;)
LG1856	305	The President holds a cabinet council, he is sur-roundedsurrounded by the Great Secretaries,
LG1856	306	On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms,
LG1856	307	The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
LG1856	308	The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle,
LG1856	309	The fare-collector goes through the train, he gives notice by the jingling of loose change,
LG1856	310	The floor-men are laying the floor—the tinners are tinning the roof—the masons are calling for mortar,
LG1856	311	In single file, each shouldering his hod, pass on-wardonward the laborers,
LG1856	312	Seasons pursuing each other, the indescribable crowd is gathered—it is the Fourth of July —what salutes of cannon and small arms!
LG1856	313	Seasons pursuing each other, the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground,
LG1856	314	Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
LG1856	315	The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,
LG1856	316	Flatboatmen make fast toward dusk near the cot-ton-woodcotton-wood or pekan-trees,
LG1856	317	Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river, or through those drained by the Ten-nesseeTennessee, or through those of the Arkansaw,
LG1856	318	Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chat-tahoocheeChattahoochee or Altamahaw,
LG1856	319	Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around them,
LG1856	320	In walls of adobe, in canvass tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport,
LG1856	321	The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
LG1856	322	The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time.
LG1856	323	The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
LG1856	324	And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
LG1856	325	And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I am.
LG1856	326	I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
LG1856	327	Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
LG1856	328	Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
LG1856	329	Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,
LG1856	330	One of the great nation, the nation of many nations, the smallest the same, the largest the same,
LG1856	331	A southerner soon as a northerner, a planter non-chalantnonchalant and hospitable,
LG1856	332	A Yankee bound my own way, ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
LG1856	333	A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings,
LG1856	334	A boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts — a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye,
LG1856	335	A Louisianian or Georgian, a Poke-easy from sand-hills and pines,
LG1856	336	At home on Canadian snow-shoes, or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland,
LG1856	337	At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest, and tacking,
LG1856	338	At home on the hills of Vermont, or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch,
LG1856	339	Comrade of Californians, comrade of free north-westernersnorthwesterners, loving their big proportions.
LG1856	340	Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat,
LG1856	341	A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulest,
LG1856	342	A novice beginning, experient of myriads of sea-sonsseasons,
LG1856	343	Of every hue, trade, rank, of every caste and re-ligionreligion,
LG1856	344	Not merely of the New World, but of Africa, Europe, Asia—a wandering savage,
LG1856	345	A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, lover, quaker,
LG1856	346	A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.
LG1856	347	I resist anything better than my own diversity,
LG1856	348	And breathe the air, and leave plenty after me,
LG1856	349	And am not stuck up, and am in my place.
LG1856	350	The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
LG1856	351	The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place,
LG1856	352	The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.
LG1856	353	These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
LG1856	354	If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing,
LG1856	355	If they do not enclose everything, they are next to nothing,
LG1856	356	If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing,
LG1856	357	If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.
LG1856	358	This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
LG1856	359	This is the common air that bathes the globe.
LG1856	360	This is the breath of laws, songs, behaviour,
LG1856	361	This is the tasteless water of souls, this is the true sustenance,
LG1856	362	It is for the illiterate, it is for the judges of the supreme court, it is for the federal capitol and the state capitols,
LG1856	363	It is for the admirable communes of literats, composers, singers, lecturers, engineers, sa-vanssavans,
LG1856	364	It is for the endless races of work-people, farm-ersfarmers, seamen.
LG1856	365	These are trills of thousands of clear cornets, screams of octave flutes, strike of triangles.
LG1856	366	I play not a march for victors only, I play great marches for conquered and slain persons.
LG1856	367	Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
LG1856	368	I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
LG1856	369	I beat triumphal drums for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest music to them,
LG1856	370	Vivas to those who have failed! and to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! and those themselves who sank in the sea!
LG1856	371	And to all generals that lost engagements! and all overcome heroes! and the numberless un-knownunknown heroes, equal to the greatest heroes known!
LG1856	372	This is the meal pleasantly set, this is the meat and drink for natural hunger,
LG1856	373	It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous —I make appointments with all,
LG1856	374	I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
LG1856	375	The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby in-vitedinvited—the heavy-lipped slave is invited, the venerealee is invited,
LG1856	376	There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
LG1856	377	This is the press of a bashful hand, this is the float and odor of hair,
LG1856	378	This is the touch of my lips to yours, this is the murmur of yearning,
LG1856	379	This is the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
LG1856	380	This is the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
LG1856	381	Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
LG1856	382	Well, I have—for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
LG1856	383	Do you take it I would astonish?
LG1856	384	Does the daylight astonish? Does the early red-startredstart, twittering through the woods?
LG1856	385	Do I astonish more than they?
LG1856	386	This hour I tell things in confidence,
LG1856	387	I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.
LG1856	388	Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, nude?
LG1856	389	How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
LG1856	390	What is a man anyhow? What am I? What are you?
LG1856	391	All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your own,
LG1856	392	Else it were time lost listening to me.
LG1856	393	I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
LG1856	394	That months are vacuums, and the ground but wallow and filth,
LG1856	395	That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears.
LG1856	396	Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, conformity goes to the fourth-removedfourth-removed,
LG1856	397	I cock my hat as I please, indoors or out.
LG1856	398	Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be cere-moniousceremonious?
LG1856	399	I have pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair,
LG1856	400	Counselled with doctors, calculated close, found no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
LG1856	401	In all people I see myself—none more, not one a barleycorn less,
LG1856	402	And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.
LG1856	403	And I know I am solid and sound,
LG1856	404	To me the converging objects of the universe per-petuallyperpetually flow,
LG1856	405	All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
LG1856	406	I know I am deathless,
LG1856	407	I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
LG1856	408	I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.
LG1856	409	I know I am august,
LG1856	410	I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
LG1856	411	I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
LG1856	412	I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.
LG1856	413	I exist as I am, that is enough,
LG1856	414	If no other in the world be aware, I sit content,
LG1856	415	And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
LG1856	416	One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
LG1856	417	And whether I come to my own today, or in ten thousand or ten million years,
LG1856	418	I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheer-fulnesscheerfulness I can wait.
LG1856	419	My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite,
LG1856	420	I laugh at what you call dissolution,
LG1856	421	And I know the amplitude of time.
LG1856	422	I am the poet of the body,
LG1856	423	And I am the poet of the soul.
LG1856	424	The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me,
LG1856	425	The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
LG1856	426	I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
LG1856	427	And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
LG1856	428	And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
LG1856	429	I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
LG1856	430	We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
LG1856	431	I show that size is only development.
LG1856	432	Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
LG1856	433	It is a trifle—they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
LG1856	434	I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
LG1856	435	I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night.
LG1856	436	Press close, bare-bosomed night! press close, magnetic, nourishing night!
LG1856	437	Night of south winds! night of the large few stars!
LG1856	438	Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night!
LG1856	439	Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breathed earth!
LG1856	440	Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
LG1856	441	Earth of departed sunset! earth of the moun-tainsmountains, misty-topt!
LG1856	442	Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!
LG1856	443	Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river!
LG1856	444	Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake!
LG1856	445	Far-swooping elbowed earth! rich, apple-blos-somedapple-blossomed earth!
LG1856	446	Smile, for your lover comes!
LG1856	447	Prodigal, you have given me love! therefore I to you give love!
LG1856	448	O unspeakable passionate love!
LG1856	449	Thruster holding me tight, and that I hold tight!
LG1856	450	We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.
LG1856	451	You sea! I resign myself to you also, I guess what you mean,
LG1856	452	I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
LG1856	453	I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
LG1856	454	We must have a turn together—I undress — hurry me out of sight of the land,
LG1856	455	Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
LG1856	456	Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.
LG1856	457	Sea of stretched ground-swells!
LG1856	458	Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
LG1856	459	Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovelled and always-ready graves!
LG1856	460	Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!
LG1856	461	I am integral with you—I too am of one phase, and of all phases.
LG1856	462	Partaker of influx and efflux, extoller of hate and conciliation,
LG1856	463	Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others' arms.
LG1856	464	I am he attesting sympathy,
LG1856	465	Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip the house that supports them?
LG1856	466	I am the poet of commonsense, and of the demon-strabledemonstrable, and of immortality,
LG1856	467	And am not the poet of goodness only—I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
LG1856	468	Washes and razors for foofoos—for me freckles and a bristling beard.
LG1856	469	What blurt is this about virtue and about vice?
LG1856	470	Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me — I stand indifferent,
LG1856	471	My gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
LG1856	472	I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
LG1856	473	Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
LG1856	474	Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?
LG1856	475	I step up to say that what we do is right, and what we affirm is right, and some is only the ore of right,
LG1856	476	Witnesses of us, one side a balance, and the anti-podalantipodal side a balance,
LG1856	477	Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
LG1856	478	Thoughts and deeds of the present, our rouse and early start.
LG1856	479	This minute that comes to me over the past de-cillionsdecillions,
LG1856	480	There is no better than it and now.
LG1856	481	What behaved well in the past, or behaves well today, is not such a wonder,
LG1856	482	The wonder is always and always how can there be a mean man or an infidel.
LG1856	483	Endless unfolding of words of ages!
LG1856	484	And mine a word of the modern—a word en-masseen-masse,
LG1856	485	A word of the faith that never balks,
LG1856	486	One time as good as another time—here or henceforward it is all the same to me,
LG1856	487	A word of reality, materialism first and last im-bueingimbueing.
LG1856	488	Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!
LG1856	489	Fetch stonecrop, mix it with cedar and branches of lilac,
LG1856	490	This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches,
LG1856	491	These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
LG1856	492	This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.
LG1856	493	Gentlemen, I receive you and attach and clasp hands with you,
LG1856	494	The facts are useful and real—they are not my dwelling—I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.
LG1856	495	I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,
LG1856	496	And go on the square for my own sake and for others' sakes,
LG1856	497	And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped,
LG1856	498	And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugi-tivesfugitives and them that plot and conspire.
LG1856	499	Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
LG1856	500	Disorderly, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, breed-ingbreeding,
LG1856	501	No sentimentalist, no stander above men and wo-menwomen, or apart from them—no more modest than immodest.
LG1856	502	Unscrew the locks from the doors!
LG1856	503	Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
LG1856	504	Whoever degrades another degrades me, and whatever is done or said returns at last to me,
LG1856	505	And whatever I do or say, I also return.
LG1856	506	Through me the afflatus surging and surging — through me the current and index.
LG1856	507	I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
LG1856	508	By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
LG1856	509	Through me many long dumb voices,
LG1856	510	Voices of the interminable generations of slaves,
LG1856	511	Voices of prostitutes, and of deformed persons,
LG1856	512	Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs,
LG1856	513	Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
LG1856	514	And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff,
LG1856	515	And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
LG1856	516	Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
LG1856	517	Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
LG1856	518	Through me forbidden voices,
LG1856	519	Voices of sexes and lusts—voices veiled, and I remove the veil,
LG1856	520	Voices indecent, by me clarified and transfigured.
LG1856	521	I do not press my finger across my mouth,
LG1856	522	I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
LG1856	523	Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
LG1856	524	I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
LG1856	525	Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
LG1856	526	Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,
LG1856	527	The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,
LG1856	528	This head is more than churches, bibles, creeds.
LG1856	529	If I worship any particular thing, it shall be some of the spread of my own body,
LG1856	530	Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!
LG1856	531	Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, it shall be you!
LG1856	532	Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you!
LG1856	533	You my rich blood! your milky stream, pale strip-pingsstrippings of my life!
LG1856	534	Breast that presses against other breasts, it shall be you!
LG1856	535	My brain, it shall be your occult convolutions!
LG1856	536	Root of washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you!
LG1856	537	Mixed tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
LG1856	538	Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!
LG1856	539	Sun so generous, it shall be you!
LG1856	540	Vapors lighting and shading my face, it shall be you!
LG1856	541	You sweaty brooks and dews, it shall be you!
LG1856	542	Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me, it shall be you!
LG1856	543	Broad muscular fields, branches of live-oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you!
LG1856	544	Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you!
LG1856	545	I dote on myself, there is that lot of me, and all so luscious,
LG1856	546	Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with joy.
LG1856	547	I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,
LG1856	548	Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.
LG1856	549	To walk up my stoop is unaccountable, I pause to consider if it really be,
LG1856	550	That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great authors and schools,
LG1856	551	A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
LG1856	552	To behold the day-break!
LG1856	553	The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
LG1856	554	The air tastes good to my palate.
LG1856	555	Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently rising, freshly exuding,
LG1856	556	Scooting obliquely high and low.
LG1856	557	Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
LG1856	558	Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
LG1856	559	The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,
LG1856	560	The heaved challenge from the east that moment over my head,
LG1856	561	The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!
LG1856	562	Dazzling and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
LG1856	563	If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.
LG1856	564	We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,
LG1856	565	We found our own, my soul, in the calm and cool of the day-break.
LG1856	566	My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
LG1856	567	With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and volumes of worlds.
LG1856	568	Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself.
LG1856	569	It provokes me forever,
LG1856	570	It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough, why don't you let it out then?
LG1856	571	Come now, I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation.
LG1856	572	Do you not know how the buds beneath are folded?
LG1856	573	Waiting in gloom, protected by frost,
LG1856	574	The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,
LG1856	575	I underlying causes, to balance them at last,
LG1856	576	My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of things,
LG1856	577	Happiness, which, whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this day.
LG1856	578	My final merit I refuse you—I refuse putting from me the best I am.
LG1856	579	Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
LG1856	580	I crowd your noisiest talk by looking toward you.
LG1856	581	Writing and talk do not prove me,
LG1856	582	I carry the plenum of proof, and every thing else, in my face,
LG1856	583	With the hush of my lips I confound the topmost skeptic.
LG1856	584	I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,
LG1856	585	To accrue what I hear into myself, to let sounds contribute toward me.
LG1856	586	I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals.
LG1856	587	I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
LG1856	588	I hear all sounds as they are tuned to their uses, sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
LG1856	589	Talkative young ones to those that like them, the recitative of fish-pedlars and fruit-pedlars, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,
LG1856	590	The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,
LG1856	591	The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips pronouncing a death-sentence,
LG1856	592	The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,
LG1856	593	The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-cartshose-carts, with premonitory tinkles and colored lights,
LG1856	594	The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,
LG1856	595	The slow-march played at night at the head of the association,
LG1856	596	They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.
LG1856	597	I hear the violincello or man's heart's complaint,
LG1856	598	I hear the keyed cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears, it shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.
LG1856	599	I hear the chorus, it is a grand-opera—this in-deedindeed is music!
LG1856	600	A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,
LG1856	601	The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.
LG1856	602	I hear the trained soprano, she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip,
LG1856	603	The orchestra wrenches such ardors from me, I did not know I possessed them,
LG1856	604	It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror,
LG1856	605	It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are licked by the indolent waves,
LG1856	606	I am exposed, cut by bitter and poisoned hail,
LG1856	607	Steeped amid honeyed morphine, my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death,
LG1856	608	Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,
LG1856	609	And that we call Being.
LG1856	610	To be in any form, what is that?
LG1856	611	If nothing lay more developed, the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
LG1856	612	Mine is no callous shell,
LG1856	613	I have instant conductors all over me, whether I pass or stop,
LG1856	614	They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
LG1856	615	I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
LG1856	616	To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.
LG1856	617	Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
LG1856	618	Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
LG1856	619	Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
LG1856	620	My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,
LG1856	621	On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
LG1856	622	Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
LG1856	623	Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
LG1856	624	Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose,
LG1856	625	Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,
LG1856	626	Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sun-light and pasture-fields,
LG1856	627	Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
LG1856	628	They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me,
LG1856	629	No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
LG1856	630	Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile,
LG1856	631	Then all uniting to stand on a head-land and worry me.
LG1856	632	The sentries desert every other part of me,
LG1856	633	They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
LG1856	634	They all come to the head-land, to witness and assist against me.
LG1856	635	I am given up by traitors!
LG1856	636	I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,
LG1856	637	I went myself first to the head-land, my own hands carried me there.
LG1856	638	You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,
LG1856	639	Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.
LG1856	640	Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheathed, hooded, sharp-toothed touch!
LG1856	641	Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
LG1856	642	Parting, tracked by arriving—perpetual payment of the perpetual loan,
LG1856	643	Rich showering rain, and recompense richer after-wardafterward.
LG1856	644	Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital,
LG1856	645	Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized, golden.
LG1856	646	All truths wait in all things,
LG1856	647	They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it,
LG1856	648	They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
LG1856	649	The insignificant is as big to me as any,
LG1856	650	What is less or more than a touch?
LG1856	651	Logic and sermons never convince,
LG1856	652	The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
LG1856	653	Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
LG1856	654	Only what nobody denies is so.
LG1856	655	A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,
LG1856	656	I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
LG1856	657	And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
LG1856	658	And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
LG1856	659	And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
LG1856	660	And until every one shall delight us, and we them.
LG1856	661	I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-workjourneywork of the stars,
LG1856	662	And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
LG1856	663	And the tree-toad is a chef-d'ouvre for the highest,
LG1856	664	And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
LG1856	665	And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
LG1856	666	And the cow crunching with depressed head sur-passessurpasses any statue,
LG1856	667	And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sex-tillionssextillions of infidels,
LG1856	668	And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's girl boiling her iron tea-kettletea-kettle and baking short-cake.
LG1856	669	I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
LG1856	670	And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
LG1856	671	And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
LG1856	672	And call any thing close again, when I desire it.
LG1856	673	In vain the speeding or shyness,
LG1856	674	In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
LG1856	675	In vain the mastadon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
LG1856	676	In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes,
LG1856	677	In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low,
LG1856	678	In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
LG1856	679	In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
LG1856	680	In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
LG1856	681	In vain the razor-billed auk sails far north to Labrador,
LG1856	682	I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.
LG1856	683	I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained,
LG1856	684	I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.
LG1856	685	They do not sweat and whine about their condi-tioncondition,
LG1856	686	They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
LG1856	687	They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
LG1856	688	No one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
LG1856	689	Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
LG1856	690	Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
LG1856	691	So they show their relations to me, and I accept them,
LG1856	692	They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.
LG1856	693	I do not know where they got those tokens,
LG1856	694	I may have passed that way untold times ago and negligently dropt them,
LG1856	695	Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
LG1856	696	Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
LG1856	697	Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
LG1856	698	Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my re-membrancersremembrancers,
LG1856	699	Picking out here one that I love, choosing to go with him on brotherly terms.
LG1856	700	A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and respon-siveresponsive to my caresses,
LG1856	701	Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
LG1856	702	Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
LG1856	703	Eyes well apart, full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
LG1856	704	His nostrils dilate, my heels embrace him, his well-built limbs tremble with pleasure, we speed around and return.
LG1856	705	I but use you a moment, then I resign you stal-lionstallion, do not need your paces, out-gallop them,
LG1856	706	Myself, as I stand or sit, passing faster than you.
LG1856	707	Swift wind! space! my soul! now I know it is true, what I guessed at,
LG1856	708	What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,
LG1856	709	What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed, and again as I walked the beach under the paling stars of the morning.
LG1856	710	My ties and ballasts leave me—I travel, I sail, my elbows rest in the sea-gaps,
LG1856	711	I skirt the sierras, my palms cover continents,
LG1856	712	I am afoot with my vision.
LG1856	713	By the city's quadrangular houses, in log-huts, camping with lumber-men,
LG1856	714	Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
LG1856	715	Weeding my onion-patch, hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,
LG1856	716	Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,
LG1856	717	Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river,
LG1856	718	Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,
LG1856	719	Where the rattle-snake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish,
LG1856	720	Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
LG1856	721	Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-tail,
LG1856	722	Over the growing sugar, over the cotton-plant, over the rice in its low moist field,
LG1856	723	Over the sharp-peaked farm-house, with its scal-lopedscalloped scum and slender shoots from the gut-tersgutters,
LG1856	724	Over the western persimmon, over the long-leaved corn, over the delicate blue-flowered flax,
LG1856	725	Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,
LG1856	726	Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze,
LG1856	727	Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,
LG1856	728	Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,
LG1856	729	Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,
LG1856	730	Where the bat flies in the July eve, where the great gold-bug drops through the dark,
LG1856	731	Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,
LG1856	732	Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,
LG1856	733	Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides,
LG1856	734	Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cob-webscobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters,
LG1856	735	Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,
LG1856	736	Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs,
LG1856	737	Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, floating in it myself and looking composedly down,
LG1856	738	Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,
LG1856	739	Where the she-whale swims with her calves and never forsakes them,
LG1856	740	Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,
LG1856	741	Where the ground-shark's fin cuts like a black chip out of the water,
LG1856	742	Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents,
LG1856	743	Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below,
LG1856	744	Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments,
LG1856	745	Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,
LG1856	746	Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,
LG1856	747	Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
LG1856	748	Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs, or a good game of base-ball,
LG1856	749	At he-festivals, with blackguard jibes, ironical li-censelicense, bull-dances, drinking, laughter,
LG1856	750	At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown sqush, sucking the juice through a straw,
LG1856	751	At apple-peelings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
LG1856	752	At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;
LG1856	753	Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gur-glesgurgles, cackles, screams, weeps,
LG1856	754	Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scattered, where the brood cow waits in the hovel,
LG1856	755	Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,
LG1856	756	Where heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,
LG1856	757	Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limit-lesslimitless and lonesome prairie,
LG1856	758	Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near,
LG1856	759	Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,
LG1856	760	Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh,
LG1856	761	Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden, half-hid by the high weeds,
LG1856	762	Where band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out,
LG1856	763	Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery,
LG1856	764	Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,
LG1856	765	Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs,
LG1856	766	Where the splash of swimmers and divers cool the warm noon,
LG1856	767	Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well,
LG1856	768	Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
LG1856	769	Through the salt-lick or orange glade, under coni-calconical firs,
LG1856	770	Through the gymnasium, through the curtained saloon, through the office or public hall,
LG1856	771	Pleased with the native, pleased with the foreign, pleased with the new and old,
LG1856	772	Pleased with women, the homely as well as the handsome,
LG1856	773	Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,
LG1856	774	Pleased with the tunes of the choir of the white-washedwhitewashed church,
LG1856	775	Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any preacher—look-inglooking seriously at the camp-meeting,
LG1856	776	Looking in at the shop-windows in Broadway the whole forenoon, pressing the flesh of my nose to the thick plate-glass,
LG1856	777	Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds,
LG1856	778	My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;
LG1856	779	Coming home with the bearded and dark-cheeked bush-boy, riding behind him at the drape of the day,
LG1856	780	Far from the settlements, studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print,
LG1856	781	By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
LG1856	782	By the coffined corpse when all is still examin-ingexamining with a candle,
LG1856	783	Voyaging to every port to dicker and adven-tureadventure,
LG1856	784	Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any,
LG1856	785	Hot toward one I hate ready in my madness to knife him,
LG1856	786	Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
LG1856	787	Walking the old hills of Judea, with the beautiful gentle god by my side,
LG1856	788	Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,
LG1856	789	Speeding amid the seven satellites, and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles,
LG1856	790	Speeding with tailed meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,
LG1856	791	Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,
LG1856	792	Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
LG1856	793	Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
LG1856	794	I tread day and night such roads.
LG1856	795	I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,
LG1856	796	And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quin-tillionsquintillions green.
LG1856	797	I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul,
LG1856	798	My course runs below the soundings of plummets.
LG1856	799	I help myself to material and immaterial,
LG1856	800	No guard can shut me off, no law can prevent me.
LG1856	801	I anchor my ship for a little while only,
LG1856	802	My messengers continually cruise away, or bring their returns to me.
LG1856	803	I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.
LG1856	804	I ascend to the fore-truck, I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest, we sail through the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,
LG1856	805	Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,
LG1856	806	The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all direc-tionsdirections,
LG1856	807	The white-topped mountains show in the dis-tancedistance, I fling out my fancies toward them,
LG1856	808	We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged,
LG1856	809	We pass the colossal out-posts of the encamp-mentsencampments, we pass with still feet and caution,
LG1856	810	Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruined city, the blocks and fallen archi-tecturearchitecture more than all the living cities of the globe.
LG1856	811	I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires.
LG1856	812	I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
LG1856	813	I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.
LG1856	814	My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,
LG1856	815	They fetch my man's body up, dripping and drowned.
LG1856	816	I understand the large hearts of heroes,
LG1856	817	The courage of present times and all times,
LG1856	818	How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and death chasing it up and down the storm,
LG1856	819	How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,
LG1856	820	And chalked in large letters, Be of good cheer, We will not desert you,
LG1856	821	How he saved the drifting company at last,
LG1856	822	How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their prepared graves,
LG1856	823	How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved men,
LG1856	824	All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,
LG1856	825	I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
LG1856	826	The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
LG1856	827	The mother, condemned for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on,
LG1856	828	The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, covered with sweat,
LG1856	829	The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buck-shot and the bullets,
LG1856	830	All these I feel or am.
LG1856	831	I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
LG1856	832	Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
LG1856	833	I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinned with the ooze of my skin,
LG1856	834	I fall on the weeds and stones,
LG1856	835	The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
LG1856	836	Taunt my dizzy ears, beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
LG1856	837	Agonies are one of my changes of garments,
LG1856	838	I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,
LG1856	839	My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
LG1856	840	I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken, tumbling walls buried me in their debris,
LG1856	841	Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
LG1856	842	I heard the distant click of their picks and shov-elsshovels,
LG1856	843	They have cleared the beams away, they tenderly life me forth.
LG1856	844	I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake.
LG1856	845	Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so un-happyunhappy,
LG1856	846	White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,
LG1856	847	The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
LG1856	848	Distant and dead resuscitate,
LG1856	849	They show as the dial or move as the hands of me—I am the clock myself.
LG1856	850	I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's bombard-mentbombardment, I am there again.
LG1856	851	Again the reveille of drummers, again the attack-ingattacking cannon, mortars, howitzers,
LG1856	852	Again the attacked send cannon responsive;
LG1856	853	I take part, I see and hear the whole,
LG1856	854	The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aimed shots,
LG1856	855	The ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip,
LG1856	856	Workmen searching after damages, making indis-pensableindispensable repairs,
LG1856	857	The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion,
LG1856	858	The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.
LG1856	859	Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand,
LG1856	860	He gasps through the clot, Mind not me—mind — the entrenchments.
LG1856	861	I tell not the fall of Alamo, not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
LG1856	862	The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo.
LG1856	863	Hear now the tale of a jet-black sunrise,
LG1856	864	Hear of the murder in cold-blood of four hundred and twelve young men.
LG1856	865	Retreating, they had formed in a hollow square, with their baggage for breast-works,
LG1856	866	Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance,
LG1856	867	Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,
LG1856	868	They treated for an honorable capitulation, re-ceivedreceived writing and seal, gave up their arms, marched back prisoners of war.
LG1856	869	They were the glory of the race of rangers,
LG1856	870	Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, court-shipcourtship,
LG1856	871	Large, turbulent, brave, handsome, generous, proud, affectionate,
LG1856	872	Bearded, sunburnt, dressed in the free costume of hunters,
LG1856	873	Not a single one over thirty years of age.
LG1856	874	The second Sunday morning they were brought out in squads and massacred—it was beauti-fulbeautiful early summer,
LG1856	875	The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.
LG1856	876	None obeyed the command to kneel,
LG1856	877	Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,
LG1856	878	A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together,
LG1856	879	The maimed and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there,
LG1856	880	Some, half-killed, attempted to crawl away,
LG1856	881	These were dispatched with bayonets, or battered with the blunts of muskets,
LG1856	882	A youth not seventeen years old seized his assas-sinassassin, till two more came to release him,
LG1856	883	The three were all torn, and covered with the boy's blood.
LG1856	884	At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies;
LG1856	885	That is the tale of the murder of the four hun-dredhundred and twelve young men,
LG1856	886	And that was a jet-black sunrise.
LG1856	887	Did you read in the sea-books of the old-fashioned frigate-fight?
LG1856	888	Did you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?
LG1856	889	Our foe was no skulk in his ship, I tell you,
LG1856	890	His was the English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be,
LG1856	891	Along the lowered eve he came, horribly raking us.
LG1856	892	We closed with him, the yards entangled, the can-noncannon touched,
LG1856	893	My captain lashed fast with his own hands.
LG1856	894	We had received some eighteen-pound shots un-derunder the water,
LG1856	895	On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.
LG1856	896	Ten o'clock at night and the full moon shining, and the leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported,
LG1856	897	The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold, to give them a chance for themselves.
LG1856	898	The transit to and from the magazine was now stopped by the sentinels,
LG1856	899	They saw so many strange faces that they did not know whom to trust.
LG1856	900	Our frigate was afire, the other asked if we de-mandeddemanded quarter? if our colors were struck and the fighting done?
LG1856	901	I laughed content when I heard the voice of my little captain,
LG1856	902	We have not struck, he composedly cried, We have just begun our part of the fighting.
LG1856	903	Only three guns were in use,
LG1856	904	One was directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main-mast,
LG1856	905	Two, well served with grape and canister, silenced his musketry and cleared his decks.
LG1856	906	The tops alone seconded the fire of this little bat-terybattery, especially the main-top,
LG1856	907	They all held out bravely during the whole of the action.
LG1856	908	Not a moment's cease,
LG1856	909	The leaks gained fast on the pumps, the fire eat toward the powder-magazine,
LG1856	910	One of the pumps was shot away, it was generally thought we were sinking.
LG1856	911	Serene stood the little captain,
LG1856	912	He was not hurried, his voice was neither high nor low,
LG1856	913	His eyes gave more light to us than our battle-lanternsbattle-lanterns.
LG1856	914	Toward twelve at night, there in the beams of the moon they surrendered to us.
LG1856	915	Stretched and still lay the midnight,
LG1856	916	Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,
LG1856	917	Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, prepara-tionspreparations to pass to the one we had conquered,
LG1856	918	The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet,
LG1856	919	Near by, the corpse of the child that served in the cabin,
LG1856	920	The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers,
LG1856	921	The flames, spite of all that could be done, flicker-ingflickering aloft and below,
LG1856	922	The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,
LG1856	923	Formless stacks of bodies, bodies by them-selvesthemselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,
LG1856	924	Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,
LG1856	925	Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,
LG1856	926	Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in change to survivors,
LG1856	927	The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
LG1856	928	Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, long dull tapering groan,
LG1856	929	These so, these irretrievable.
LG1856	930	O Christ! My fit is mastering me!
LG1856	931	What the rebel said, gaily adjusting his throat to the rope-noose,
LG1856	932	What the savage at the stump, his eye-sockets empty, his mouth spirting whoops and defi-ancedefiance,
LG1856	933	What stills the traveler come to the vault at Mount Vernon,
LG1856	934	What sobers the Brooklyn boy as he looks down the shores of the Wallabout and remembers the prison ships,
LG1856	935	What burnt the gums of the red-coat at Saratoga when he surrendered his brigades,
LG1856	936	These become mine and me every one, and they are but little,
LG1856	937	I become as much more as I like.
LG1856	938	I become any presence or truth of humanity here,
LG1856	939	And see myself in prison shaped like another man,
LG1856	940	And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
LG1856	941	For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
LG1856	942	It is I let out in the morning and barred at night.
LG1856	943	Not a mutineer walks hand-cuffed to the jail, but I am hand-cuffed to him and walk by his side,
LG1856	944	I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one, with sweat on my twitching lips.
LG1856	945	Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.
LG1856	946	Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp, but I also lie at the last gasp,
LG1856	947	My face is ash-colored, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.
LG1856	948	Askers embody themselves in me, and I am em-bodiedembodied in them,
LG1856	949	I project my hat, sit shame-faced, beg.
LG1856	950	I rise extatic through all, sweep with the true gravitation,
LG1856	951	The whirling and whirling is elemental within me.
LG1856	952	Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back!
LG1856	953	Give me a little time beyond my cuffed head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,
LG1856	954	I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
LG1856	955	That I could forget the mockers and insults!
LG1856	956	That I could forget the trickling tears, and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!
LG1856	957	That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning!
LG1856	958	I remember, I resume the overstaid fraction,
LG1856	959	The grave of rock multiplies what has been con-fidedconfided to it, or to any graves,
LG1856	960	The corpses rise, the gashes heal, the fastenings roll away.
LG1856	961	I troop forth replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,
LG1856	962	We walk the roads of Ohio, Massachusetts, Vir-giniaVirginia, Wisconsin, Manhattan Island, New Orleans, Texas, Montreal, San Francisco, Charleston, Havana, Mexico,
LG1856	963	Inland and by the sea-coast and boundary lines, and we pass all boundary lines.
LG1856	964	Our swift ordinances are on their way over the whole earth,
LG1856	965	The blossoms we wear in our hats are the growth of two thousand years.
LG1856	966	Eleves, I salute you!
LG1856	967	I see the approach of your numberless gangs, I see you understand yourselves and me,
LG1856	968	And know that they who have eyes are divine, and the blind and lame are equally divine,
LG1856	969	And that my steps drag behind yours, yet go be-forebefore them,
LG1856	970	And are aware how I am with you no more than I am with everybody.
LG1856	971	The friendly and flowing savage, Who is he?
LG1856	972	Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mas-teringmastering it?
LG1856	973	Is he some south-westerner, raised out-doors? Is he Canadian?
LG1856	974	Is he from the Mississippi country? from Iowa, Oregon, California? from the mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? from the sea?
LG1856	975	Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him;
LG1856	976	They desire he should like them, touch them speak to them, stay with them.
LG1856	977	Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter, naivete,
LG1856	978	Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,
LG1856	979	They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
LG1856	980	They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.
LG1856	981	Flaunt of the sun-shine, I need not your bask, lie over!
LG1856	982	You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
LG1856	983	Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
LG1856	984	Say old top-knot! what do you want?
LG1856	985	Man or woman! I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
LG1856	986	And might tell what it is in me, and what it is in you, but cannot,
LG1856	987	And might tell the pinings I have, the pulse of my nights and days.
LG1856	988	Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,
LG1856	989	What I give I give out of myself.
LG1856	990	You there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarfed chops till I blow grit within you,
LG1856	991	Spread your palms, and lift the flaps of your pockets,
LG1856	992	I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
LG1856	993	And any thing I have I bestow;
LG1856	994	I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
LG1856	995	You can do nothing, and be nothing, but what I will infold you.
LG1856	996	To a drudge of the cotton-fields or cleaner of privies I lean—on his right cheek I put the family kiss,
LG1856	997	And in my soul I swear, I never will deny him.
LG1856	998	On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,
LG1856	999	This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arro-gantarrogant republics.
LG1856	1000	To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
LG1856	1001	Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
LG1856	1002	Let the physician and the priest go home.
LG1856	1003	I seize the descending man, I raise him with re-sistlessresistless will.
LG1856	1004	O despairer, here is my neck,
LG1856	1005	By God! you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
LG1856	1006	I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
LG1856	1007	Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force, lovers of me, bafflers of graves,
LG1856	1008	Sleep! I and they keep guard all night,
LG1856	1009	Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
LG1856	1010	I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
LG1856	1011	And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.
LG1856	1012	I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,
LG1856	1013	And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
LG1856	1014	I heard what was said of the universe,
LG1856	1015	Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;
LG1856	1016	It is middling well as far as it goes, but is that all?
LG1856	1017	Magnifying and applying come I,
LG1856	1018	Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
LG1856	1019	The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of my own seminal wet,
LG1856	1020	Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah — lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, Hercules his grandson—buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha—in my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved—with Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and every idol and image,
LG1856	1021	Taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more,
LG1856	1022	Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,
LG1856	1023	Admitting they bore mites, as for unfledged birds, who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,
LG1856	1024	Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out bet-terbetter in myself—bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,
LG1856	1025	Discovering as much, or more, in a framer framing a house,
LG1856	1026	Putting higher claims for him there with his rolled-up sleeves, driving the mallet and chisel,
LG1856	1027	Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation,
LG1856	1028	Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars,
LG1856	1029	Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,
LG1856	1030	Their brawny limbs passing safe over charred laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames,
LG1856	1031	By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born,
LG1856	1032	Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagged out at their waists,
LG1856	1033	The snag-toothed hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,
LG1856	1034	Selling all he possesses, travelling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother, and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;
LG1856	1035	What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then,
LG1856	1036	The bull and the bug never worshipped half enough,
LG1856	1037	Dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed,
LG1856	1038	The supernatural of no account—myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes,
LG1856	1039	The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as pro-digiousprodigious,
LG1856	1040	Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs out of pulpit or print;
LG1856	1041	By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator!
LG1856	1042	Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows!
LG1856	1043	A call in the midst of the crowd,
LG1856	1044	My own voice, orotund, sweeping, final.
LG1856	1045	Come my children,
LG1856	1046	Come my boys and girls, my women, household, intimates,
LG1856	1047	Now the performer launches his nerve, he has passed his prelude on the reeds within.
LG1856	1048	Easily written, loose-fingered chords! I feel the thrum of their climax and close.
LG1856	1049	My head slues round on my neck,
LG1856	1050	Music rolls, but not from the organ—folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
LG1856	1051	Ever the hard unsunk ground,
LG1856	1052	Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides,
LG1856	1053	Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,
LG1856	1054	Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorned thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,
LG1856	1055	Ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides, and bring him forth;
LG1856	1056	Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
LG1856	1057	Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the tressels of death.
LG1856	1058	Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,
LG1856	1059	To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
LG1856	1060	Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,
LG1856	1061	Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,
LG1856	1062	A few idly owning, and they the wheat continu-allycontinually claiming.
LG1856	1063	This is the city, and I am one of the citizens,
LG1856	1064	Whatever interests the rest interests me—poli-ticspolitics, markets, newspapers, schools, benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs, steam-shipssteamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate, personal estate.
LG1856	1065	They who piddle and patter here in collars and tailed coats, I am aware who they are—they are not worms or fleas,
LG1856	1066	I acknowledge the duplicates of myself—the weak-estweakest and shallowest is deathless with me,
LG1856	1067	What I do and say, the same waits for them;
LG1856	1068	Every thought that flounders in me, the same flounders in them.
LG1856	1069	I know perfectly well my own egotism,
LG1856	1070	I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
LG1856	1071	And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself.
LG1856	1072	My words are words of a questioning, and to in-dicateindicate reality;
LG1856	1073	This printed and bound book—but the printer, and the printing-office boy?
LG1856	1074	The marriage estate and settlement—but the body and mind of the bridegroom? also those of the bride?
LG1856	1075	The panorama of the sea—but the sea itself?
LG1856	1076	The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?
LG1856	1077	The fleet of ships of the line, and all the modern improvements—but the craft and pluck of the admiral?
LG1856	1078	The dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
LG1856	1079	The sky up there—yet here, or next door, or across the way?
LG1856	1080	The saints and sages in history—but you your-selfyourself?
LG1856	1081	Sermons, creeds, theology—but the human brain, and what is called reason, and what is called love, and what is called life?
LG1856	1082	I do not despise you, priests,
LG1856	1083	My faith is the greatest of faiths, and the least of faiths,
LG1856	1084	Enclosing all worship ancient and modern, and all between ancient and modern,
LG1856	1085	Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
LG1856	1086	Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,
LG1856	1087	Making a fetish of the first rock or stump, powow-ingpowowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
LG1856	1088	Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
LG1856	1089	Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic pro-cessionprocession—rapt and austere in the woods, a gymnosophist,
LG1856	1090	Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to shastas and vedas admirant, minding the koran,
LG1856	1091	Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
LG1856	1092	Accepting the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is di-vinedivine,
LG1856	1093	To the mass kneeling, to the puritan's prayer ris-ingrising, sitting patiently in a pew,
LG1856	1094	Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,
LG1856	1095	Looking forth on pavement and land, and outside of pavement and land,
LG1856	1096	Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.
LG1856	1097	One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang, I turn and talk like a man leaving charges be-forebefore a journey.
LG1856	1098	Down-hearted doubters, dull and excluded,
LG1856	1099	Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dis-hearteneddisheartened, atheistical,
LG1856	1100	I know every one of you, I know the unspoken interrogatories,
LG1856	1101	By experience I know them.
LG1856	1102	How the flukes splash!
LG1856	1103	How they contort, rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!
LG1856	1104	Be at peace, bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,
LG1856	1105	I take my place among you as much as among any,
LG1856	1106	The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,
LG1856	1107	Day and night are for you, me, all,
LG1856	1108	And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same.
LG1856	1109	I do not know what is untried and afterward,
LG1856	1110	But I know it is sure, alive, sufficient.
LG1856	1111	Each who passes is considered, each who stops is considered, not a single one can it fail.
LG1856	1112	It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
LG1856	1113	Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,
LG1856	1114	Nor the little child that peeped in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again,
LG1856	1115	Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,
LG1856	1116	Nor him in the poor-house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
LG1856	1117	Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked, nor the brutish koboo called the ordure of humanity,
LG1856	1118	Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
LG1856	1119	Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
LG1856	1120	Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor one of the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,
LG1856	1121	Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.
LG1856	1122	It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.
LG1856	1123	What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown.
LG1856	1124	The clock indicates the moment, but what does eternity indicate?
LG1856	1125	Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs, its buckets are rising forever and ever,
LG1856	1126	They pour, they pour, and exhale away.
LG1856	1127	We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
LG1856	1128	There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.
LG1856	1129	Births have brought us richness and variety,
LG1856	1130	And other births will bring us richness and variety.
LG1856	1131	I do not call one greater and one smaller,
LG1856	1132	That which fills its period and place is equal to any.
LG1856	1133	Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?
LG1856	1134	I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,
LG1856	1135	All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation;
LG1856	1136	What have I to do with lamentation?
LG1856	1137	I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be.
LG1856	1138	My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,
LG1856	1139	On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,
LG1856	1140	All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.
LG1856	1141	Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,
LG1856	1142	Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,
LG1856	1143	I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,
LG1856	1144	And took my time, and took no hurt from the fœtid carbon.
LG1856	1145	Long I was hugged close—long and long.
LG1856	1146	Immense have been the preparations for me,
LG1856	1147	Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.
LG1856	1148	Cycles ferried my cradle rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,
LG1856	1149	For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,
LG1856	1150	They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.
LG1856	1151	Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,
LG1856	1152	My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it,
LG1856	1153	For it the nebula cohered to an orb, the long slow strata piled to rest it on, vast vegetables gave it sustenance,
LG1856	1154	Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care.
LG1856	1155	All forces have been steadily employed to com-pletecomplete and delight me,
LG1856	1156	Now I stand on this spot with my soul.
LG1856	1157	Span of youth! ever-pushed elasticity! manhood, balanced, florid, full!
LG1856	1158	My lovers suffocate me!
LG1856	1159	Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,
LG1856	1160	Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,
LG1856	1161	Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head,
LG1856	1162	Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled under-brush,
LG1856	1163	Or while I swim in the bath, or drink from the pump at the corner, or the curtain is down at the opera, or I glimpse at a woman's face in the rail-road car,
LG1856	1164	Lighting on every moment of my life,
LG1856	1165	Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
LG1856	1166	Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.
LG1856	1167	Old age superbly rising! Ineffable grace of dying days!
LG1856	1168	Every condition promulges not only itself, it pro-mulgespromulges what grows after and out of itself,
LG1856	1169	And the dark hush promulges as much as any.
LG1856	1170	I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkledfar-sprinkled systems,
LG1856	1171	And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems.
LG1856	1172	Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
LG1856	1173	Outward, outward, forever outward.
LG1856	1174	My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
LG1856	1175	He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
LG1856	1176	And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
LG1856	1177	There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage,
LG1856	1178	If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run,
LG1856	1179	We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
LG1856	1180	And as surely go as much farther, and then far-therfarther and farther.
LG1856	1181	A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span, or make it impatient,
LG1856	1182	They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
LG1856	1183	See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
LG1856	1184	Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
LG1856	1185	My rendezvous is appointed,
LG1856	1186	The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms.
LG1856	1187	I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured, and never will be measured.
LG1856	1188	I tramp a perpetual journey,
LG1856	1189	My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
LG1856	1190	No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
LG1856	1191	I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
LG1856	1192	I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
LG1856	1193	But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
LG1856	1194	My left hand hooks you round the waist,
LG1856	1195	My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.
LG1856	1196	Not I, not any one else, can travel that road for you,
LG1856	1197	You must travel it for yourself.
LG1856	1198	It is not far, it is within reach,
LG1856	1199	Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
LG1856	1200	Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.
LG1856	1201	Shoulder your duds, I will mine, let us hasten forth,
LG1856	1202	Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
LG1856	1203	If you tire, give me both burdens and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
LG1856	1204	And in due time you shall repay the same ser-viceservice to me,
LG1856	1205	For after we start we never lie by again.
LG1856	1206	This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven,
LG1856	1207	And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then?
LG1856	1208	And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond.
LG1856	1209	You are also asking me questions, and I hear you,
LG1856	1210	I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
LG1856	1211	Sit awhile wayfarer,
LG1856	1212	Here are biscuits to eat, here is milk to drink,
LG1856	1213	But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I will certainly kiss you with my good-bye kiss, and open the gate for your egress hence.
LG1856	1214	Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
LG1856	1215	Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
LG1856	1216	You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light, and of every moment of your life.
LG1856	1217	Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
LG1856	1218	Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
LG1856	1219	To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, laughingly dash with your hair.
LG1856	1220	I am the teacher of athletes,
LG1856	1221	He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
LG1856	1222	He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.
LG1856	1223	The boy I love, the same becomes a man, not through derived power, but in his own right,
LG1856	1224	Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity of fear,
LG1856	1225	Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
LG1856	1226	Unrequited love, or a slight, cutting him worse than a wound cuts,
LG1856	1227	First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song, or play on the banjo,
LG1856	1228	Preferring scars, and faces pitted with small-pox, over all latherers and those that keep out of the sun.
LG1856	1229	I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
LG1856	1230	I follow you, whoever you are, from the present hour,
LG1856	1231	My words itch at your ears till you understand them.
LG1856	1232	I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat,
LG1856	1233	It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you,
LG1856	1234	It was tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosened.
LG1856	1235	I swear I will never mention love or death inside a house,
LG1856	1236	And I swear I never will translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.
LG1856	1237	If you would understand me, go to the heights or water-shore,
LG1856	1238	The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key,
LG1856	1239	The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.
LG1856	1240	No shuttered room or school can commune with me,
LG1856	1241	But roughs and little children better than they.
LG1856	1242	The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me pretty well,
LG1856	1243	The wood-man that takes his axe and jug with him, shall take me with him all day,
LG1856	1244	The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,
LG1856	1245	In vessels that sail my words sail—I go with fishermen and seamen, and love them,
LG1856	1246	My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket,
LG1856	1247	The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,
LG1856	1248	The young mother and old mother comprehend me,
LG1856	1249	The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment, and forget where they are,
LG1856	1250	They and all would resume what I have told them.
LG1856	1251	I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
LG1856	1252	And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
LG1856	1253	And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-selfone's-self is,
LG1856	1254	And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his own funeral, dressed in his shroud,
LG1856	1255	And I or you, pocketless of a dime, may pur-chasepurchase the pick of the earth,
LG1856	1256	And to glance with an eye, or show a bean in its pod, confounds the learning of all times,
LG1856	1257	And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,
LG1856	1258	And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe,
LG1856	1259	And any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes.
LG1856	1260	And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,
LG1856	1261	For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God,
LG1856	1262	No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God, and about death.
LG1856	1263	I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
LG1856	1264	Nor do I understand who there can be more won-derfulwonderful than myself.
LG1856	1265	Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
LG1856	1266	I see something of God each hour of the twenty-fourtwenty-four, and each moment then,
LG1856	1267	In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
LG1856	1268	I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
LG1856	1269	And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.
LG1856	1270	And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mor-talitymortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.
LG1856	1271	To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
LG1856	1272	I see the elder-hand, pressing, receiving, support-ingsupporting,
LG1856	1273	I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors, mark the outlet, mark the relief and escape.
LG1856	1274	And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,
LG1856	1275	I smell the white roses sweet-scented and grow-inggrwoing,
LG1856	1276	I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polished breasts of melons.
LG1856	1277	And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
LG1856	1278	No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.
LG1856	1279	I hear you whispering there, O stars of heaven,
LG1856	1280	O suns, O grass of graves, O perpetual trans-ferstransfers and promotions, if you do not say any-thinganything, how can I say anything?
LG1856	1281	Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
LG1856	1282	Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,
LG1856	1283	Toss, sparkles of day and dusk! Toss on the black stems that decay in the muck!
LG1856	1284	Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs!
LG1856	1285	I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
LG1856	1286	And perceive of the ghastly glimmer the sun-beamssunbeams reflected,
LG1856	1287	And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.
LG1856	1288	There is that in me—I do not know what it is — but I know it is in me.
LG1856	1289	Wrenched and sweaty, calm and cool then my body becomes,
LG1856	1290	I sleep—I sleep long.
LG1856	1291	I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,
LG1856	1292	It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.
LG1856	1293	Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
LG1856	1294	To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.
LG1856	1295	Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.
LG1856	1296	Do you see, O my brothers and sisters?
LG1856	1297	It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan —it is eternal life—it is happiness.
LG1856	1298	The past and present wilt—I have filled them, emptied them,
LG1856	1299	And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
LG1856	1300	Listener up there! here you! what have you to confide to me?
LG1856	1301	Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
LG1856	1302	Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
LG1856	1303	Do I contradict myself?
LG1856	1304	Very well then, I contradict myself,
LG1856	1305	I am large, I contain multitudes.
LG1856	1306	I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
LG1856	1307	Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
LG1856	1308	Who wishes to walk with me?
LG1856	1309	Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
LG1856	1310	The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me — he complains of my gab and my loitering.
LG1856	1311	I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untrans-latableuntranslatable,
LG1856	1312	I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
LG1856	1313	The last scud of day holds back for me,
LG1856	1314	It flings my likeness, after the rest, and true as any, on the shadowed wilds,
LG1856	1315	It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
LG1856	1316	I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the run-away sun,
LG1856	1317	I effuse my flash in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
LG1856	1318	I bequeath myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love,
LG1856	1319	If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
LG1856	1320	You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean,
LG1856	1321	But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
LG1856	1322	And filter and fibre your blood.
LG1856	1323	Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
LG1856	1324	Missing me one place, search another,
LG1856	1325	I stop some where waiting for you.
LG1856	1326	UNFOLDED only out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded,
LG1856	1327	Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the superbest man of the earth,
LG1856	1328	Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man,
LG1856	1329	Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman, can a man be formed of perfect body,
LG1856	1330	Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of the woman can come the poems of man — only thence have my poems come,
LG1856	1331	Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love,
LG1856	1332	Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscledwell-muscled woman I love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man,
LG1856	1333	Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain, come all the folds of the man's brain, duly obedient,
LG1856	1334	Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all jus-ticejustive is unfolded,
LG1856	1335	Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy;
LG1856	1336	A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity—but every jot of the great-nessgreatness of man is unfolded out of woman,
LG1856	1337	First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.
LG1856	1338	O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!
LG1856	1339	Such gliding wonders! Such sights and sounds!
LG1856	1340	Such joined unended links, each hooked to the next!
LG1856	1341	Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.
LG1856	1342	What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
LG1856	1343	What waves and soils exuding?
LG1856	1344	What climes? what persons and lands are here?
LG1856	1345	Who are the infants? some playing, some slum-beringslumbering?
LG1856	1346	Who are the girls? Who are the married women?
LG1856	1347	Who are the three old men going slowly with their arms about each others' necks?
LG1856	1348	What rivers are these? What forests and fruits are these?
LG1856	1349	What are the mountains called that rise so high in the mists?
LG1856	1350	What myriads of dwellings are they, filled with dwellers?
LG1856	1351	Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,
LG1856	1352	Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for in the west,
LG1856	1353	Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
LG1856	1354	Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends;
LG1856	1355	Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months,
LG1856	1356	Stretched in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above the horizon, and sinks again;
LG1856	1357	Within me zones, seas, cataracts, plains, volca-noesvolcanoes, groups,
LG1856	1358	Oceanica, Australasia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
LG1856	1359	What do you hear, Walt Whitman?
LG1856	1360	I hear the workman singing, and the farmer's wife singing,
LG1856	1361	I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the day,
LG1856	1362	I hear the inimitable music of the voices of mothers,
LG1856	1363	I hear the persuasions of lovers,
LG1856	1364	I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky, hunting on hills,
LG1856	1365	I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse,
LG1856	1366	I hear the Spanish dance with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the rebeck and guitar,
LG1856	1367	I hear continual echoes from the Thames,
LG1856	1368	I hear fierce French liberty songs,
LG1856	1369	I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical reci-tativerecitative of old poems,
LG1856	1370	I hear the Virginia plantation chorus of negroes, of a harvest night, in the glare of pine knots,
LG1856	1371	I hear the strong baritone of the 'long-shore-men of Manahatta—I hear the stevedores unlad-ingunlading the cargoes, and singing,
LG1856	1372	I hear the screams of the water-fowl of solitary northwest lakes,
LG1856	1373	I hear the rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and grass with the showers of their terrible clouds,
LG1856	1374	I hear the Coptic refrain toward sun-down pen-sivelypensively falling on the breast of the black ven-erablevenerable vast mother, the Nile,
LG1856	1375	I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada,
LG1856	1376	I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule,
LG1856	1377	I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque,
LG1856	1378	I hear Christian priests at the altars of their churches—I hear the responsive base and soprano,
LG1856	1379	I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-hairedwhite-haired Irish grand-parents, when they learn the death of their grand-son,
LG1856	1380	I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice, putting to sea at Okotsk,
LG1856	1381	I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle, as the slaves march on, as the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fastened together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,
LG1856	1382	I hear the entreaties of women tied up for punish-mentpunishment, I hear the sibilant whisk of thongs through the air,
LG1856	1383	I hear the appeal of the greatest orator, he that turns states by the tip of his tongue,
LG1856	1384	I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,
LG1856	1385	I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the Romans,
LG1856	1386	I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful god, the Christ,
LG1856	1387	I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three thousand years ago.
LG1856	1388	What do you see, Walt Whitman?
LG1856	1389	Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?
LG1856	1390	I see a great round wonder rolling through the air,
LG1856	1391	I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, grave-yards, jails, factories, palaces, hovels, huts of barba-riansbarbarians, tents of nomads, upon the surface,
LG1856	1392	I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping, and the sun-lit part on the other side,
LG1856	1393	I see the curious silent change of the light and shade,
LG1856	1394	I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me.
LG1856	1395	I see plenteous waters,
LG1856	1396	I see mountain peaks—I see the sierras of Andes and Alleghanies, I see where they range,
LG1856	1397	I see plainly the Himmalehs, Chian Shahs, Al-taysAltays, Gauts,
LG1856	1398	I see the Rocky Mountains, and the Peak of Winds,
LG1856	1399	I see the Styrian Alps and the Karnac Alps,
LG1856	1400	I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the Dofrafields, and off at sea Mount Hecla,
LG1856	1401	I see Vesuvius and Etna—I see the Anahuacs,
LG1856	1402	I see the Mountains of the Moon, and the Snow Mountains, and the Red Mountains of Mada-gascarMadagascar,
LG1856	1403	I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras;
LG1856	1404	I see the vast deserts of Western America,
LG1856	1405	I see the Libyan, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;
LG1856	1406	I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,
LG1856	1407	I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones — the Atlantic and Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
LG1856	1408	The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea,
LG1856	1409	The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and the Bay of Biscay,
LG1856	1410	The clear-sunned Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,
LG1856	1411	The inland fresh-tasted seas of North America,
LG1856	1412	The White Sea, and the sea around Greenland.
LG1856	1413	I behold the mariners of the world,
LG1856	1414	Some are in storms, some in the night, with the watch on the look-out, some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.
LG1856	1415	I behold the steam-ships of the world,
LG1856	1416	Some double the Cape of Storms, some Cape Verde, others Cape Guardafui, Bon, or Baja-doreBajadore,
LG1856	1417	Others Dondra Head, others pass the Straits of Sunda, others Cape Lopatka, others Beh-ring'sBehring's Straits,
LG1856	1418	Others Cape Horn, others the Gulf of Mexico, or along Cuba or Hayti, others Hudson's Bay or Baffin's Bay,
LG1856	1419	Others pass the Straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the Firth of Solway, others round Cape Clear, others the Land's End,
LG1856	1420	Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
LG1856	1421	Others add to the exits and entrances at Sandy Hook,
LG1856	1422	Others to the comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
LG1856	1423	Others sternly push their way through the north-ernnorthern winter-packs,
LG1856	1424	Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
LG1856	1425	Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Hoang-hoHoangho and Amoor, others the Indus, the Buram-pooterBurampooter and Cambodia,
LG1856	1426	Others wait at the wharves of Manahatta, steamed up, ready to start,
LG1856	1427	Wait swift and swarthy in the ports of Australia,
LG1856	1428	Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples, Hamburgh, Bremen, Bor-deauxBordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,
LG1856	1429	Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama,
LG1856	1430	Wait at their moorings at Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, Galves-tonGalveston, San Francisco.
LG1856	1431	I see the tracks of the rail-roads of the earth,
LG1856	1432	I see them welding state to state, county to county, city to city, through North America,
LG1856	1433	I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Eu-ropeEurope,
LG1856	1434	I see them in Asia and in Africa.
LG1856	1435	I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,
LG1856	1436	I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains, passions, of my race.
LG1856	1437	I see the long thick river-stripes of the earth,
LG1856	1438	I see where the Mississippi flows, I see where the Columbia flows,
LG1856	1439	I see the St. Lawrence and the falls of Niagara,
LG1856	1440	I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,
LG1856	1441	I see where the Seine flows, and where the Loire, the Rhone, and the Guadalquivir flow,
LG1856	1442	I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,
LG1856	1443	I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po,
LG1856	1444	I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.
LG1856	1445	I see the site of the great old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and that of India,
LG1856	1446	I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.
LG1856	1447	I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in human forms,
LG1856	1448	I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians lamas, monks, muftis, exhorters,
LG1856	1449	I see where druids walked the groves of Mona, I see the misletoe and vervain,
LG1856	1450	I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of gods, I see the old signifiers,
LG1856	1451	I see Christ once more eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of youths and old persons,
LG1856	1452	I see where the strong divine young man, the Her-culesHercules, toiled faithfully and long, and then died,
LG1856	1453	I see the place of the innocent rich life and hap-lesshappless fate of the beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limbed Bacchus,
LG1856	1454	I see Kneph, blooming, dressed in blue, with the crown of feathers on his head,
LG1856	1455	I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, Do not weep for me, this is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country, I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.
LG1856	1456	I see the battle-fields of the earth—grass grows upon them, and blossoms and corn,
LG1856	1457	I see the tracks of ancient and modern expedi-tionsexpeditions.
LG1856	1458	I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of the earth.
LG1856	1459	I see the places of the sagas,
LG1856	1460	I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,
LG1856	1461	I see granite boulders and cliffs, I see green mea-dowsmeadows and lakes,
LG1856	1462	I see the burial-cairns of Scandinavian warriors,
LG1856	1463	I see them raised high with stones, by the marge of restless oceans, that the dead men's spirits, when they wearied of their quiet graves, might rise up through the mounds, and gaze on the tossing billows, and be refreshed by storms, immensity, liberty, action.
LG1856	1464	I see the steppes of Asia,
LG1856	1465	I see the tumuli of Mongolia, I see the tents of Kalmucks and Baskirs,
LG1856	1466	I see the nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows,
LG1856	1467	I see the table-lands notched with ravines, I see the jungles and deserts,
LG1856	1468	I see the camel, the wild steed, the bustard, the fat-tailed sheep, the antelope, and the bur-rowingburrowing wolf.
LG1856	1469	I see the high-lands of Abyssinia,
LG1856	1470	I see flocks of goats feeding, I see the fig-tree, tamarind, date,
LG1856	1471	I see fields of teff-wheat, I see the places of verdure and gold.
LG1856	1472	I see the Brazilian vaquero,
LG1856	1473	I see the Bolivian ascending Mount Sorata,
LG1856	1474	I see the Guacho crossing the plains, I see the incomparable rider of horses with his lasso on his arm,
LG1856	1475	I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.
LG1856	1476	I see the little and large sea-dots, some inhabited, some uninhabited;
LG1856	1477	I see two boats with nets, lying off the shore of Paumanok, quite still,
LG1856	1478	I see ten fishermen waiting—they discover now a thick school of mossbonkers, they drop the joined seine-ends in the water,
LG1856	1479	The boats separate, they diverge and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
LG1856	1480	The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
LG1856	1481	Some of the fishermen lounge in the boats, others stand negligently ankle-deep in the water, poised on strong legs,
LG1856	1482	The boats are partly drawn up, the water slaps against them,
LG1856	1483	On the sand, in heaps and winrows, well out from the water, lie the green-backed spotted moss-bonkersmoss-bonkers.
LG1856	1484	I see the despondent red man in the west, lingering about the banks of Moingo, and about Lake Pepin,
LG1856	1485	He has beheld the quail and honey-bee, and sadly prepared to depart.
LG1856	1486	I see the regions of snow and ice,
LG1856	1487	I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,
LG1856	1488	I see the seal-seeker in his boat, poising his lance,
LG1856	1489	I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge, drawn by dogs,
LG1856	1490	I see the porpoise-hunters, I see the whale-crews of the South Pacific and the North Atlantic,
LG1856	1491	I see the cliffs, glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switz-erlandSwitzerland—I mark the long winters and the isolation.
LG1856	1492	I see the cities of the earth, and make myself a part of them,
LG1856	1493	I am a real Londoner, Parisian, Viennese,
LG1856	1494	I am a habitan of St. Petersburgh, Berlin, Con-stantinopleConstantinople,
LG1856	1495	I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,
LG1856	1496	I am of Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
LG1856	1497	I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence,
LG1856	1498	I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw—or north-wardnorthward in Christiana or Stockholm—or in some street in Iceland,
LG1856	1499	I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.
LG1856	1500	I see vapors exhaling from unexplored coun-triescountries,
LG1856	1501	I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poisoned splint, the fetish and the obi.
LG1856	1502	I see African and Asiatic towns,
LG1856	1503	I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuc-tooTimbuctoo, Monrovia,
LG1856	1504	I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta,
LG1856	1505	I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashantee-man in their huts,
LG1856	1506	I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo,
LG1856	1507	I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat,
LG1856	1508	I see Teheran, I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands—I see the caravans toil-ingtoiling onward;
LG1856	1509	I see Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks,
LG1856	1510	I look on chiselled histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs of sand-stone or granite blocks,
LG1856	1511	I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mum-miesmummies, embalmed, swathed in linen cloth, lying there many centuries,
LG1856	1512	I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.
LG1856	1513	I see the menials of the earth, laboring,
LG1856	1514	I see the prisoners in the prisons,
LG1856	1515	I see the defective human bodies of the earth,
LG1856	1516	I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunch-backshunchbacks, lunatics,
LG1856	1517	I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,
LG1856	1518	I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
LG1856	1519	I see male and female everywhere,
LG1856	1520	I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,
LG1856	1521	I see the constructiveness of my race,
LG1856	1522	I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,
LG1856	1523	I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations—I go among them, I mix indiscriminately,
LG1856	1524	And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
LG1856	1525	You, inevitable where you are!
LG1856	1526	You daughter or son of England!
LG1856	1527	You free man of Australia! you of Tasmania! you of Papua! you free woman of the same!
LG1856	1528	You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
LG1856	1529	You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed, nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!
LG1856	1530	You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
LG1856	1531	You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
LG1856	1532	You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
LG1856	1533	You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!
LG1856	1534	You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohe-mianBohemian! farmer of Styria!
LG1856	1535	You neighbor of the Danube!
LG1856	1536	You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too!
LG1856	1537	You Sardinian! you Bavarian! you Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
LG1856	1538	You citizen of Prague! you Roman! Napolitan! Greek!
LG1856	1539	You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
LG1856	1540	You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
LG1856	1541	You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!
LG1856	1542	You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle, shooting arrows to the mark!
LG1856	1543	You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
LG1856	1544	You women of the earth, subordinated at your tasks!
LG1856	1545	You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once on Syrian ground!
LG1856	1546	You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
LG1856	1547	You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!
LG1856	1548	You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of Mecca!
LG1856	1549	You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babel-mandelBabelmandel, ruling your families and tribes!
LG1856	1550	You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields off Nazareth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias!
LG1856	1551	You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargain-ingbargaining in the shops of Lassa!
LG1856	1552	You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!
LG1856	1553	All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!
LG1856	1554	All you on the numberless islands of the archi-pelagoesarchipelagoes of the sea!
LG1856	1555	And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
LG1856	1556	And you everywhere whom I specify not, but in-cludeinclude just the same!
LG1856	1557	I salute you for myself and for America.
LG1856	1558	Each of us inevitable,
LG1856	1559	Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
LG1856	1560	Each of us allowed the eternal purport of the earth,
LG1856	1561	Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
LG1856	1562	You Hottentot with clicking palate!
LG1856	1563	You woolly-haired hordes! you white or black owners of slaves!
LG1856	1564	You owned persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
LG1856	1565	You felons, deformed persons, idiots!
LG1856	1566	You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressiveever-impressive countenances of brutes!
LG1856	1567	You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your glimmering language and spirituality!
LG1856	1568	You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California!
LG1856	1569	You dwarfed Kamskatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!
LG1856	1570	You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with pro-trusiveprotrusive lip, grovelling, seeking your food!
LG1856	1571	You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
LG1856	1572	You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee!
LG1856	1573	You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
LG1856	1574	You bather bathing in the Ganges!
LG1856	1575	You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Pat-agonianPatagonian! you Fegee-man!
LG1856	1576	You peon of Mexico! you Russian serf! you quadroon of Carolina, Texas, Tennessee!
LG1856	1577	I do not refuse you my hand, or prefer others before you,
LG1856	1578	I do not say one word against you.
LG1856	1579	My spirit has passed in compassion and deter-minationdetermination around the whole earth,
LG1856	1580	I have looked for brothers, sisters, lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands.
LG1856	1581	I think I have risen with you, you vapors, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
LG1856	1582	I think I have blown with you, you winds,
LG1856	1583	I think, you waters, I have fingered every shore with you,
LG1856	1584	I think I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through,
LG1856	1585	I think I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on imbedded rocks.
LG1856	1586	What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities myself,
LG1856	1587	All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself,
LG1856	1588	I find my home wherever there are any homes of men.
LG1856	1589	COME closer to me,
LG1856	1590	Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess,
LG1856	1591	Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.
LG1856	1592	This is unfinished business with me—How is it with you?
LG1856	1593	I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.
LG1856	1594	I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.
LG1856	1595	I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me—I know that it is good for you to do so.
LG1856	1596	Were all educations practical and ornamental well displayed out of me, what would it amount to?
LG1856	1597	Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to?
LG1856	1598	Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?
LG1856	1599	The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,
LG1856	1600	A man like me, and never the usual terms.
LG1856	1601	Neither a servant nor a master am I,
LG1856	1602	I take no sooner a large price than a small price —I will have my own, whoever enjoys me,
LG1856	1603	I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.
LG1856	1604	If you are a workman or workwoman, I stand as nigh as the nighest that works in the same shop,
LG1856	1605	If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend,
LG1856	1606	If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome,
LG1856	1607	If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,
LG1856	1608	If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? plenty of them?
LG1856	1609	If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table,
LG1856	1610	If you meet some stranger in the street, and love him or her, do I not often meet strangers in the street and love them?
LG1856	1611	If you see a good deal remarkable in me, I see just as much, perhaps more, in you.
LG1856	1612	Why what have you thought of yourself?
LG1856	1613	Is it you, then, that thought yourself less?
LG1856	1614	Is it you that thought the President greater than you? or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?
LG1856	1615	Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief, or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now, or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in print, do you give in that you are any less immortal?
LG1856	1616	Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouch-inguntouching,
LG1856	1617	It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no,
LG1856	1618	I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns —I see and hear you, and what you give and take,
LG1856	1619	What is there you cannot give and take?
LG1856	1620	I see not merely that you are polite or white-faced, married, single, citizens of old states, citizens of new states, eminent in some profession, a lady or gentleman in a parlor, or dressed in the jail uniform, or pulpit uniform,
LG1856	1621	Not only the free Utahan, Kansian, Arkansian — not only the free Cuban, not merely the slave, not Mexican native, Flatfoot, negro from Africa,
LG1856	1622	Iroquois eating the war-flesh, fish-tearer in his lair of rocks and sand, Esquimaux in the dark cold snow-house, Chinese with his transverse eyes, Bedowee, wandering nomad, taboun-schiktabounschik at the head of his droves,
LG1856	1623	Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, I see — and all else is behind or through them.
LG1856	1624	The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband!
LG1856	1625	The daughter, and she is just as good as the son!
LG1856	1626	The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father!
LG1856	1627	Offspring of those not rich, boys apprenticed to trades,
LG1856	1628	Young fellows working on farms, and old fellows working on farms,
LG1856	1629	The naive, the simple and hardy, he going to the polls to vote, he who has a good time, and he who has a bad time,
LG1856	1630	Mechanics, southerners, new arrivals, laborers sailors, mano'warsmen, merchantmen, coast-erscoasters,
LG1856	1631	All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I see,
LG1856	1632	None shall escape me, and none shall wish to escape me.
LG1856	1633	I bring what you much need, yet always have,
LG1856	1634	Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good,
LG1856	1635	I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself.
LG1856	1636	There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually,
LG1856	1637	It is not what is printed, preached, discussed—it eludes discussion and print,
LG1856	1638	It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,
LG1856	1639	It is for you, whoever you are—it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you,
LG1856	1640	It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest—it is not them, though it is endlessly provoked by them—what is there ready and near you now?
LG1856	1641	You may read in many languages, yet read nothing about it,
LG1856	1642	You may read the President's message, and read nothing about it there,
LG1856	1643	Nothing in the reports from the State department or Treasury department, or in the daily papers or the weekly papers,
LG1856	1644	Or in the census returns, assessors' returns, prices current, or any accounts of stock.
LG1856	1645	The sun and stars that float in the open air—the apple-shaped earth, and we upon it, surely the drift of them is something grand!
LG1856	1646	I do not know what it is, except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,
LG1856	1647	And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot, or recon-noissancereconnoissance,
LG1856	1648	And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without luck must be a failure for us,
LG1856	1649	And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.
LG1856	1650	The light and shade, the curious sense of body and identity, the greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things, the endless pride and out-stretching of man, unspeakable joys and sorrows,
LG1856	1651	The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees, and the wonders that fill each minute of time forever, and each acre of surface and space forever,
LG1856	1652	Have you reckoned them for a trade or farm-work? or for the profits of a store? or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman's leisure, or a lady's leisure?
LG1856	1653	Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it might be painted in a picture?
LG1856	1654	Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?
LG1856	1655	Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations, and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans?
LG1856	1656	Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
LG1856	1657	Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?
LG1856	1658	Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural ta-blestables, or agriculture itself?
LG1856	1659	Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?
LG1856	1660	Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,
LG1856	1661	I rate them high as the highest, then a child born of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate.
LG1856	1662	We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,
LG1856	1663	I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,
LG1856	1664	I am this day just as much in love with them as you,
LG1856	1665	Then I am eternally in love with you, and with all my fellows upon the earth.
LG1856	1666	We consider bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine,
LG1856	1667	I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,
LG1856	1668	It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,
LG1856	1669	Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you.
LG1856	1670	The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are,
LG1856	1671	The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him,
LG1856	1672	The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,
LG1856	1673	The Congress convenes every December for you,
LG1856	1674	Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you.
LG1856	1675	All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exurge from you,
LG1856	1676	All sculpture and monuments, and anything in-scribedinscribed anywhere, are tallied in you,
LG1856	1677	The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records reach, is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,
LG1856	1678	If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?
LG1856	1679	The most renowned poems would be ashes, ora-tionsorations and plays would be vacuums.
LG1856	1680	All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,
LG1856	1681	Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of the arches and cornices?
LG1856	1682	All music is what awakes from you, when you are reminded by the instruments,
LG1856	1683	It is not the violins and the cornets—it is not the oboe nor the beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his sweet ro-manzaromanza, nor that of the men's chorus, nor that of the women's chorus,
LG1856	1684	It is nearer and farther than they.
LG1856	1685	Will the whole come back then?
LG1856	1686	Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is there nothing greater or more?
LG1856	1687	Does all sit there with you, and here with me?
LG1856	1688	The old, forever-new things—you foolish child! the closest, simplest things, this moment with you,
LG1856	1689	Your person, and every particle that relates to your person,
LG1856	1690	The pulses of your brain, waiting their chance and encouragement at every deed or sight,
LG1856	1691	Anything you do in public by day, and anything you do in secret between-days,
LG1856	1692	What is called right and what is called wrong, what you behold or touch, what causes your anger or wonder,
LG1856	1693	The ankle-chain of the slave, the bed of the bed-housebedhouse, the cards of the gambler, the plates of the forger,
LG1856	1694	What is seen or learnt in the street, or intui-tivelyintuitively learnt,
LG1856	1695	What is learnt in the public school, spelling, reading, writing, ciphering, the black-board, the teacher's diagrams,
LG1856	1696	The panes of the windows, all that appears through them, the going forth in the morning, the aimless spending of the day,
LG1856	1697	(What is it that you made money? what is it that you got what you wanted?)
LG1856	1698	The usual routine, the work-shop, factory, yard, office, store, desk,
LG1856	1699	The jaunt of hunting or fishing, the life of hunt-inghunting or fishing,
LG1856	1700	Pasture-life, foddering, milking, herding, all the personnel and usages,
LG1856	1701	The plum-orchard, apple-orchard, gardening, seedlings, cuttings, flowers, vines,
LG1856	1702	Grains, manures, marl, clay, loam, the subsoil plough, the shovel, pick, rake, hoe, irrigation, draining,
LG1856	1703	The curry-comb, the horse-cloth, the halter, bridle, bits, the very wisps of straw,
LG1856	1704	The barn and barn-yard, the bins, mangers, mows, racks,
LG1856	1705	Manufactures, commerce, engineering, the build-ingbuilding of cities, every trade carried on there, the implements of every trade,
LG1856	1706	The anvil, tongs, hammer, the axe and wedge, the square, mitre, jointer, smoothing-plane,
LG1856	1707	The plumbob, trowel, level, the wall-scaffold, the work of walls and ceilings, any mason-workmasonwork,
LG1856	1708	The steam-engine, lever, crank, axle, piston, shaft, air-pump, boiler, beam, pulley, hinge, flange, band, bolt, throttle, governors, up and down rods,
LG1856	1709	The ship's compass, the sailor's tarpaulin, the stays and lanyards, the ground tackle for anchoring or mooring, the life-boat for wrecks,
LG1856	1710	The sloop's tiller, the pilot's wheel and bell, the yacht or fish-smack, the great gay-pennanted three-hundred-foot steamboat under full head-wayheadway, with her proud fat breasts and her deli-catedelicate swift-flashing paddles,
LG1856	1711	The trail, line, hooks, sinkers, the seine, hauling the seine,
LG1856	1712	The arsenal, small-arms, rifles, gunpowder, shot, caps, wadding, ordnance for war, carriages;
LG1856	1713	Every-day objects, house-chairs, carpet, bed, counterpane of the bed, him or her sleeping at night, wind blowing, indefinite noises,
LG1856	1714	The snow-storm or rain-storm, the tow-trowsers, the lodge-hut in the woods, the still-hunt,
LG1856	1715	City and country, fire-place, candle, gas-light, heater, aqueduct,
LG1856	1716	The message of the governor, mayor, chief of police—the dishes of breakfast, dinner, sup-persupper,
LG1856	1717	The bunk-room, the fire-engine, the string-team, the car or truck behind,
LG1856	1718	The paper I write on or you write on, every word we write, every cross and twirl of the pen, and the curious way we write what we think, yet very faintly,
LG1856	1719	The directory, the detector, the ledger, the books in ranks on the book-shelves, the clock at-tachedattached to the wall,
LG1856	1720	The ring on your finger, the lady's wristlet, the scent-powder, the druggist's vials and jars, the draught of lager-beer,
LG1856	1721	The etui of surgical instruments, the etui of ocu-list'soculist's or aurist's instruments, or dentist's in-strumentsinstruments,
LG1856	1722	The permutating lock that can be turned and locked as many different ways as there are minutes in a year,
LG1856	1723	Glass-blowing, nail-making, salt-making, tin-roof-ingtin-roofing, shingle-dressing, candle-making, lock-makinglock-making and hanging,
LG1856	1724	Ship-carpentering, dock-building, fish-curing, ferry-ingferrying, stone-breaking, flagging of side-walks by flaggers,
LG1856	1725	The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,
LG1856	1726	Coal-mines, all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs, what medita-tionsmeditations, what vast native thoughts looking through smutch'd faces,
LG1856	1727	Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men around feeling the melt with huge crowbars—lumps of ore, the due combining of ore, limestone, coal—the blast-furnaceblast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup- lumploup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last — the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped T rail for rail-roadsrailroads,
LG1856	1728	Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and factories,
LG1856	1729	Lead-mines, and all that is done in lead-mines, or with the lead afterward,
LG1856	1730	Copper-mines, the sheets of copper, and what is formed out of the sheets, and all the work in forming it,
LG1856	1731	Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades, or window or door lintels—the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb,
LG1856	1732	Oakum, the oakum-chisel, the caulking-iron—the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire under the kettle,
LG1856	1733	The cotton-bale, the stevedore's hook, the saw and buck of the sawyer, the screen of the coal-screenercoalscreener, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,
LG1856	1734	The four-double cylinder press, the hand-press, the frisket and tympan, the compositor's stick and rule, type-setting, making up the forms, all the work of newspaper counters, folders, carriers, news-men,
LG1856	1735	The implements for daguerreotyping—the tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-makerblock-maker,
LG1856	1736	Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making, glazier's implements,
LG1856	1737	The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner's orna-mentsornaments, the decanter and glasses, the shears and flat-iron,
LG1856	1738	The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal—the making of all sorts of edged tools,
LG1856	1739	The ladders and hanging ropes of the gymnasium, manly exercises, the game of base-ball, run-ningrunning, leaping, pitching quoits,
LG1856	1740	The designs for wall-papers, oil-cloths, carpets, the fancies for goods for women, the book-binder'sbookbinder's stamps,
LG1856	1741	The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every-thingeverything that is done by brewers, also by wine-makerswine-makers, also vinegar-makers,
LG1856	1742	Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting, distilling, sign-painting, lime-burninglime-burning, coopering, cotton-picking, electro-platingelectro-plating, stereotyping,
LG1856	1743	Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-ma-chinesreaping-machines, ploughing-machines, thrashing-ma-chinesthrashing-machines, steam-wagons,
LG1856	1744	The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponder-ousponderous dray,
LG1856	1745	The wires of the electric telegraph stretched on land, or laid at the bottom of the sea, and then the message in an instant from ten thousand miles off,
LG1856	1746	The snow-plough and two engines pushing it, the ride in the express-train of only one car, the swift go through a howling storm—the locomo-tivelocomotive, and all that is done about a locomotive,
LG1856	1747	The bear-hunt or coon-hunt, the bonfire of shav-ingsshavings in the open lot in the city, the crowd of children watching,
LG1856	1748	The blows of the fighting-man, the upper-cut and one-two-three,
LG1856	1749	Pyrotechny, letting off colored fire-works at night, fancy figures and jets,
LG1856	1750	Shop-windows, coffins in the sexton's ware-room, fruit on the fruit-stand—beef in the butcher's stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the butcher in his killing-clothes,
LG1856	1751	The area of pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder's tub, gutting, the cutter's cleaver, the packer's maul, and the plenteous winter-work of pork-packing,
LG1856	1752	Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice —the barrels and the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees,
LG1856	1753	Bread and cakes in the bakery, the milliner's rib-bonsribbons, the dress-maker's patterns, the tea-table, the home-made sweetmeats;
LG1856	1754	Coins and medals, the ancient bronze coin, bust, inscription, date, ring-money, the copper cent, the silver dime, the five-dime piece, the gold dollar, the fifty-dollar piece—Modern coins, and all the study and reminiscence of old coins,
LG1856	1755	Cheap literature, maps, charts, lithographs, daily and weekly newspapers,
LG1856	1756	The column of wants in the one-cent paper, the news by telegraph, amusements, operas, shows,
LG1856	1757	The business parts of a city, the trottoirs of a city when thousands of well-dressed people walk up and down,
LG1856	1758	The cotton, woolen, linen you wear, the money you make and spend,
LG1856	1759	Your room and bed-room, your piano-forte, the stove and cook-pans,
LG1856	1760	The house you live in, the rent, the other tenants, the deposite in the savings-bank, the trade at the grocery,
LG1856	1761	The pay on Saturday night, the going home, and the purchases;
LG1856	1762	In them the heft of the heaviest—in them far more than you estimated, and far less also,
LG1856	1763	In them, not yourself—you and your soul enclose all things, regardless of estimation,
LG1856	1764	In them your themes, hints, provokers—if not, the whole earth has no themes, hints, pro-vokersprovokers, and never had.
LG1856	1765	I do not affirm what you see beyond is futile—I do not advise you to stop,
LG1856	1766	I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,
LG1856	1767	But I say that none lead to greater, sadder, hap-pierhappier, than those lead to.
LG1856	1768	Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,
LG1856	1769	In things best known to you, finding the best, or as good as the best,
LG1856	1770	In folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,
LG1856	1771	Happiness not in another place, but this place — not for another hour, but this hour,
LG1856	1772	Man in the first you see or touch, always in your friend, brother, nighest neighbor—Woman in your mother, lover, wife,
LG1856	1773	The popular tastes and occupations taking prece-denceprecedence in poems or anywhere,
LG1856	1774	You workwomen and workmen of These States having your own divine and strong life — looking the President always sternly in the face, unbending, nonchalant, understanding that he is to be kept by you to short and sharp account of himself,
LG1856	1775	And all else thus far giving place to men and women.
LG1856	1776	When the psalm sings instead of the singer,
LG1856	1777	When the script preaches instead of the preacher,
LG1856	1778	When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting-desk,
LG1856	1779	When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch my body back again,
LG1856	1780	When the sacred vessels, or the bits of the eucha-risteucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate as effec-tuallyeffectually as the young silver-smiths or bakers, or the masons in their over-alls,
LG1856	1781	When a university course convinces like a slum-beringslumbering woman and child convince,
LG1856	1782	When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman's daughter,
LG1856	1783	When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly companions,
LG1856	1784	I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and women.
LG1856	1785	BROAD-AXE, shapely, naked, wan!
LG1856	1786	Head from the mother's bowels drawn!
LG1856	1787	Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one and lip only one!
LG1856	1788	Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
LG1856	1789	Resting, the grass amid and upon,
LG1856	1790	To be leaned, and to lean on.
LG1856	1791	Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes, masculine trades, sights and sounds,
LG1856	1792	Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music,
LG1856	1793	Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great organ.
LG1856	1794	Welcome are all earth's lands, each for its kind,
LG1856	1795	Welcome are lands of pine and oak,
LG1856	1796	Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig,
LG1856	1797	Welcome are lands of gold,
LG1856	1798	Welcome are lands of wheat and maize—welcome those of the grape,
LG1856	1799	Welcome are lands of sugar and rice,
LG1856	1800	Welcome the cotton-lands—welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato,
LG1856	1801	Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prai-riesprairies,
LG1856	1802	Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings,
LG1856	1803	Welcome the measureless grazing lands—wel-comewelcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey, hemp,
LG1856	1804	Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands,
LG1856	1805	Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands,
LG1856	1806	Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores,
LG1856	1807	Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc,
LG1856	1808	Lands of iron! lands of the make of the axe!
LG1856	1809	The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,
LG1856	1810	The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space cleared for a garden,
LG1856	1811	The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is lulled,
LG1856	1812	The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
LG1856	1813	The thought of ships struck in the storm, and put on their beam-ends, and the cutting away of masts;
LG1856	1814	The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashioned houses and barns;
LG1856	1815	The remembered print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods,
LG1856	1816	The disembarcation, the founding of a new city,
LG1856	1817	The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it,
LG1856	1818	The Year 1 of These States, the weapons that year began with, scythe, pitch-fork, club, horse-pistolhorse-pistol,
LG1856	1819	The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
LG1856	1820	The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
LG1856	1821	The beauty of all adventurous and daring per-sonspersons,
LG1856	1822	The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces,
LG1856	1823	The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
LG1856	1824	The American contempt for statutes and cere-moniesceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint,
LG1856	1825	The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification;
LG1856	1826	The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and sloops, the rafts-man, the pioneer,
LG1856	1827	Lumber-men in their winter camp, day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,
LG1856	1828	The glad clear sound of one's own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods, the strong day's work,
LG1856	1829	The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin;
LG1856	1830	The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
LG1856	1831	The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mor-tisingmortising,
LG1856	1832	The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them regular,
LG1856	1833	Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises, according as they were prepared,
LG1856	1834	The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their curved limbs,
LG1856	1835	Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by posts and braces,
LG1856	1836	The hooked arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,
LG1856	1837	The floor-men forcing the planks close, to be nailed,
LG1856	1838	Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,
LG1856	1839	The echoes resounding through the vacant building;
LG1856	1840	The huge store-house carried up in the city, well under way,
LG1856	1841	The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,
LG1856	1842	The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,
LG1856	1843	The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels and bricks,
LG1856	1844	The bricks, one after another, each laid so work-man-likeworkman-like in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,
LG1856	1845	The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boardsmortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men;
LG1856	1846	Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,
LG1856	1847	The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast,
LG1856	1848	The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slant-inglyslantingly into the pine,
LG1856	1849	The butter-colored chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,
LG1856	1850	The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes;
LG1856	1851	The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-headsbulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea;
LG1856	1852	The city fire-man—the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the close-packed square,
LG1856	1853	The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,
LG1856	1854	The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the forming in line, the echoed rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,
LG1856	1855	The slender, spasmic blue-white jets—the bring-ingbringing to bear of the hooks and ladders, and their execution,
LG1856	1856	The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors, if the fire smoulders under them,
LG1856	1857	The crowd with their lit faces, watching—the glare and dense shadows;
LG1856	1858	The forger at his forge-furnace, and the user of iron after him,
LG1856	1859	The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
LG1856	1860	The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the edge with his thumb,
LG1856	1861	The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket,
LG1856	1862	The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,
LG1856	1863	The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,
LG1856	1864	The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
LG1856	1865	The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
LG1856	1866	The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
LG1856	1867	The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,
LG1856	1868	The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling, the rush of friend and foe thither,
LG1856	1869	The siege of revolted lieges determined for lib-ertyliberty,
LG1856	1870	The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley,
LG1856	1871	The sack of an old city in its time,
LG1856	1872	The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumult-uouslytumultuously and disorderly,
LG1856	1873	Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,
LG1856	1874	Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands,
LG1856	1875	Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
LG1856	1876	The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
LG1856	1877	The list of all executive deeds and words, just or unjust,
LG1856	1878	The power of personality, just or unjust.
LG1856	1879	Muscle and pluck forever!
LG1856	1880	What invigorates life, invigorates death,
LG1856	1881	And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
LG1856	1882	And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
LG1856	1883	And the roughness of the earth and of man en-closesencloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,
LG1856	1884	And nothing endures but personal qualities.
LG1856	1885	What do you think endures?
LG1856	1886	Do you think the greatest city endures?
LG1856	1887	Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best built steam-ships?
LG1856	1888	Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d'oeuvreschef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?
LG1856	1889	Away! These are not to be cherished for them-selvesthemselves,
LG1856	1890	They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musi-ciansmusicians play for them,
LG1856	1891	The show passes, all does well enough of course,
LG1856	1892	All does very well till one flash of defiance.
LG1856	1893	The greatest city is that which has the greatest man or woman,
LG1856	1894	If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
LG1856	1895	The place where the greatest city stands is not the place of stretched wharves, docks, manu-facturesmanufactures, deposites of produce,
LG1856	1896	Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers, or the anchor-lifters of the departing,
LG1856	1897	Nor the place of the tallest and costliest build-ingsbuildings, or shops selling goods from the rest of the earth,
LG1856	1898	Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where money is plentiest,
LG1856	1899	Nor the place of the most numerous population.
LG1856	1900	Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,
LG1856	1901	Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves them in return, and understands them,
LG1856	1902	Where these may be seen going every day in the streets, with their arms familiar to the shoul-dersshoulders of their friends,
LG1856	1903	Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,
LG1856	1904	Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,
LG1856	1905	Where behavior is the finest of the fine arts,
LG1856	1906	Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,
LG1856	1907	Where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases,
LG1856	1908	Where the populace rise at once against the auda-cityaudacity of elected persons,
LG1856	1909	Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves,
LG1856	1910	Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority,
LG1856	1911	Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President, Mayor, Governor, and what not, are agents for pay,
LG1856	1912	Where children are taught from the jump that they are to be laws to themselves, and to depend on themselves,
LG1856	1913	Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,
LG1856	1914	Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,
LG1856	1915	Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,
LG1856	1916	Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men, and are appealed to by the orators the same as the men,
LG1856	1917	Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,
LG1856	1918	Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,
LG1856	1919	Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,
LG1856	1920	Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,
LG1856	1921	There the greatest city stands.
LG1856	1922	How beggarly appear poems, arguments, orations, before an electric deed!
LG1856	1923	How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's or woman's look!
LG1856	1924	All waits, or goes by default, till a strong being appears;
LG1856	1925	A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of the universe,
LG1856	1926	When he or she appears, materials are over-awedoverawed,
LG1856	1927	The dispute on the soul stops,
LG1856	1928	The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or laid away.
LG1856	1929	What is your money-making now? What can it do now?
LG1856	1930	What is your respectability now?
LG1856	1931	What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books now?
LG1856	1932	Where are your jibes of being now?
LG1856	1933	Where are your cavils about the soul now?
LG1856	1934	Was that your best? Were those your vast and solid?
LG1856	1935	Riches, opinions, politics, institutions, to part obe-dientlyobediently from the path of one man or woman!
LG1856	1936	The centuries, and all authority, to be trod under the foot-soles of one man or woman!
LG1856	1937	—A sterile landscape covers the ore—there is as good as the best, for all the forbidding appearance,
LG1856	1938	There is the mine, there are the miners,
LG1856	1939	The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accom-plishedaccomplished, the hammers-men are at hand with their tongs and hammers,
LG1856	1940	What always served and always serves, is at hand.
LG1856	1941	Than this nothing has better served—it has served all,
LG1856	1942	Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek,
LG1856	1943	Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,
LG1856	1944	Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindostanee,
LG1856	1945	Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose relics remain in Central America,
LG1856	1946	Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars, and the druids, and the bloody body laid in the hollow of the great stone,
LG1856	1947	Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the snow-covered hills of Scandinavia,
LG1856	1948	Served those who, time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean-waves,
LG1856	1949	Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the pastoral tribes and nomads,
LG1856	1950	Served the incalculably distant Celt, served the hardy pirates of the Baltic,
LG1856	1951	Served before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,
LG1856	1952	Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of those for war,
LG1856	1953	Served all great works on land, and all great works on the sea,
LG1856	1954	For the medieval ages, and before the medieval ages,
LG1856	1955	Served not the living only, then as now, but served the dead.
LG1856	1956	I see the European headsman,
LG1856	1957	He stands masked, clothed in red, with huge legs, and strong naked arms,
LG1856	1958	And leans on a ponderous axe.
LG1856	1959	Whom have you slaughtered lately, European headsman?
LG1856	1960	Whose is that blood upon you, so wet and sticky?
LG1856	1961	I see the clear sun-sets of the martyrs,
LG1856	1962	I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,
LG1856	1963	Ghosts of dead princes, uncrowned ladies, im-peachedimpeached ministers, rejected kings,
LG1856	1964	Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains, and the rest.
LG1856	1965	I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,
LG1856	1966	The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,
LG1856	1967	Mind you, O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.
LG1856	1968	I see the blood washed entirely away from the axe,
LG1856	1969	Both blade and helve are clean,
LG1856	1970	They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, —they clasp no more the necks of queens.
LG1856	1971	I see the headsman withdraw and become use-lessuseless,
LG1856	1972	I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,
LG1856	1973	I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race, the newest largest race.
LG1856	1974	America! I do not vaunt my love for you,
LG1856	1975	I have what I have.
LG1856	1976	The axe leaps!
LG1856	1977	The solid forest gives fluid utterances,
LG1856	1978	They tumble forth, they rise and form,
LG1856	1979	Hut, tent, landing, survey,
LG1856	1980	Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
LG1856	1981	Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
LG1856	1982	Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibi-tion-houseexhibition-house, library,
LG1856	1983	Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch,
LG1856	1984	Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jackplane, mallet, wedge, rounce,
LG1856	1985	Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
LG1856	1986	Work-box, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
LG1856	1987	Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
LG1856	1988	Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for or-phansorphans or for the poor or sick,
LG1856	1989	Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas.
LG1856	1990	The shapes arise!
LG1856	1991	Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbors them,
LG1856	1992	Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot, or St. John's, or Kennebec,
LG1856	1993	Dwellers in cabins among the Californian moun-tainsmountains, or by the little lakes,
LG1856	1994	Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande—friendly gatherings, the characters and fun,
LG1856	1995	Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river, dwellers on coasts and off coasts,
LG1856	1996	Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking pas-sagespassages through the ice.
LG1856	1997	The shapes arise!
LG1856	1998	Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,
LG1856	1999	Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,
LG1856	2000	Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frame-worksframeworks, girders, arches,
LG1856	2001	Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake craft, river craft.
LG1856	2002	The shapes arise!
LG1856	2003	Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Atlantic and Pacific, and in many a bay and by-place,
LG1856	2004	The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatuck-roots for knees,
LG1856	2005	The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and in-sideinside,
LG1856	2006	The tools lying around, the great augur and little augur, the adze, bolt, line, square, gouge, bead-plane.
LG1856	2007	The shapes arise!
LG1856	2008	The shape measured, sawed, jacked, joined, stained,
LG1856	2009	The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud;
LG1856	2010	The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride's-bed,
LG1856	2011	The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe's cradle,
LG1856	2012	The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers' feet,
LG1856	2013	The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly parents and children,
LG1856	2014	The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and woman, the roof over the well-marriedwell-married young man and woman,
LG1856	2015	The roof over the supper joyously cooked by the chaste wife, and joyously eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day's work.
LG1856	2016	The shapes arise!
LG1856	2017	The shape of the prisoner's place in the court-roomcourt-room, and of him or her seated in the place,
LG1856	2018	The shape of the pill-box, the disgraceful oint-ment-boxointment-box, the nauseous application, and him or her applying it,
LG1856	2019	The shape of the liquor-bar leaned against by the young rum-drinker and the old rum-drinker,
LG1856	2020	The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod by sneaking footsteps,
LG1856	2021	The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple,
LG1856	2022	The shape of the gambling board with its devilish winnings and losings,
LG1856	2023	The shape of the slats of the bed of a corrupted body, the bed of the corruption of gluttony or alcoholic drinks,
LG1856	2024	The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinioned arms,
LG1856	2025	The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipped crowd, the sickening dan-glingdangling of the rope.
LG1856	2026	The shapes arise!
LG1856	2027	Shapes of doors giving so many exits and entrances,
LG1856	2028	The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed, and in haste,
LG1856	2029	The door that admits good news and bad news,
LG1856	2030	The door whence the son left home, confident and puffed up,
LG1856	2031	The door he entered from a long and scandalous absence, diseased, broken down, without in-nocenceinnocence, without means.
LG1856	2032	Their shapes arise, the shapes of full-sized men!
LG1856	2033	Men taciturn yet loving, used to the open air, and the manners of the open air,
LG1856	2034	Saying their ardor in native forms, saying the old response,
LG1856	2035	Take what I have then, (saying fain,) take the pay you approached for,
LG1856	2036	Take the white tears of my blood, if that is what you are after.
LG1856	2037	Her shape arises!
LG1856	2038	She, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
LG1856	2039	The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled,
LG1856	2040	She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is concealed from her,
LG1856	2041	She is none the less considerate or friendly there-foretherefore,
LG1856	2042	She is the best-beloved, it is without exception, she has no reason to fear, and she does not fear,
LG1856	2043	Oaths, quarrels, hiccuped songs, smutty expres-sionsexpressions, are idle to her as she passes,
LG1856	2044	She is silent, she is possessed of herself, they do not offend her,
LG1856	2045	She receives them as the laws of nature receive them, she is strong,
LG1856	2046	She too is a law of nature, there is no law greater than she is.
LG1856	2047	His shape arises!
LG1856	2048	Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish,
LG1856	2049	Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, country-mancountryman,
LG1856	2050	Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea,
LG1856	2051	Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed,
LG1856	2052	Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and back,
LG1856	2053	Countenance sun-burnt, bearded, calm, unrefined,
LG1856	2054	Reminder of animals, meeter of savage and gen-tlemangentleman on equal terms,
LG1856	2055	Attitudes lithe and erect, costume free, neck open, of slow movement on foot,
LG1856	2056	Passer of his right arm round the shoulders of his friends, companion of the street,
LG1856	2057	Persuader always of people to give him their sweetest touches, and never their meanest,
LG1856	2058	A Manhattanese bred, fond of Brooklyn, fond of Broadway, fond of the life of the wharves and the great ferries,
LG1856	2059	Enterer everywhere, welcomed everywhere, eas-ilyeasily understood after all,
LG1856	2060	Never offering others, always offering himself, corroborating his phrenology,
LG1856	2061	Voluptuous, inhabitive, combative, conscientious, alimentive, intuitive, of copious friendship, sublimity, firmness, self-esteem, comparison, individuality, form, locality, eventuality,
LG1856	2062	Avowing by life, manners, works, to contribute illustrations of results of The States,
LG1856	2063	Teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism,
LG1856	2064	Inviter of others continually henceforth to try their strength against his.
LG1856	2065	The shapes arise!
LG1856	2066	Shapes of America, shapes of centuries,
LG1856	2067	Shapes of those that do not joke with life, but are in earnest with life,
LG1856	2068	Shapes ever projecting other shapes,
LG1856	2069	Shapes of a hundred Free States, begetting another hundred north and south,
LG1856	2070	Shapes of the turbulent manly cities,
LG1856	2071	Shapes of the untamed breed of young men and natural persons,
LG1856	2072	Shapes of women fit for These States,
LG1856	2073	Shapes of the composition of all the varieties of the earth,
LG1856	2074	Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
LG1856	2075	Shapes bracing the whole earth, and braced with the whole earth.
LG1856	2076	GREAT are the myths, I too delight in them,
LG1856	2077	Great are Adam and Eve, I too look back and accept them,
LG1856	2078	Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors, priests.
LG1856	2079	Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
LG1856	2080	Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail!
LG1856	2081	Yours is the muscle of life or death, yours is the perfect science, in you I have absolute faith.
LG1856	2082	Great is today, and beautiful,
LG1856	2083	It is good to live in this age, there never was any better.
LG1856	2084	Great are the plunges, throes, triumphs, falls of democracy,
LG1856	2085	Great the reformers, with their lapses and screams,
LG1856	2086	Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.
LG1856	2087	Great are yourself and myself,
LG1856	2088	We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest or any,
LG1856	2089	What the best and worst did, we could do,
LG1856	2090	What they felt, do not we feel it in ourselves?
LG1856	2091	What they wished, do we not wish the same?
LG1856	2092	Great is youth, equally great is old age—great are the day and night,
LG1856	2093	Great is wealth, great is poverty, great is expres-sionexpression, great is silence,
LG1856	2094	Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth, full of grace, force, fascination,
LG1856	2095	Do you know that old age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?
LG1856	2096	Day, full-blown and splendid—day of the im-menseimmense sun, action, ambition, laughter,
LG1856	2097	The night follows close, with millions of suns, and sleep, and restoring darkness.
LG1856	2098	Wealth with the flush hand, fine clothes, hospi-talityhospitality,
LG1856	2099	But then the soul's wealth, which is candor, knowledge, pride, enfolding love;
LG1856	2100	(Who goes for men and women showing poverty richer than wealth?)
LG1856	2101	Expression of speech! in what is written or said, forget not that silence is also expressive,
LG1856	2102	That anguish as hot as the hottest, and contempt as cold as the coldest, may be without words,
LG1856	2103	That the true adoration is likewise without words, and without kneeling.
LG1856	2104	Great is the greatest nation! the nation of clus-tersclusters of equal nations!
LG1856	2105	Great is the earth, and the way it became what it is,
LG1856	2106	Do you imagine it is stopped at this? the increase abandoned?
LG1856	2107	Understand then that it goes as far onward from this, as this is from the times when it lay in covering waters and gases.
LG1856	2108	Great is the quality of truth in man,
LG1856	2109	The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes,
LG1856	2110	It is inevitably in the man—he and it are in love, and never leave each other.
LG1856	2111	The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eye-sighteyesight,
LG1856	2112	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,
LG1856	2113	If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth —if there be things at all upon the earth, there is truth.
LG1856	2114	O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press the whole way toward you,
LG1856	2115	Sound your voice! I scale mountains, or dive in the sea after you.
LG1856	2116	Great is language—it is the mightiest of the sciences,
LG1856	2117	It is the fulness, color, form, diversity of the earth, and of men and women, and of all qualities and processes,
LG1856	2118	It is greater than wealth—it is greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings, music.
LG1856	2119	Great is the English speech—what speech is so great as the English?
LG1856	2120	Great is the English brood—what brood has so vast a destiny as the English?
LG1856	2121	It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule,
LG1856	2122	The new rule shall rule as the soul rules, and as the love, justice, equality in the soul, rule.
LG1856	2123	Great in the law—great are the old few land-markslandmarks of the law,
LG1856	2124	They are the same in all times, and shall not be disturbed.
LG1856	2125	Great are marriage, commerce, newspapers, books, free-trade, rail-roads, steamers, interna-tionalinternational mails, telegraphs, exchanges.
LG1856	2126	Great is justice!
LG1856	2127	Justice is not settled by legislators and laws—it is in the soul,
LG1856	2128	It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity, can,
LG1856	2129	It is immutable—it does not depend on major-itiesmajorities—majorities or what not come at last before the same passionless and exact tri-bunaltribunal.
LG1856	2130	For justice are the grand natural lawyers and per-fectperfect judges, it is in their souls,
LG1856	2131	It is well assorted, they have not studied for noth-ingnothing, the great includes the less,
LG1856	2132	They rule on the highest grounds, they oversee all eras, states, administrations.
LG1856	2133	The perfect judge fears nothing, he could go front to front before God,
LG1856	2134	Before the perfect judge all shall stand back — life and death shall stand back—heaven and hell shall stand back.
LG1856	2135	Great is goodness!
LG1856	2136	I do not know what it is any more than I know what health is, but I know it is great.
LG1856	2137	Great is wickedness—I find I often admire it just as much as I admire goodness,
LG1856	2138	Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a par-adoxparadox.
LG1856	2139	The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is great,
LG1856	2140	And there is another paradox.
LG1856	2141	Great is life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever,
LG1856	2142	Great is death—sure as life holds all parts to-gethertogether, death holds all parts together,
LG1856	2143	Death has just as much purport as life has,
LG1856	2144	Do you enjoy what life confers? you shall enjoy what death confers,
LG1856	2145	I do not understand the realities of death, but I know they are great,
LG1856	2146	I do not understand the least reality of life — how then can I understand the realities of death?
LG1856	2147	THE bodies of men and women engirth me, and I engirth them,
LG1856	2148	They will not let me off, nor I them, till I go with them, respond to them, love them.
LG1856	2149	Was it doubted if those who corrupt their own live bodies conceal themselves?
LG1856	2150	And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
LG1856	2151	And if the body does not do as much as the soul?
LG1856	2152	And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
LG1856	2153	The expression of the body of man or woman balks account,
LG1856	2154	The male is perfect, and that of the female is per-fectperfect.
LG1856	2155	The expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
LG1856	2156	It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
LG1856	2157	It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does not hide him,
LG1856	2158	The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel,
LG1856	2159	To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
LG1856	2160	You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
LG1856	2161	The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the con-tourcontour of their shape downwards,
LG1856	2162	The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shinegreenshine, or lies with his face up, and rolls silently in the heave of the water,
LG1856	2163	The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his saddle,
LG1856	2164	Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their per-formancesperformances,
LG1856	2165	The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
LG1856	2166	The female soothing a child, the farmer's daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
LG1856	2167	The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,
LG1856	2168	The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down, after work,
LG1856	2169	The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
LG1856	2170	The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
LG1856	2171	The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-set-tingclean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
LG1856	2172	The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, the listening on the alert,
LG1856	2173	The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curved neck, the counting,
LG1856	2174	Such-like I love, I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother's breast with the little child,
LG1856	2175	Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, pause, listen, count.
LG1856	2176	I knew a man, he was a common farmer, he was the father of five sons, and in them were the fathers of sons, and in them were the fathers of sons.
LG1856	2177	This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
LG1856	2178	The shape of his head, the richness and breadth of his manners, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,
LG1856	2179	These I used to go and visit him to see—he was wise also,
LG1856	2180	He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old—his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
LG1856	2181	They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him, they did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,
LG1856	2182	He drank water only, the blood showed like scar-letscarlet through the clear brown skin of his face,
LG1856	2183	He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sailed his boat himself, he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner—he had fowling-pieces, presented to him by men that loved him,
LG1856	2184	When he went with his five sons and many grand-sonsgrandsons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
LG1856	2185	You would wish long and long to be with him — you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other.
LG1856	2186	I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,
LG1856	2187	To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
LG1856	2188	To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breath-ingbreathing, laughing flesh is enough,
LG1856	2189	To pass among them, to touch any one, to rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
LG1856	2190	I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it, as in a sea.
LG1856	2191	There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the con-tactcontract and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
LG1856	2192	All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
LG1856	2193	This is the female form!
LG1856	2194	A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
LG1856	2195	It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
LG1856	2196	I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor—all falls aside but myself and it,
LG1856	2197	Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, the atmosphere and the clouds, what was expected of heaven or feared of hell, are now consumed,
LG1856	2198	Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,
LG1856	2199	Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands, all diffused—mine too diffused,
LG1856	2200	Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
LG1856	2201	Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and deliri-ousdelirious juice,
LG1856	2202	Bridegroom-night of love, working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
LG1856	2203	Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
LG1856	2204	Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-fleshedsweetfleshed day.
LG1856	2205	This is the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, the man is born of woman,
LG1856	2206	This is the bath of birth—this is the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.
LG1856	2207	Be not ashamed, women! your privilege encloses the rest, it is the exit of the rest,
LG1856	2208	You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul!
LG1856	2209	The female contains all qualities, and tempers them—she is in her place, she moves with perfect balance,
LG1856	2210	She is all things duly veiled, she is both passive and active—she is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.
LG1856	2211	As I see my soul reflected in nature, as I see through a mist, one with inexpressible com-pletenesscompleteness and beauty—see the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the female I see,
LG1856	2212	I see the bearer of the great fruit which is im-mortalityimmortality—the good thereof is not tasted by roues, and never can be.
LG1856	2213	The male is not less the soul, nor more—he too is in his place,
LG1856	2214	He too is all qualities, he is action and power, the flush of the known universe is in him,
LG1856	2215	Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defi-ancedefiance become him well,
LG1856	2216	The fiercest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost, become him well — pride is for him,
LG1856	2217	The full-spread pride of man is calming and ex-cellentexcellent to the soul,
LG1856	2218	Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings everything to the test of himself,
LG1856	2219	Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes soundings at last only here,
LG1856	2220	Where else does he strike soundings, except here?
LG1856	2221	The man's body is sacred, and the woman's body is sacred—it is no matter who,
LG1856	2222	Is it a slave? Is it one of the dull-faced immi-grantsimmigrants just landed on the wharf?
LG1856	2223	Each belongs here or anywhere, just as much as the well-off, just as much as you,
LG1856	2224	Each has his or her place in the procession.
LG1856	2225	All is a procession!
LG1856	2226	The universe is a procession, with measured and beautiful motion!
LG1856	2227	Do you know so much, that you call the slave or the dull-face ignorant?
LG1856	2228	Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?
LG1856	2229	Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffused float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts, for you, and not for him and her?
LG1856	2230	A man's body at auction!
LG1856	2231	I help the auctioneer—the sloven does not half know his business.
LG1856	2232	Gentlemen, look on this wonder!
LG1856	2233	Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot be high enough for it,
LG1856	2234	For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years, without one animal or plant,
LG1856	2235	For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily rolled.
LG1856	2236	In this head the all-baffling brain,
LG1856	2237	In it and below it the making of the attributes of heroes.
LG1856	2238	Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve,
LG1856	2239	They shall be stript that you may see them.
LG1856	2240	Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
LG1856	2241	Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant back-bone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs,
LG1856	2242	And wonders within there yet.
LG1856	2243	Within there runs blood—the same old blood! the same red running blood!
LG1856	2244	There swells and jets a heart—there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations,
LG1856	2245	Do you think they are not there because they are not expressed in parlors and lecture-rooms?
LG1856	2246	This is not only one man—this is the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns,
LG1856	2247	In him the start of populous states and rich re-publicsrepublics,
LG1856	2248	Of him countless immortal lives, with countless embodiments and enjoyments.
LG1856	2249	How do you know who shall come from the off-springoffspring of his offspring through the centuries?
LG1856	2250	Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the cen-turiescenturies?
LG1856	2251	A woman's body at auction!
LG1856	2252	She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
LG1856	2253	She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.
LG1856	2254	Her daughters, or their daughters' daughters — who knows who shall mate with them?
LG1856	2255	Who knows through the centuries what heroes may come from them?
LG1856	2256	In them, and of them, natal love—in them the divine mystery, the same old beautiful mystery.
LG1856	2257	Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
LG1856	2258	Have you ever loved the body of a man?
LG1856	2259	Your father, where is your father?
LG1856	2260	Your mother, is she living? Have you been much with her? and has she been much with you?
LG1856	2261	Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all, in all nations and times, all over the earth?
LG1856	2262	If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred,
LG1856	2263	And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
LG1856	2264	And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is beautiful as the most beautiful face.
LG1856	2265	Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own live body?
LG1856	2266	For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.
LG1856	2267	O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you!
LG1856	2268	I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul,
LG1856	2269	I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems—for they are poems,
LG1856	2270	Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's, husband's, mother's, father's, young man's, young woman's poems,
LG1856	2271	Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
LG1856	2272	Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eye-brows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
LG1856	2273	Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
LG1856	2274	Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
LG1856	2275	Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
LG1856	2276	Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shouldershind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,
LG1856	2277	Upper-arm, arm-pit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinewsarm-sinews, arm-bones,
LG1856	2278	Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-balls, finger-joints, finger-nails,
LG1856	2279	Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
LG1856	2280	Ribs, belly, back-bone, joints of the back-bone,
LG1856	2281	Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and out-wardoutward round, man-balls, man-root,
LG1856	2282	Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
LG1856	2283	Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
LG1856	2284	Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel,
LG1856	2285	All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body, or of any one's body, male or female,
LG1856	2286	The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
LG1856	2287	The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
LG1856	2288	Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality maternity,
LG1856	2289	Womanhood, and all that is a woman—and the man that comes from woman,
LG1856	2290	The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturba-tionslove-perturbations and risings,
LG1856	2291	The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
LG1856	2292	Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walk-ingwalking, swimming,
LG1856	2293	Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving, and tightening,
LG1856	2294	The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
LG1856	2295	The skin, the sun-burnt shade, freckles, hair,
LG1856	2296	The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling with the hand the naked meat of his own body or another person's body,
LG1856	2297	The circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out,
LG1856	2298	The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
LG1856	2299	The thin red jellies within you, or within me — the bones, and the marrow in the bones,
LG1856	2300	The exquisite realization of health,
LG1856	2301	O I think these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
LG1856	2302	O I think these are the soul!
LG1856	2303	If these are not the soul, what is the soul?
LG1856	2304	A NATION announcing itself,
LG1856	2305	I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
LG1856	2306	I reject none, accept all, reproduce all in my own forms.
LG1856	2307	A breed whose testimony is behaviour,
LG1856	2308	What we are, we are—nativity is answer enough to objections;
LG1856	2309	We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded,
LG1856	2310	We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
LG1856	2311	We are executive in ourselves—we are sufficient in the variety of ourselves,
LG1856	2312	We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in our-selvesourselves,
LG1856	2313	Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
LG1856	2314	Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves.
LG1856	2315	Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme?
LG1856	2316	There can be any number of Supremes—one does not countervail another any more than one eye-sight countervails another, or one life countervails another.
LG1856	2317	All is eligible to all,
LG1856	2318	All is for individuals—all is for you,
LG1856	2319	No condition is prohibited, not God's or any,
LG1856	2320	If one is lost, you are inevitably lost.
LG1856	2321	All comes by the body—only health puts you rapport with the universe.
LG1856	2322	Produce great persons, the rest follows.
LG1856	2323	How dare a sick man, or an obedient man, write poems?
LG1856	2324	Which is the theory or book that is not diseased?
LG1856	2325	Piety and conformity to them that like!
LG1856	2326	Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like!
LG1856	2327	I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, to leap from their seats and contend for their lives!
LG1856	2328	I am he who goes through the streets with a barbed tongue, questioning every one I meet —questioning you up there now,
LG1856	2329	Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
LG1856	2330	Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?
LG1856	2331	Are you, or would you be, better than all that has ever been before?
LG1856	2332	If you would be better than all that has ever been before, come listen to me, and I will to you.
LG1856	2333	Fear grace! Fear delicatesse!
LG1856	2334	Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juicehoney-juice!
LG1856	2335	Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature!
LG1856	2336	Beware what precedes the decay of the rugged-nessruggedness of states and men!
LG1856	2337	Ages, precedents, poems, have long been accumu-latingaccumulating undirected materials,
LG1856	2338	America brings builders, and brings its own styles.
LG1856	2339	Mighty bards have done their work, and passed to other spheres,
LG1856	2340	One work forever remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.
LG1856	2341	America, curious toward foreign characters, stands sternly by its own,
LG1856	2342	Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound,
LG1856	2343	Sees itself promulger of men and women, initiates the true use of precedents,
LG1856	2344	Does not repel them or the past, or what they have produced under their forms, or amid other politics, or amid the idea of castes, or the old religions,
LG1856	2345	Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house,
LG1856	2346	Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days, that its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches, and that he shall be fit-testfittest for his days.
LG1856	2347	Any period, one nation must lead,
LG1856	2348	One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.
LG1856	2349	These States are the amplest poem,
LG1856	2350	Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations,
LG1856	2351	Here the doings of men correspond with the broadcast doings of the day and night,
LG1856	2352	Here is what moves in magnificent masses, care-lesslycarelessly faithful of particulars,
LG1856	2353	Here are the roughs, beards, friendliness, com-bativenesscombativeness, the soul loves,
LG1856	2354	Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves.
LG1856	2355	Race of races, and bards to corroborate!
LG1856	2356	Of them, standing among them, one lifts to the light his west-bred face,
LG1856	2357	To him the hereditary countenance bequeathed, both mother's and father's,
LG1856	2358	His first parts substances, earth, water, animals, trees,
LG1856	2359	Built of the common stock, having room for far and near,
LG1856	2360	Used to dispense with other lands, incarnating this land,
LG1856	2361	Attracting it body and soul to himself, hanging on its neck with incomparable love,
LG1856	2362	Plunging his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits,
LG1856	2363	Making its geography, cities, beginnings, events, glories, defections, diversities, vocal in him,
LG1856	2364	Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him,
LG1856	2365	Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes, Missouri, Columbia, Ohio, St. Law-renceLawrence, Hudson, spending themselves lovingly in him,
LG1856	2366	The blue breadth over the sea off Massachusetts and Maine, or over the Virginia and Maryland sea, or over inland Champlain, Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, Superior, or over the Texan, Mexican, Cuban, Floridian seas, or over the seas off California and Oregon, not tallying the breadth of the waters below, more than the breadth of above and below is tallied in him,
LG1856	2367	If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south,
LG1856	2368	Spanning between them east and west, and touch-ingtouching whatever is between them,
LG1856	2369	Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chest-nutchestnut, cypress, hickory, lime-tree, cotton-wood, tulip-tree, cactus, tamarind, orange, magnolia, persimmon,
LG1856	2370	Tangles as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp,
LG1856	2371	He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hang-inghanging from the boughs,
LG1856	2372	Off him pasturage sweet and natural as savannah, upland, prairie,
LG1856	2373	Through him flights, songs, screams, answering those of the wild-pigeon, high-hold, orchard-orioleorchard-oriole, coot, surf-duck, red-shouldered-hawk, fish-hawk, white-ibis, indian-hen, cat-owl, water-pheasant, qua-bird, pied-sheldrake, mocking-bird, buzzard, condor, night-heron, eagle;
LG1856	2374	His spirit surrounding his country's spirit, unclosed to good and evil,
LG1856	2375	Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times,
LG1856	2376	Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
LG1856	2377	Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, the rapid stature and muscle,
LG1856	2378	The haughty defiance of the Year 1—war, peace, the formation of the Constitution,
LG1856	2379	The separate States, the simple, elastic scheme, the immigrants,
LG1856	2380	The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and always calm and impregnable,
LG1856	2381	The unsurveyed interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers;
LG1856	2382	Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,
LG1856	2383	Congress convening every December, the mem-bersmembers duly coming up from the uttermost parts;
LG1856	2384	Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men,
LG1856	2385	Responding their manners, speech, dress, friend-shipsfriendships—the gait they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors,
LG1856	2386	The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the copiousness and decision of their phrenology,
LG1856	2387	The picturesque looseness of their carriage, their deathless attachment to freedom, their fierce-nessfierceness when wronged,
LG1856	2388	The fluency of their speech, their delight in music, their curiosity, good-temper, open-handednessopen-handedness,
LG1856	2389	The prevailing ardor and enterprise, the large amativeness,
LG1856	2390	The perfect equality of the female with the male, the fluid movement of the population,
LG1856	2391	The superior marine, free commerce, fisheries, whaling, gold-digging,
LG1856	2392	Wharf-hemm'd cities, railroad and steamboat lines, intersecting all points,
LG1856	2393	Factories, mercantile life, labor-saving machinery, the north-east, north-west, south-west,
LG1856	2394	Manhattan firemen, the Yankee swap, southern plantation life,
LG1856	2395	Slavery, the tremulous spreading of hands to shelter it—the stern opposition to it, which ceases only when it ceases.
LG1856	2396	For these, and the like, their own voices! For these, space ahead!
LG1856	2397	Others take finish, but the republic is ever con-structiveconstructive, and ever keeps vista;
LG1856	2398	Others adorn the past—but you, O, days of the present, I adorn you!
LG1856	2399	O days of the future, I believe in you!
LG1856	2400	O America, because you build for mankind, I build for you!
LG1856	2401	O well-beloved stone-cutters! I lead them who plan with decision and science,
LG1856	2402	I lead the present with friendly hand toward the future.
LG1856	2403	Bravas to states whose semitic impulses send wholesome children to the next age!
LG1856	2404	But damn that which spends itself on flaunters and dallyers, with no thought of the stains, pains, dismay, feebleness, it is bequeathing!
LG1856	2405	By great bards only can series of peoples and States be fused into the compact organism of one nation.
LG1856	2406	To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account,
LG1856	2407	That only holds men together which is living principles, as the hold of the limbs of the body, or the fibres of plants.
LG1856	2408	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,
LG1856	2409	Their Presidents shall not be their common ref-ereereferee so much as their poets shall.
LG1856	2410	Of mankind, the poet is the equable man,
LG1856	2411	Not in him, but off from him, things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns,
LG1856	2412	Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,
LG1856	2413	He bestows on every object or quality its fit pro-portionsproportions, neither more nor less,
LG1856	2414	He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
LG1856	2415	He is the equalizer of his age and land
LG1856	2416	He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what wants checking,
LG1856	2417	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,
LG1856	2418	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;
LG1856	2419	The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,
LG1856	2420	He is no arguer, he is judgment,
LG1856	2421	He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a helpless thing,
LG1856	2422	As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,
LG1856	2423	His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,
LG1856	2424	In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,
LG1856	2425	He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,
LG1856	2426	He sees eternity in men and women—he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.
LG1856	2427	An American literat fills his own place,
LG1856	2428	He justifies science—did you think the demon-strabledemonstrable less divine than the mythical?
LG1856	2429	He stands by liberty according to the compact of the first day of the first year of These States,
LG1856	2430	He concentres in the real body and soul, and in the pleasure of things,
LG1856	2431	He possesses the superiority of genuineness over fiction and romance;
LG1856	2432	As he emits himself, facts are showered over with light,
LG1856	2433	The day-light is lit with more volatile light—the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold,
LG1856	2434	Each precise object, condition, combination, pro-cessprocess, exhibits a beauty—the multiplication-tablemultiplication-table its, old age its, the carpenter's trade its, the grand-opera its,
LG1856	2435	The huge-hulled clean-shaped Manhattan clipper at sea, under steam or full sail, gleams with unmatched beauty,
LG1856	2436	The national circles and large harmonies of gov-ernmentgovernment gleam with theirs,
LG1856	2437	The commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs.
LG1856	2438	Of the idea of perfect individuals, the idea of These States, their bards walk in advance, leaders of leaders,
LG1856	2439	The attitudes of them cheer up slaves and horrify despots.
LG1856	2440	Without extinction is liberty! Without retrograde is equality!
LG1856	2441	They live in the feelings of young men, and the best women,
LG1856	2442	Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for liberty!
LG1856	2443	Language-using controls the rest;
LG1856	2444	Wonderful is language!
LG1856	2445	Wondrous the English language, language of live men,
LG1856	2446	Language of ensemble, powerful language of re-sistanceresistance,
LG1856	2447	Language of a proud and melancholy stock, and of all who aspire,
LG1856	2448	Language of growth, faith, self-esteem, rudeness, justice, friendliness, amplitude, prudence, de-cisiondecision, exactitude, courage,
LG1856	2449	Language to well-nigh express the inexpressible,
LG1856	2450	Language for the modern, language for America.
LG1856	2451	Who would use language to America may well prepare himself, body and mind,
LG1856	2452	He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe, himself,
LG1856	2453	He shall surely be questioned beforehand by me with many and stern questions.
LG1856	2454	Who are you that would talk to America?
LG1856	2455	Have you studied out my land, its idioms and men?
LG1856	2456	Have you learned the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom, friendship, of my land? its substratums and objects?
LG1856	2457	Have you considered the organic compact of the first day of the first year of the independence of The States?
LG1856	2458	Have you possessed yourself of the Federal Con-stitutionConstitution?
LG1856	2459	Do you acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at naught for life and death?
LG1856	2460	Do you see who have left described processes and poems behind them, and assumed new ones?
LG1856	2461	Are you faithful to things? Do you teach what-everwhatever the land and sea, the bodies of men, womanhood, amativeness, angers, excesses, crimes, teach?
LG1856	2462	Have you sped through customs, laws, popu-laritiespopularities?
LG1856	2463	Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions?
LG1856	2464	Are you not of some coterie? some school or religion?
LG1856	2465	Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? animating to life itself?
LG1856	2466	Have you possessed yourself with the spirit of the maternity of These States?
LG1856	2467	Have you sucked the nipples of the breasts of the mother of many children?
LG1856	2468	Have you too the old, ever-fresh, forbearance and impartiality?
LG1856	2469	Do you hold the like love for those hardening to maturity? for the last-born? little and big? and for the errant?
LG1856	2470	What is this you bring my America?
LG1856	2471	Is it uniform with my country?
LG1856	2472	Is it not something that has been better told or done before?
LG1856	2473	Have you imported this, or the spirit of it, in some ship?
LG1856	2474	Is it a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?
LG1856	2475	Has it never dangled at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats, of enemies' lands?
LG1856	2476	Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here?
LG1856	2477	Does it answer universal needs? Will it improve manners?
LG1856	2478	Can your performance face the open fields and the sea-side?
LG1856	2479	Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, nobility, meanness—to appear again in my strength, gait, face?
LG1856	2480	Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not amanuenses?
LG1856	2481	Does it meet modern discoveries, calibers, facts, face to face?
LG1856	2482	Does it respect me? America? the soul? to-daytoday?
LG1856	2483	What does it mean to me? to American persons, pro-gressesprogresses, cities? Chicago, Canada, Arkansas? the planter, Yankee, Georgian, native, immi-grantimmigrant, sailors, squatters, old States, new States?
LG1856	2484	Does it encompass all The States, and the unexceptional rights of all men and women, the genital impulse of The States?
LG1856	2485	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?
LG1856	2486	Does it see what befals and has always befallen each temporiser, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever asked any-thinganything of America?
LG1856	2487	What mocking and scornful negligence?
LG1856	2488	The track strewed with the dust of skeletons?
LG1856	2489	By the road-side others disdainfully tossed?
LG1856	2490	Rhymes and rhymers pass away—poems dis-tilleddistilled from other poems pass away,
LG1856	2491	The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes,
LG1856	2492	Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make the soil of literature;
LG1856	2493	America justifies itself, give it time—no disguise can deceive it or conceal from it—it is im-passiveimpassive enough,
LG1856	2494	Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them,
LG1856	2495	If its poets appear, it will advance to meet them, there is no fear of mistake,
LG1856	2496	The proof of a poet shall be sternly deferred till his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.
LG1856	2497	He masters whose spirit masters—he tastes sweetest who results sweetest,
LG1856	2498	The blood of the brawn beloved of time is uncon-straintunconstraint,
LG1856	2499	In the need of poems, philosophy, politics, manners, engineering, an appropriate native grand-opera, ship-craft, any craft, he or she is greatest who contributes the greatest original practical example.
LG1856	2500	Already a nonchalant breed silently fills the houses and streets,
LG1856	2501	People's lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers, positive knowers;
LG1856	2502	There will shortly be no more priests—their work is done,
LG1856	2503	Death is without emergencies here, but life is per-petualperpetual emergencies here,
LG1856	2504	Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb,
LG1856	2505	Friendship, self-esteem, justice, health, clear the way with irresistible power.
LG1856	2506	Give me the pay I have served for!
LG1856	2507	Give me to speak beautiful words! take all the rest;
LG1856	2508	I have loved the earth, sun, animals—I have de-spiseddespised riches,
LG1856	2509	I have given alms to every one that asked, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted my in-comeincome and labor to others,
LG1856	2510	I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the peo-plepeople, taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,
LG1856	2511	I have gone freely with powerful uneducated per-sonspersons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families,
LG1856	2512	I have read these leaves to myself in the open air, I have tried them by trees, stars, rivers,
LG1856	2513	I have dismissed whatever insulted my own soul or defiled my body,
LG1856	2514	I have claimed nothing to myself which I have not carefully claimed for others on the same terms,
LG1856	2515	I have studied my land, its idioms and men,
LG1856	2516	I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of myself,
LG1856	2517	I reject none, I permit all,
LG1856	2518	Whom I have staid with once I have found long-inglonging for me ever afterwards.
LG1856	2519	I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things!
LG1856	2520	It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
LG1856	2521	It is I who am great, or to be great—it is you, or any one,
LG1856	2522	It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, govern-mentsgovernments, theories, nature, poems, shows, to in-dividualsindividuals.
LG1856	2523	Underneath all are individuals,
LG1856	2524	I swear nothing is good that ignores individuals!
LG1856	2525	The American compact is with individuals,
LG1856	2526	The only government is that which makes minute of individuals.
LG1856	2527	Underneath all is nativity,
LG1856	2528	I swear I will stand by my own nativity—pious or impious, so be it!
LG1856	2529	I swear I am charmed with nothing except nativity!
LG1856	2530	Men, women, cities, nations, are only beautiful from nativity.
LG1856	2531	Underneath all is the need of the expression of love for men and women,
LG1856	2532	I swear I have had enough of mean and impotent modes of expressing love for men and women,
LG1856	2533	After this day I take my own modes of express-ingexpressing love for men and women.
LG1856	2534	I swear I will have each quality of my race in myself,
LG1856	2535	Talk as you like, he only suits These States whose manners favor the audacity and sub-limesublime turbulence of These States.
LG1856	2536	Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, nature, governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,
LG1856	2537	Underneath all to me is myself—to you, your-selfyourself,
LG1856	2538	If all had not kernels for you and me, what were it to you and me?
LG1856	2539	O I see now that this America is only you and me,
LG1856	2540	Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,
LG1856	2541	Its roughs, beards, haughtiness, ruggedness, are you and me,
LG1856	2542	Its ample geography, the sierras, the prairies, Mississippi, Huron, Colorado, Boston, To-rontoToronto, Releigh, Nashville, Havana, are you and me,
LG1856	2543	Its settlements, wars, the organic compact, peace, Washington, the Federal Constitution, are you and me,
LG1856	2544	Its young men's manners, speech, dress, friend-shipsfriendships, are you and me,
LG1856	2545	Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, slavery, are you and me,
LG1856	2546	Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships, are you and me,
LG1856	2547	Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,
LG1856	2548	Its inventions, science, schools, are you and me,
LG1856	2549	Its deserts, forests, clearings, log-houses, hunters, are you and me,
LG1856	2550	The perpetual arrivals of immigrants are you and me,
LG1856	2551	Natural and artificial are you and me,
LG1856	2552	Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,
LG1856	2553	Failures, successes, births, deaths, are you and me,
LG1856	2554	Past, present, future, are only you and me.
LG1856	2555	I swear I dare not shirk any part of myself,
LG1856	2556	Not America, nor any part of America,
LG1856	2557	Not my body, not friendship, hospitality, pro-creationprocreation,
LG1856	2558	Not my soul, not the last explanation of prudence,
LG1856	2559	Not the similitude that interlocks me with all identities that exist, or ever have existed,
LG1856	2560	Not faith, sin, defiance, nor any disposition or duty of myself,
LG1856	2561	Not the promulgation of liberty, not to cheer up slaves and horrify despots,
LG1856	2562	Not to build for that which builds for mankind,
LG1856	2563	Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
LG1856	2564	Not to justify science, not the march of equality,
LG1856	2565	Not to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn beloved of time.
LG1856	2566	I swear I am for those that have never been mastered!
LG1856	2567	For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered,
LG1856	2568	For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
LG1856	2569	I swear I am for those who walk abreast with America and with the earth!
LG1856	2570	Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.
LG1856	2571	I swear I will not be outfaced by irrational things!
LG1856	2572	I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me!
LG1856	2573	I will make cities and civilizations defer to me!
LG1856	2574	I will confront these shows of the day and night!
LG1856	2575	I will know if I am to be less than they!
LG1856	2576	I will see if I am not as majestic as they!
LG1856	2577	I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they!
LG1856	2578	I will see if I am to be less generous than they!
LG1856	2579	I will see if I have no meaning, and the houses and ships have meaning!
LG1856	2580	I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be enough for myself!
LG1856	2581	I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes,
LG1856	2582	I will learn why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked,
LG1856	2583	I take you to be mine, you beautiful, terrible, rude forms.
LG1856	2584	SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest,
LG1856	2585	I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
LG1856	2586	I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
LG1856	2587	I will not strip my clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
LG1856	2588	I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
LG1856	2589	How can the ground not sicken of men?
LG1856	2590	How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
LG1856	2591	How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
LG1856	2592	Are they not continually putting distempered corpses in the earth?
LG1856	2593	Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead?
LG1856	2594	Where have you disposed of those carcasses of the drunkards and gluttons of so many gen-erationsgenerations?
LG1856	2595	Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
LG1856	2596	I do not see any of it upon you today—or per-hapsperhaps I am deceived,
LG1856	2597	I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath,
LG1856	2598	I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
LG1856	2599	Behold!
LG1856	2600	This is the compost of billions of premature corpses,
LG1856	2601	Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick person,
LG1856	2602	Yet Behold!
LG1856	2603	The grass covers the prairies,
LG1856	2604	The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
LG1856	2605	The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
LG1856	2606	The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branchesapple-branches,
LG1856	2607	The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
LG1856	2608	The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
LG1856	2609	The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
LG1856	2610	The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,
LG1856	2611	The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
LG1856	2612	Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
LG1856	2613	Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;
LG1856	2614	The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.
LG1856	2615	What chemistry!
LG1856	2616	That the winds are really not infectious!
LG1856	2617	That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me!
LG1856	2618	That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues!
LG1856	2619	That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it!
LG1856	2620	That all is clean, forever and forever!
LG1856	2621	That the cool drink from the well tastes so good!
LG1856	2622	That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy!
LG1856	2623	That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me!
LG1856	2624	That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease!
LG1856	2625	Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.
LG1856	2626	Now I am terrified at the earth! it is that calm and patient,
LG1856	2627	It grows such sweet things out of such corrup-tionscorruptions,
LG1856	2628	It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses,
LG1856	2629	It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
LG1856	2630	It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
LG1856	2631	It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
LG1856	2632	WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
LG1856	2633	I fear those realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
LG1856	2634	Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
LG1856	2635	Your true soul and body appear before me,
LG1856	2636	They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, begetting, dying,
LG1856	2637	They receive these in their places, they find these or the like of these, eternal, for reasons,
LG1856	2638	They find themselves eternal, they do not find that the water and soil tend to endure forever — and they not endure.
LG1856	2639	Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,
LG1856	2640	I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
LG1856	2641	I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
LG1856	2642	O I have been dilatory and dumb,
LG1856	2643	I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
LG1856	2644	I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.
LG1856	2645	I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
LG1856	2646	None have understood you, but I understand you,
LG1856	2647	None have done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
LG1856	2648	None but have found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
LG1856	2649	None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,
LG1856	2650	I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond what waits intrin-sicallyintrinsically in yourself.
LG1856	2651	Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all,
LG1856	2652	From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-colored light,
LG1856	2653	But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-colored light,
LG1856	2654	From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.
LG1856	2655	O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
LG1856	2656	You have not known what you are—you have slumbered upon yourself all your life,
LG1856	2657	Your eye-lids have been as much as closed most of the time,
LG1856	2658	What you have done returns already in mock-eriesmockeries,
LG1856	2659	Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?
LG1856	2660	The mockeries are not you,
LG1856	2661	Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk,
LG1856	2662	I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
LG1856	2663	Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these con-cealconceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
LG1856	2664	The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others, they do not balk me,
LG1856	2665	The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunken-nessdrunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside,
LG1856	2666	I track through your windings and turnings—I come upon you where you thought eye should never come upon you.
LG1856	2667	There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,
LG1856	2668	There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman but as good is in you,
LG1856	2669	No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
LG1856	2670	No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal plea-surepleasure waits for you.
LG1856	2671	As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you,
LG1856	2672	I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.
LG1856	2673	Whoever you are, you are to hold your own at any hazard,
LG1856	2674	These shows of the east and west are tame com-paredcompared to you,
LG1856	2675	These immense meadows, these interminable riv-ersrivers—you are immense and interminable as they,
LG1856	2676	These furies, elements, storms, motions of nature, throes of apparent dissolution—you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
LG1856	2677	Master or mistress in your own right over nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.
LG1856	2678	The hopples fall from your ankles! you find an unfailing sufficiency!
LG1856	2679	Old, young, male, female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,
LG1856	2680	Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,
LG1856	2681	Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.
LG1856	2682	FLOOD-TIDE of the river, flow on! I watch you, face to face,
LG1856	2683	Clouds of the west! sun half an hour high! I see you also face to face.
LG1856	2684	Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
LG1856	2685	On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross are more curious to me than you suppose,
LG1856	2686	And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
LG1856	2687	The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
LG1856	2688	The simple, compact, well-joined scheme—my-selfmyself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme,
LG1856	2689	The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
LG1856	2690	The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river,
LG1856	2691	The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away,
LG1856	2692	The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
LG1856	2693	The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
LG1856	2694	Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore,
LG1856	2695	Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
LG1856	2696	Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
LG1856	2697	Others will see the islands large and small,
LG1856	2698	Fifty years hence others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
LG1856	2699	A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
LG1856	2700	Will enjoy the sun-set, the pouring in of the flood-tideflood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tideebb-tide.
LG1856	2701	It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not,
LG1856	2702	I am with you, you men and women of a genera-tiongeneration, or ever so many generations hence,
LG1856	2703	I project myself, also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
LG1856	2704	Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
LG1856	2705	Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
LG1856	2706	Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river, and the bright flow, I was refreshed,
LG1856	2707	Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hur-riedhurried,
LG1856	2708	Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked.
LG1856	2709	I too many and many a time crossed the river, the sun half an hour high,
LG1856	2710	I watched the December sea-gulls, I saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings oscillating their bodies,
LG1856	2711	I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong shadow,
LG1856	2712	I saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south.
LG1856	2713	I too saw the reflection of the summer-sky in the water.
LG1856	2714	Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
LG1856	2715	Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the sun-lit water,
LG1856	2716	Looked on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward,
LG1856	2717	Looked on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
LG1856	2718	Looked toward the lower bay to notice the arriv-ingarriving ships,
LG1856	2719	Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
LG1856	2720	Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
LG1856	2721	The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
LG1856	2722	The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants,
LG1856	2723	The large and small steamers in motion, the pi-lotspilots in their pilot-houses,
LG1856	2724	The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
LG1856	2725	The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set,
LG1856	2726	The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glisten-ingglistening,
LG1856	2727	The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite store-houses by the docks,
LG1856	2728	On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tugsteam-tug closely flanked on each side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
LG1856	2729	On the neighboring shore the fires from the foun-dryfoundry chimneys burning high and glaringly into the night,
LG1856	2730	Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
LG1856	2731	These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
LG1856	2732	I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.
LG1856	2733	I loved well those cities,
LG1856	2734	I loved well the stately and rapid river,
LG1856	2735	The men and women I saw were all near to me,
LG1856	2736	Others the same—others who look back on me, because I looked forward to them,
LG1856	2737	The time will come, though I stop here today and tonight.
LG1856	2738	What is it, then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
LG1856	2739	Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.
LG1856	2740	I too lived,
LG1856	2741	I too walked the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it;
LG1856	2742	I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir with-inwithin me,
LG1856	2743	In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,
LG1856	2744	In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.
LG1856	2745	I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
LG1856	2746	I too had received identity by my body,
LG1856	2747	That I was, I knew was of my body, and what I should be, I knew I should be of my body.
LG1856	2748	It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
LG1856	2749	The dark threw patches down upon me also,
LG1856	2750	The best I had done seemed to me blank and sus-picioussuspicious,
LG1856	2751	My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? Would not people laugh at me?
LG1856	2752	It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil,
LG1856	2753	I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
LG1856	2754	I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
LG1856	2755	Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged,
LG1856	2756	Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
LG1856	2757	Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, a solitary committer, a coward, a malignant person,
LG1856	2758	The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
LG1856	2759	The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adul-terousadulterous wish, not wanting,
LG1856	2760	Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, lazi-nesslaziness, none of these wanting.
LG1856	2761	But I was a Manhattanese, free, friendly, and proud!
LG1856	2762	I was called by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me ap-proachingapproaching or passing,
LG1856	2763	Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the neg-ligentnegligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
LG1856	2764	Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
LG1856	2765	Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
LG1856	2766	Played the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
LG1856	2767	The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, or as small as we like, or both great and small.
LG1856	2768	Closer yet I approach you,
LG1856	2769	What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance,
LG1856	2770	I considered long and seriously of you before you were born.
LG1856	2771	Who was to know what should come home to me?
LG1856	2772	Who knows but I am enjoying this?
LG1856	2773	Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
LG1856	2774	It is not you alone, nor I alone,
LG1856	2775	Not a few races, not a few generations, not a few centuries,
LG1856	2776	It is that each came, or comes, or shall come, from its due emission, without fail, either now, or then, or henceforth.
LG1856	2777	Every thing indicates—the smallest does, and the largest does,
LG1856	2778	A necessary film envelops all, and envelops the soul for a proper time.
LG1856	2779	Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and admirable to me than my mast-hemm'dmast-hemm'd Manhatta, my river and sun-set, and my scallop-edged waves of flood-tide, the sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter,
LG1856	2780	Curious what gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach,
LG1856	2781	Curious what is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my face,
LG1856	2782	Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you.
LG1856	2783	We understand, then, do we not?
LG1856	2784	What I promised without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
LG1856	2785	What the study could not teach—what the preaching could not accomplish is accom-plishedaccomplished, is it not?
LG1856	2786	What the push of reading could not start is started by me personally, is it not?
LG1856	2787	Flow on, river! Flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
LG1856	2788	Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
LG1856	2789	Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set, drench with your splendor me, or the men and women genera-tionsgenerations after me!
LG1856	2790	Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
LG1856	2791	Stand up, tall masts of Manahatta!—stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
LG1856	2792	Bully for you! you proud, friendly, free Manhat-taneseManhattanese!
LG1856	2793	Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out ques-tionsquestions and answers!
LG1856	2794	Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
LG1856	2795	Blab, blush, lie, steal, you or I or any one after us!
LG1856	2796	Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
LG1856	2797	Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and mu-sicallymusically call me by my nighest name!
LG1856	2798	Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
LG1856	2799	Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it!
LG1856	2800	Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon you!
LG1856	2801	Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting cur-rentcurrent!
LG1856	2802	Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air!
LG1856	2803	Receive the summer-sky, you water! faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
LG1856	2804	Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one's head, in the sun-lit water!
LG1856	2805	Come on, ships, from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters!
LG1856	2806	Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lowered at sun-set!
LG1856	2807	Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at night-fall! cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
LG1856	2808	Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are!
LG1856	2809	You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul!
LG1856	2810	About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest aromas!
LG1856	2811	Thrive, cities! Bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers!
LG1856	2812	Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual!
LG1856	2813	Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting!
LG1856	2814	We descend upon you and all things, we arrest you all,
LG1856	2815	We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids,
LG1856	2816	Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality,
LG1856	2817	Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves.
LG1856	2818	You have waited, you always wait, you dumb beautiful ministers! you novices!
LG1856	2819	We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
LG1856	2820	Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or with-holdwithhold yourselves from us,
LG1856	2821	We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us,
LG1856	2822	We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also,
LG1856	2823	You furnish your parts toward eternity,
LG1856	2824	Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
LG1856	2825	AFOOT and light-hearted I take to the open road!
LG1856	2826	Healthy, free, the world before me!
LG1856	2827	The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose!
LG1856	2828	Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I am good-fortunegood-fortune,
LG1856	2829	Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
LG1856	2830	Strong and content, I travel the open road.
LG1856	2831	The earth—that is sufficient,
LG1856	2832	I do not want the constellations any nearer,
LG1856	2833	I know they are very well where they are,
LG1856	2834	I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
LG1856	2835	Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
LG1856	2836	I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go,
LG1856	2837	I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
LG1856	2838	I am filled with them, and I will fill them in return.
LG1856	2839	You road I travel and look around! I believe you are not all that is here!
LG1856	2840	I believe that something unseen is also here.
LG1856	2841	Here is the profound lesson of reception, neither preference or denial,
LG1856	2842	The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, the illiterate person, are not de-nieddenied,
LG1856	2843	The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
LG1856	2844	The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
LG1856	2845	The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
LG1856	2846	They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
LG1856	2847	None but are accepted, none but are dear to me.
LG1856	2848	You air that serves me with breath to speak!
LG1856	2849	You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
LG1856	2850	You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
LG1856	2851	You animals moving serenely over the earth!
LG1856	2852	You birds that wing yourselves through the air! you insects!
LG1856	2853	You sprouting growths from the farmers' fields! you stalks and weeds by the fences!
LG1856	2854	You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the road-sides!
LG1856	2855	I think you are latent with curious existences — you are so dear to me.
LG1856	2856	You flagged walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
LG1856	2857	You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
LG1856	2858	You rows of houses! you window-pierced facades! you roofs!
LG1856	2859	You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
LG1856	2860	You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
LG1856	2861	You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
LG1856	2862	You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
LG1856	2863	From all that has been near you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
LG1856	2864	From the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and ami-cableamicable with me.
LG1856	2865	The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
LG1856	2866	The picture alive, every part in its best light,
LG1856	2867	The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
LG1856	2868	The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
LG1856	2869	O highway I travel! O public road! do you say to me, Do not leave me?
LG1856	2870	Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost?
LG1856	2871	Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beatenwell-beaten and undenied—Adhere to me?
LG1856	2872	O public road! I say back, I am not afraid to leave you—yet I love you,
LG1856	2873	You express me better than I can express myself,
LG1856	2874	You shall be more to me than my poem.
LG1856	2875	I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air,
LG1856	2876	I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles,
LG1856	2877	I think whatever I meet on the road I shall like, and whatever beholds me shall like me,
LG1856	2878	I think whoever I see must be happy.
LG1856	2879	From this hour, freedom!
LG1856	2880	From this hour, I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines!
LG1856	2881	Going where I list—my own master, total and absolute,
LG1856	2882	Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
LG1856	2883	Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
LG1856	2884	Gently but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
LG1856	2885	I inhale great draughts of air,
LG1856	2886	The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
LG1856	2887	I am larger than I thought!
LG1856	2888	I did not know I held so much goodness!
LG1856	2889	All seems beautiful to me,
LG1856	2890	I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me, I would do the same to you.
LG1856	2891	I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
LG1856	2892	I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
LG1856	2893	I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
LG1856	2894	Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me,
LG1856	2895	Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.
LG1856	2896	Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear, it would not amaze me,
LG1856	2897	Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women ap-pearedappeared, it would not astonish me.
LG1856	2898	Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
LG1856	2899	It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.
LG1856	2900	Here is space—here a great personal deed has room,
LG1856	2901	A great deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
LG1856	2902	Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law, and mocks all authority and all argument against it.
LG1856	2903	Here is the test of wisdom,
LG1856	2904	Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
LG1856	2905	Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it, to another not having it,
LG1856	2906	Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
LG1856	2907	Applies to all stages and objects and qualities, and is content,
LG1856	2908	Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things,
LG1856	2909	Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.
LG1856	2910	Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
LG1856	2911	They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents.
LG1856	2912	Here is realization,
LG1856	2913	Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
LG1856	2914	The animals, the past, the future, light, space, majesty, love, if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.
LG1856	2915	Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
LG1856	2916	Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
LG1856	2917	Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
LG1856	2918	Here is adhesiveness—it is not previously fashioned, it is apropos;
LG1856	2919	Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
LG1856	2920	Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?
LG1856	2921	Here is the efflux of the soul,
LG1856	2922	The efflux of the soul comes through beautiful gates of laws, provoking questions,
LG1856	2923	These yearnings, why are they? these thoughts in the darkness, why are they?
LG1856	2924	Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sun-light expands my blood?
LG1856	2925	Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
LG1856	2926	Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
LG1856	2927	(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees, and always drop fruit as I pass;)
LG1856	2928	What is it I interchange so suddenly with stran-gersstrangers?
LG1856	2929	What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
LG1856	2930	What with some fisherman, drawing his seine by the shore, as I walk by and pause?
LG1856	2931	What gives me to be free to a woman's or man's good-will? What gives them to be free to mine?
LG1856	2932	The efflux of the soul is happiness—here is happiness,
LG1856	2933	I think it pervades the air, waiting at all times,
LG1856	2934	Now it flows into us—we are rightly charged.
LG1856	2935	Here rises the fluid and attaching character;
LG1856	2936	The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,
LG1856	2937	The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of them-selvesthemselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet contin-uallycontinually out of itself.
LG1856	2938	Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,
LG1856	2939	From it falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
LG1856	2940	Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
LG1856	2941	Allons! Whoever you are, come travel with me!
LG1856	2942	Traveling with me, you find what never tires.
LG1856	2943	The earth never tires!
LG1856	2944	The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first—nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
LG1856	2945	Be not discouraged—keep on—there are divine things, well enveloped,
LG1856	2946	I swear to you there are divine things more beau-tifulbeautiful than words can tell!
LG1856	2947	Allons! We must not stop here!
LG1856	2948	However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here!
LG1856	2949	However sheltered this port, however calm these waters, we must not anchor here!
LG1856	2950	However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
LG1856	2951	Allons! the inducements shall be great to you,
LG1856	2952	We will sail pathless and wild seas,
LG1856	2953	We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.
LG1856	2954	Allons! With power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
LG1856	2955	Health, defiance, gaiety, self-esteem, curiosity!
LG1856	2956	Allons! From all formulas!
LG1856	2957	From your formulas, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests!
LG1856	2958	The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.
LG1856	2959	Allons! Yet take warning!
LG1856	2960	He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
LG1856	2961	None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health.
LG1856	2962	Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself!
LG1856	2963	Only those may come who come in sweet and determined bodies,
LG1856	2964	No diseased person—no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here,
LG1856	2965	I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
LG1856	2966	We convince by our presence.
LG1856	2967	Listen! I will be honest with you,
LG1856	2968	I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
LG1856	2969	These are the days that must happen to you:
LG1856	2970	You shall not heap up what is called riches,
LG1856	2971	You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
LG1856	2972	You but arrive at the city to which you were destined—you hardly settle yourself to satis-factionsatisfaction, before you are called by an irresistible call to depart,
LG1856	2973	You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
LG1856	2974	What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
LG1856	2975	You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands toward you.
LG1856	2976	Allons! After the great companions! and to be-longbelong to them!
LG1856	2977	They too are on the road! they are the swift and majestic men! they are the greatest women!
LG1856	2978	Over that which hindered them, over that which retarded, passing impediments large or small,
LG1856	2979	Committers of crimes, committers of many beauti-fulbeautiful virtues,
LG1856	2980	Enjoyers of calms of seas, and storms of seas,
LG1856	2981	Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
LG1856	2982	Habitues of many different countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings,
LG1856	2983	Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
LG1856	2984	Pausers and contemplaters of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
LG1856	2985	Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
LG1856	2986	Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers down of coffins,
LG1856	2987	Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years—the curious years, each emerging from that which preceded it,
LG1856	2988	Journeyers as with companions, namely, their own diverse phases,
LG1856	2989	Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-daysbaby-days,
LG1856	2990	Journeyers gaily with their own youth—journey-ersjourneyers with their bearded and well-grained manhood,
LG1856	2991	Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsur-passedunsurpassed, content,
LG1856	2992	Journeyers with their sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
LG1856	2993	Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
LG1856	2994	Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
LG1856	2995	Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless!
LG1856	2996	To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights!
LG1856	2997	To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to!
LG1856	2998	Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys!
LG1856	2999	To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it!
LG1856	3000	To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it!
LG1856	3001	To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you! however long, but it stretches and waits for you!
LG1856	3002	To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither!
LG1856	3003	To see no possession but you may possess it! enjoying all without labor or purchase — abstracting the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it;
LG1856	3004	To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens!
LG1856	3005	To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through!
LG1856	3006	To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go!
LG1856	3007	To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them! to gather the love out of their hearts!
LG1856	3008	To take your own lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you!
LG1856	3009	To know the universe itself as a road—as many roads—as roads for traveling souls!
LG1856	3010	The soul travels,
LG1856	3011	The body does not travel as much as the soul,
LG1856	3012	The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.
LG1856	3013	All parts away for the progress of souls,
LG1856	3014	All religion, all solid things, arts, governments — all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the processions of souls along the grand roads of the universe,
LG1856	3015	Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
LG1856	3016	Forever alive, forever forward,
LG1856	3017	Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
LG1856	3018	Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
LG1856	3019	They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
LG1856	3020	But I know that they go toward the best—
LG1856	3021	toward something great.
LG1856	3022	Allons! Whoever you are! come forth!
LG1856	3023	You must not stay in your house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.
LG1856	3024	Allons! out of the dark confinement!
LG1856	3025	It is useless to protest—I know all, and expose it.
LG1856	3026	Behold through you as bad as the rest!
LG1856	3027	Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
LG1856	3028	Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimmed faces,
LG1856	3029	Behold a secret silent loathing and despair!
LG1856	3030	No husband, no wife, no friend, no lover, so trusted as to hear the confession,
LG1856	3031	Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes, open and above-board it goes,
LG1856	3032	Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,
LG1856	3033	In the cars of rail-roads, in steam-boats, in the public assembly,
LG1856	3034	Home to the houses of men and women, among their families, at the table, in the bed-room, every where,
LG1856	3035	Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
LG1856	3036	Under the broad-cloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
LG1856	3037	Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
LG1856	3038	Speaking of anything else, but never of itself.
LG1856	3039	Allons! through struggles and wars!
LG1856	3040	The goal that was named cannot be counter-mandedcountermanded.
LG1856	3041	Have the past struggles succeeded?
LG1856	3042	What has succeeded? Yourself? Your nation? Nature?
LG1856	3043	Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things, that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle neces-sarynecessary.
LG1856	3044	My call is the call of battle—I nourish active rebellion,
LG1856	3045	He going with me must go well armed,
LG1856	3046	He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, contentions.
LG1856	3047	Allons! the road is before us!
LG1856	3048	It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well.
LG1856	3049	Allons! be not detained!
LG1856	3050	Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopened!
LG1856	3051	Let the tools remain in the work-shop! let the money remain unearned!
LG1856	3052	Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
LG1856	3053	Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law!
LG1856	3054	Mon enfant! I give you my hand!
LG1856	3055	I give you my love, more precious than money,
LG1856	3056	I give you myself, before preaching or law;
LG1856	3057	Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
LG1856	3058	Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
LG1856	3059	A WOMAN waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking,
LG1856	3060	Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.
LG1856	3061	Sex contains all,
LG1856	3062	Bodies, souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delica-ciesdelicacies, results, promulgations,
LG1856	3063	Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the semitic milk,
LG1856	3064	All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
LG1856	3065	All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,
LG1856	3066	All the governments, judges, gods, followed per-sonspersons of the earth,
LG1856	3067	These are contained in sex, as parts of itself and justifications of itself.
LG1856	3068	Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,
LG1856	3069	Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.
LG1856	3070	O I will fetch bully breeds of children yet!
LG1856	3071	They cannot be fetched, I say, on less terms than mine,
LG1856	3072	Electric growth from the male, and rich ripe fibre from the female, are the terms.
LG1856	3073	I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
LG1856	3074	I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,
LG1856	3075	I see that they understand me, and do not deny me,
LG1856	3076	I see that they are worthy of me—so I will be the robust husband of those women!
LG1856	3077	They are not one jot less than I am,
LG1856	3078	They are tanned in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
LG1856	3079	Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
LG1856	3080	They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
LG1856	3081	They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, well-possessed of themselves.
LG1856	3082	I draw you close to me, you women!
LG1856	3083	I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
LG1856	3084	I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others' sakes,
LG1856	3085	Enveloped in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
LG1856	3086	They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.
LG1856	3087	It is I, you women—I make my way,
LG1856	3088	I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable—but I love you,
LG1856	3089	I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
LG1856	3090	I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for These States—I press with slow rude muscle,
LG1856	3091	I brace myself effectually—I listen to no en-treatiesentreaties,
LG1856	3092	I dare not withdraw till I deposite what has so long accumulated within me.
LG1856	3093	Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
LG1856	3094	In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
LG1856	3095	On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and of America,
LG1856	3096	The drops I distil upon you are drops of fierce and athletic girls, and of new artists, musi-ciansmusicians, singers,
LG1856	3097	The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
LG1856	3098	I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
LG1856	3099	I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now,
LG1856	3100	I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gush-inggushing showers I give now,
LG1856	3101	I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality I plant so lovingly now.
LG1856	3102	A YOUNG man came to me with a message from his brother,
LG1856	3103	How should the young man know the whether and when of his brother?
LG1856	3104	Tell him to send me the signs.
LG1856	3105	And I stood before the young man face to face, and took his right hand in my left hand, and his left hand in my right hand,
LG1856	3106	And I answered for his brother, and for men, and I answered for the poet, and sent these signs.
LG1856	3107	Him all wait for, him all yield up to, his word is decisive and final,
LG1856	3108	Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light,
LG1856	3109	Him they immerse, and he immerses them.
LG1856	3110	Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals,
LG1856	3111	The profound earth and its attributes, and the un-quietunquiet ocean,
LG1856	3112	All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy,
LG1856	3113	The best farms, others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps,
LG1856	3114	The noblest and costliest cities, others grading and building, and he domiciles there,
LG1856	3115	Nothing for any one, but what is for him—near and far are for him,
LG1856	3116	The ships in the offing, the perpetual shows and marches on land, are for him, if they are for any body.
LG1856	3117	He puts things in their attitudes,
LG1856	3118	He puts today out of himself, with plasticity and love,
LG1856	3119	He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations, employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to com-mandcommand them.
LG1856	3120	He is the answerer,
LG1856	3121	What can be answered he answers, and what cannot be answered, he shows how it cannot be answered.
LG1856	3122	A man is a summons and challenge;
LG1856	3123	It is vain to skulk—Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical echoes?
LG1856	3124	Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down, seeking to give satisfaction,
LG1856	3125	He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also.
LG1856	3126	Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely, by day or by night,
LG1856	3127	He has the pass-key of hearts—to him the response of the prying of hands on the knobs.
LG1856	3128	His welcome is universal—the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he is,
LG1856	3129	The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.
LG1856	3130	Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue,
LG1856	3131	He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also,
LG1856	3132	One part does not counteract another part—he is the joiner, he sees how they join.
LG1856	3133	He says indifferently and alike, How are you, friend? to the President at his levee,
LG1856	3134	And he says, Good-day, my brother! to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,
LG1856	3135	And both understand him, and know that his speech is right.
LG1856	3136	He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,
LG1856	3137	He walks among the Congress, and one represen-tativerepresentative says to another, Here is our equal appearing and new.
LG1856	3138	Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
LG1856	3139	And the soldiers suppose him to be a captain, and the sailors that he has followed the sea,
LG1856	3140	And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
LG1856	3141	And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them.
LG1856	3142	No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has followed it,
LG1856	3143	No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there.
LG1856	3144	The English believe he comes of their English stock,
LG1856	3145	A Jew to the Jew he seems—a Russ to the Russ —usual and near, removed from none.
LG1856	3146	Whoever he looks at in the traveler's coffee-housecoffee-house claims him,
LG1856	3147	The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and the island Cuban is sure.
LG1856	3148	The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or Sacramento, or Hudson, or Delaware, claims him.
LG1856	3149	The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
LG1856	3150	The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of him — he strangely transmutes them,
LG1856	3151	They are not vile any more—they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.
LG1856	3152	Do you think it would be good to be the writer of melodious verses?
LG1856	3153	Well, it would be good to be the writer of melodious verses;
LG1856	3154	But what are verses beyond the flowing char-actercharacter you could have? or beyond beautiful manners and behaviour?
LG1856	3155	Or beyond one manly or affectionate deed of an apprentice-boy? or old woman? or man that has been in prison, or is likely to be in prison?
LG1856	3156	THIS night I am happy,
LG1856	3157	As I watch the stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future.
LG1856	3158	What can the future bring me more than I have?
LG1856	3159	Do you suppose I wish to enjoy life in other spheres?
LG1856	3160	I say distinctly I comprehend no better sphere than this earth,
LG1856	3161	I comprehend no better life than the life of my body.
LG1856	3162	I do not know what follows the death of my body,
LG1856	3163	But I know well that whatever it is, it is best for me,
LG1856	3164	And I know well that what is really Me shall live just as much as before.
LG1856	3165	I am not uneasy but I shall have good housing to myself,
LG1856	3166	But this is my first—how can I like the rest any better?
LG1856	3167	Here I grew up—the studs and rafters are grown parts of me.
LG1856	3168	I am not uneasy but I am to be beloved by young and old men, and to love them the same,
LG1856	3169	I suppose the pink nipples of the breasts of women with whom I shall sleep will taste the same to my lips,
LG1856	3170	But this is the nipple of a breast of my mother, always near and always divine to me, her true child and son.
LG1856	3171	I suppose I am to be eligible to visit the stars, in my time,
LG1856	3172	I suppose I shall have myriads of new experiences —and that the experience of this earth will prove only one out of myriads;
LG1856	3173	But I believe my body and my soul already indicate those experiences,
LG1856	3174	And I believe I shall find nothing in the stars more majestic and beautiful than I have already found on the earth,
LG1856	3175	And I believe I have this night a clue through the universes,
LG1856	3176	And I believe I have this night thought a thought of the clef of eternity.
LG1856	3177	A vast similitude interlocks all,
LG1856	3178	All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
LG1856	3179	All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same,
LG1856	3180	All distances of place, however wide,
LG1856	3181	All distances of time—all inanimate forms,
LG1856	3182	All souls—all living bodies, though they be in different worlds,
LG1856	3183	All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
LG1856	3184	All men and women—me also,
LG1856	3185	All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, lan-guageslanguages,
LG1856	3186	All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe or any globe,
LG1856	3187	All lives and deaths—all of past, present, future,
LG1856	3188	This vast similitude spans them, and always has spanned, and shall forever span them.
LG1856	3189	SUDDENLY out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
LG1856	3190	Like lightning Europe le'pt forth, half startled at itself,
LG1856	3191	Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the throats of kings.
LG1856	3192	O hope and faith! O aching close of lives! O many a sickened heart!
LG1856	3193	Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.
LG1856	3194	And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
LG1856	3195	Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
LG1856	3196	For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages,
LG1856	3197	For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laughed at in the breaking,
LG1856	3198	Then in their power, not for all these did the blows strike of personal revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall,
LG1856	3199	The People scorned the ferocity of kings.
LG1856	3200	But the sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruc-tiondestruction, and the frightened rulers come back,
LG1856	3201	Each comes in state with his train, hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, soldier, lawyer, jailer, sycophant.
LG1856	3202	Behind all, lo, a Shape,
LG1856	3203	Vague as the night, draped interminably, head front and form, in scarlet folds,
LG1856	3204	Whose face and eyes none may see,
LG1856	3205	Out of its robes only this—the red robes, lifted by the arm,
LG1856	3206	One finger, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears.
LG1856	3207	Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves — bloody corpses of young men;
LG1856	3208	The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,
LG1856	3209	And all these things bear fruits, and they are good.
LG1856	3210	Those corpses of young men,
LG1856	3211	Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierced by the gray lead,
LG1856	3212	Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughter'd vitality.
LG1856	3213	They live in other young men, O kings!
LG1856	3214	They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
LG1856	3215	They were purified by death—they were taught and exalted.
LG1856	3216	Not a grave of the murdered for freedom, but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
LG1856	3217	Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.
LG1856	3218	Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
LG1856	3219	But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.
LG1856	3220	Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.
LG1856	3221	Is the house shut? Is the master away?
LG1856	3222	Nevertheless be ready—be not weary of watching,
LG1856	3223	He will soon return—his messengers come anon.
LG1856	3224	WHO has gone farthest? For I swear I will go farther;
LG1856	3225	And who has been just? For I would be the most just person of the earth;
LG1856	3226	And who most cautious? For I would be more cautious;
LG1856	3227	And who has been happiest? O I think it is I! I think no one was ever happier than I;
LG1856	3228	And who has lavished all? For I lavish con-stantlyconstantly the best I have;
LG1856	3229	And who has been firmest? For I would be firmer;
LG1856	3230	And who proudest? For I think I have reason to be the proudest son alive—for I am the son of the brawny and tall-topt city;
LG1856	3231	And who has been bold and true? For I would be the boldest and truest being of the uni-verseuniverse;
LG1856	3232	And who benevolent? For I would show more benevolence than all the rest;
LG1856	3233	And who has projected beautiful words through the longest time? By God! I will outvie him! I will say such words, they shall stretch through longer time!
LG1856	3234	And who has received the love of the most friends? For I know what it is to receive the passionate love of many friends;
LG1856	3235	And to whom has been given the sweetest from women, and paid them in kind? For I will take the like sweets, and pay them in kind;
LG1856	3236	And who possesses a perfect and enamored body? For I do not believe any one possesses a more perfect or enamored body than mine;
LG1856	3237	And who thinks the amplest thoughts? For I will surround those thoughts;
LG1856	3238	And who has made hymns fit for the earth? For I am mad with devouring ecstasy to make joyous hymns for the whole earth!
LG1856	3239	ALL day I have walked the city and talked with my friends, and thought of prudence,
LG1856	3240	Of time, space, reality—of such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.
LG1856	3241	After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence,
LG1856	3242	Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.
LG1856	3243	The soul is of itself,
LG1856	3244	All verges to it, all has reference to what ensues,
LG1856	3245	All that a person does, says, thinks, is of conse-quenceconsequence,
LG1856	3246	Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct life-time, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward after-wardafterward through the indirect life-time.
LG1856	3247	The indirect is more than the direct,
LG1856	3248	The spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.
LG1856	3249	Not one word or deed—not venereal sore, dis-colorationdiscoloration, 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.
LG1856	3250	Charity and personal force are the only invest-mentsinvestments worth anything.
LG1856	3251	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.
LG1856	3252	Who has been wise, receives interest,
LG1856	3253	Savage, felon, President, judge, prostitute, farmer, sailor, mechanic, young, old, it is the same,
LG1856	3254	The interest will come round—all will come round.
LG1856	3255	Singly, wholly, to affect now, affected their time, will forever affect, all of the past, and all of the present, and all of the future,
LG1856	3256	All the brave actions of war and peace,
LG1856	3257	All help given to relatives, strangers, the poor, old, sorrowful, young children, widows, the sick, and to shunned persons,
LG1856	3258	All furtherance of fugitives, and of the escape of slaves,
LG1856	3259	All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others fill the seats of the boats,
LG1856	3260	All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake, or opinion's sake,
LG1856	3261	All pains of enthusiasts, scoffed at by their neigh-borsneighbors,
LG1856	3262	All the limitless sweet love and precious suffering of mothers,
LG1856	3263	All honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unre-cordedunrecorded,
LG1856	3264	All the grandeur and good of ancient nations whose fragments we inherit,
LG1856	3265	All the good of the hundreds of ancient nations unknown to us by name, date, location,
LG1856	3266	All that was ever manfully begun, whether it suc-ceededsucceeded or no,
LG1856	3267	All suggestions of the divine mind of man, or the divinity of his mouth, or the shaping of his great hands;
LG1856	3268	All that is well thought or said this day on any part of the globe—or on any of the wander-ingwandering stars, or on any of the fixed stars, by those there as we are here,
LG1856	3269	All that is henceforth to be thought or done by you, whoever you are, or by any one,
LG1856	3270	These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which they sprang, or shall spring.
LG1856	3271	Did you guess anything lived only its moment?
LG1856	3272	The world does not so exist—no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,
LG1856	3273	No consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation, and that from some other, without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.
LG1856	3274	Whatever satisfies souls is true,
LG1856	3275	Prudence satisfies the craving and glut of souls.
LG1856	3276	Itself finally satisfies the soul,
LG1856	3277	The soul has that measureless pride which re-voltsrevolts from every lesson but its own.
LG1856	3278	Now I give you an inkling,
LG1856	3279	Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time, space, reality,
LG1856	3280	That answers the pride which refuses every les-sonlesson but its own.
LG1856	3281	What is prudence, is indivisible,
LG1856	3282	Declines to separate one part of life from every part,
LG1856	3283	Divides not the righteous from the unrighteous, or the living from the dead,
LG1856	3284	Matches every thought or act by its correlative,
LG1856	3285	Knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atone-mentatonement,
LG1856	3286	Knows that the young man who composedly periled his life and lost it, has done exceeding well for himself, without doubt,
LG1856	3287	That he who never periled his life, but retains it to old age in riches and ease, has probably achieved nothing for himself worth men-tioningmentioning;
LG1856	3288	Knows that only the person has learned, who has learned to prefer results,
LG1856	3289	Who favors body and soul the same,
LG1856	3290	Who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,
LG1856	3291	Who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries or avoids death.
LG1856	3292	PERFECT sanity shows the master among philosophs,
LG1856	3293	Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts,
LG1856	3294	What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their words,
LG1856	3295	The words of the singers are the hours or min-utesminutes of the light or dark—but the words of the maker of poems are the complete light and dark,
LG1856	3296	The maker of poems settles justice, reality, im-mortalityimmortality,
LG1856	3297	His insight and power encircle things and the human race,
LG1856	3298	He is the glory and extract, thus far, of things and of the human race.
LG1856	3299	The singers do not beget—only the poet be-getsbegets,
LG1856	3300	The singers are welcomed, understood, appear often enough—but rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the maker of poems,
LG1856	3301	Not every century, or every five centuries, has contained such a day, for all its names.
LG1856	3302	The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,
LG1856	3303	The name of each is, a heart-singer, eye-singer, hymn-singer, law-singer, ear-singer, head-singerhead-singer, sweet-singer, wise-singer, droll-singerdroll-singer, thrift-singer, sea-singer, wit-singer, echo-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer, pas-sion-singerpassion-singer, mystic-singer, weeping-singer, fable-singer, item-singer, or something else.
LG1856	3304	All this time, and at all times, wait the words of poems;
LG1856	3305	The greatness of sons is the exuding of the great-nessgreatness of mothers and fathers,
LG1856	3306	The words of poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
LG1856	3307	Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawn-nesswithdrawnness, gaiety, sun-tan, air-sweetness—such are the words of poems.
LG1856	3308	The sailor and traveler underlie the maker of poems,
LG1856	3309	The builder, geometer, mathematician, astronomer, melodist, philosoph, chemist, anatomist, spiritualist, language-searcher, geologist, phrenologist, artist—all these underlie the maker of poems.
LG1856	3310	The words of poems give you more than poems,
LG1856	3311	They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behaviour, histories, essays, romances, and every thing else,
LG1856	3312	They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
LG1856	3313	They do not seek beauty, they are sought — forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick;
LG1856	3314	They are not the finish, but rather the outset,
LG1856	3315	They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full,
LG1856	3316	Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,
LG1856	3317	To launch off with absolute faith—to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and never be quiet again.
LG1856	3318	I NEED no assurances—I am a man who is pre-occupied of his own soul;
LG1856	3319	I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given time, there waits for me more which I do not know;
LG1856	3320	I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of — calm and actual faces;
LG1856	3321	I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world is latent in any iota of the world;
LG1856	3322	I do not doubt there are realizations I have no idea of, waiting for me through time and through the universes—also upon this earth;
LG1856	3323	I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the uni-versesuniverses are limitless—in vain I try to think how limitless;
LG1856	3324	I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the air 12 on purpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they;
LG1856	3325	I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have supposed;
LG1856	3326	I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have supposed—and more in all men and women —and more in my poems than I have supposed;
LG1856	3327	I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years;
LG1856	3328	I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors—and that the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and the hear-inghearing another hearing, and the voice another voice;
LG1856	3329	I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for—and that the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children, are provided for;
LG1856	3330	I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them—no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down—are provided for, to the minutest point;
LG1856	3331	I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malig-nancemalignance, are provided for;
LG1856	3332	I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the remainder of the earth, politics, freedom, degradations, are carefully provided for;
LG1856	3333	I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at any time, is provided for, in the inherences of things.
LG1856	3334	COURAGE! my brother or my sister!
LG1856	3335	Keep on! Liberty is to be subserved, what-everwhatever occurs;
LG1856	3336	That is nothing, that is quelled by one or two fail-uresfailures, or any number of failures,
LG1856	3337	Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people,
LG1856	3338	Or the show of the tushes of power—soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.
LG1856	3339	What we believe in waits latent forever through Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Australia, Cuba, and all the islands and archipelagoes of the sea;
LG1856	3340	What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
LG1856	3341	Waits patiently its time—a year—a century — a hundred centuries.
LG1856	3342	The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat,
LG1856	3343	The infidel triumphs—or supposes he triumphs,
LG1856	3344	The prison, scaffold, garrote, hand-cuffs, iron neck-lacenecklace and anklet, lead-balls, do their work,
LG1856	3345	The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
LG1856	3346	The great speakers and writers are exiled—they lie sick in distant lands,
LG1856	3347	The cause is asleep—the strong throats are choked with their own blood,
LG1856	3348	The young men drop their eye-lashes toward the ground when they meet,
LG1856	3349	But for all this, liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel entered into pos-sessionpossession.
LG1856	3350	When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,
LG1856	3351	It waits for all the rest to go—it is the last.
LG1856	3352	When there are no more memories of the lovers of the whole of the nations of the world,
LG1856	3353	The lovers' names scouted in the public gatherings by the lips of the orators,
LG1856	3354	Boys not christened after them, but christened after traitors and murderers instead,
LG1856	3355	Laws for slaves sweet to the taste of people — the slave-hunt acknowledged,
LG1856	3356	You or I walking abroad upon the earth, elated at the sight of slaves, no matter who they are,
LG1856	3357	And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,
LG1856	3358	Then shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth,
LG1856	3359	Then shall the infidel and the tyrant come into possession.
LG1856	3360	CLEAR the way there, Jonathan!
LG1856	3361	Way for the President's marshal! Way for the government cannon!
LG1856	3362	Way for the federal foot and dragoons—and the apparitions copiously tumbling.
LG1856	3363	I rose this morning early to get betimes in Boston town,
LG1856	3364	Here's a good place at the corner, I must stand and see the show.
LG1856	3365	I love to look on the stars and stripes, I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle.
LG1856	3366	How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops!
LG1856	3367	Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town.
LG1856	3368	A fog follows, antiques of the same come limping,
LG1856	3369	Some appear wooden-legged and some appear bandaged and bloodless.
LG1856	3370	Why this is a show! It has called the dead out of the earth!
LG1856	3371	The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see!
LG1856	3372	Uncountable phantoms gather by flank and rear of it!
LG1856	3373	Cocked hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist!
LG1856	3374	Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men's shoulders!
LG1856	3375	What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering of bare gums?
LG1856	3376	Does the ague convulse your limbs? Do you mistake your crutches for fire-locks, and level them?
LG1856	3377	If you blind your eyes with tears you will not see the President's marshal,
LG1856	3378	If you groan such groans you might balk the government cannon.
LG1856	3379	For shame, old maniacs! Bring down those tossed arms and let your white hair be,
LG1856	3380	Here gape your smart grand-sons—their wives gaze at them from the windows,
LG1856	3381	See how well-dressed—see how orderly they conduct themselves.
LG1856	3382	Worse and worse! Can't you stand it? Are you retreating?
LG1856	3383	Is this hour with the living too dead for you?
LG1856	3384	Retreat then! Pell-mell! Back to the hills, old limpers!
LG1856	3385	I do not think you belong here, anyhow.
LG1856	3386	But there is one thing that belongs here—shall I tell you what it is, gentlemen of Boston?
LG1856	3387	I will whisper it to the Mayor—he shall send a committee to England,
LG1856	3388	They shall get a grant from the Parliament, go with a cart to the royal vault,
LG1856	3389	Dig out King George's coffin—unwrap him quick from the grave-clothes—box up his bones for a journey,
LG1856	3390	Find a swift Yankee clipper—here is freight for you, black-bellied clipper!
LG1856	3391	Up with your anchor! shake out your sails! steer straight toward Boston bay.
LG1856	3392	Now call the President's marshal again, bring out the government cannon,
LG1856	3393	Fetch home the roarers from Congress, make another procession, guard it with foot and dragoons.
LG1856	3394	This centre-piece for them:
LG1856	3395	Look! all orderly citizens—look from the win-dowswindows, women!
LG1856	3396	The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that will not stay,
LG1856	3397	Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull.
LG1856	3398	You have got your revenge, old buster! The crown is come to its own, and more than its own.
LG1856	3399	Stick your hands in your pockets Jonathan—you are a made man from this day,
LG1856	3400	You are mighty cute, and here is one of your bargains.
LG1856	3401	REMEMBER the organic compact of These States!
LG1856	3402	Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thence-forwardthenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality, of man!
LG1856	3403	Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and white by the Commissioners, read by Wash-ingtonWashington at the head of the army!
LG1856	3404	Remember the purposes of the founders!—Re-memberRemember Washington!
LG1856	3405	Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America!
LG1856	3406	Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men!—(Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)
LG1856	3407	Remember, government is to subserve individuals!
LG1856	3408	Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,
LG1856	3409	Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.
LG1856	3410	Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions are to become the hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred millions, of equal freemen and free-womenfreewomen, amicably joined.
LG1856	3411	Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a part,
LG1856	3412	Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, supersti-tionssuperstitions of the idea of caste,
LG1856	3413	Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.
LG1856	3414	Anticipate the best women!
LG1856	3415	I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-definedwell-defined women are to spread through all These States,
LG1856	3416	I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a boy.
LG1856	3417	Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless power,
LG1856	3418	Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?
LG1856	3419	Do you see that lost character?—Do you see decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy, fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?
LG1856	3420	Do you see death, and the approach of death?
LG1856	3421	Think of the soul!
LG1856	3422	I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your soul somehow to live in other spheres,
LG1856	3423	I do not know how, but I know it is so.
LG1856	3424	Think of loving and being loved!
LG1856	3425	I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you!
LG1856	3426	Think of the past!
LG1856	3427	I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times.
LG1856	3428	The race is never separated—nor man nor woman escapes,
LG1856	3429	All is inextricable—things, spirits, nature, nations, you too—from precedents you come.
LG1856	3430	Recall the ever-welcome defiers! (The mothers precede them;)
LG1856	3431	Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, law-giverslawgivers, of the earth,
LG1856	3432	Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons — brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.
LG1856	3433	Think of the time when you was not yet born!
LG1856	3434	Think of times you stood at the side of the dying!
LG1856	3435	Think of the time when your own body will be dying!
LG1856	3436	Think of spiritual results!
LG1856	3437	Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results!
LG1856	3438	Think of manhood, and you to be a man!
LG1856	3439	Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?
LG1856	3440	Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman!
LG1856	3441	The creation is womanhood,
LG1856	3442	Have I not said that womanhood involves all?
LG1856	3443	Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood?
LG1856	3444	REALISM is mine, my miracles,
LG1856	3445	Take all of the rest—take freely—I keep but my own—I give only of them,
LG1856	3446	I offer them without end—I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you, or your eyes reach.
LG1856	3447	Why! who makes much of a miracle?
LG1856	3448	As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
LG1856	3449	Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
LG1856	3450	Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
LG1856	3451	Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
LG1856	3452	Or stand under trees in the woods,
LG1856	3453	Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
LG1856	3454	Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
LG1856	3455	Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
LG1856	3456	Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of an August forenoon,
LG1856	3457	Or animals feeding in the fields,
LG1856	3458	Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
LG1856	3459	Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
LG1856	3460	Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-moonnew-moon in May,
LG1856	3461	Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best—mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
LG1856	3462	Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to the opera,
LG1856	3463	Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
LG1856	3464	Or behold children at their sports,
LG1856	3465	Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,
LG1856	3466	Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
LG1856	3467	Or my own eyes and figure in the glass,
LG1856	3468	These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
LG1856	3469	The whole referring—yet each distinct and in its place.
LG1856	3470	To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
LG1856	3471	Every inch of space is a miracle,
LG1856	3472	Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
LG1856	3473	Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same;
LG1856	3474	Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them,
LG1856	3475	All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
LG1856	3476	To me the sea is a continual miracle,
LG1856	3477	The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with men in them —what stranger miracles are there?
LG1856	3478	THERE was a child went forth every day,
LG1856	3479	And the first object he looked upon and re-ceivedreceived with wonder, pity, love, or dread, that object he became,
LG1856	3480	And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.
LG1856	3481	The early lilacs became part of this child,
LG1856	3482	And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phœbe-bird,
LG1856	3483	And the March-born lambs, and the sow's pink-faintpink-faint litter, and the mare's foal, and the cow's calf, and the noisy brood of the barn-yard or by the mire of the pond-side, and the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid, and the water-plants with their graceful flat heads — all became part of him.
LG1856	3484	The field-sprouts of April and May became part of him—winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and of the esculent roots of the garden,
LG1856	3485	And the apple-trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,
LG1856	3486	And the old drunkard staggering home from the out-house of the tavern whence he had lately risen,
LG1856	3487	And the school-mistress that passed on her way to the school, and the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys, and the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the bare-foot negro boy and girl,
LG1856	3488	And all the changes of city and country, wherever he went.
LG1856	3489	His own parents—he that had propelled the father-stuff at night and fathered him, and she that conceived him in her womb and birthed him—they gave this child more of themselves than that,
LG1856	3490	They gave him afterward every day—they and of them became part of him.
LG1856	3491	The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
LG1856	3492	The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her per-sonperson and clothes as she walks by,
LG1856	3493	The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, angered, unjust,
LG1856	3494	The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
LG1856	3495	The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture—the yearning and swelling heart,
LG1856	3496	Affection that will not be gainsayed—the sense of what is real—the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal,
LG1856	3497	The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-timenight-time, the curious whether and how,
LG1856	3498	Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?
LG1856	3499	Men and women crowding fast in the streets—if they are not flashes and specks what are they?
LG1856	3500	The streets themselves, and the facades of houses, the goods in the windows,
LG1856	3501	Vehicles, teams, the tiered wharves, the huge crossing at the ferries,
LG1856	3502	The village on the highland seen from afar at sun-setsunset, the river between,
LG1856	3503	Shadows, aureola and mist, light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three miles off,
LG1856	3504	The schooner near-by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little boat slack-towed astern,
LG1856	3505	The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
LG1856	3506	The strata of colored clouds, the long bar of ma-roon-tintmaroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
LG1856	3507	The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fra-grancefragrance of salt-marsh and shore-mud;
LG1856	3508	These became part of that child who went forth every day, who now goes, and will always go forth every day,
LG1856	3509	And these become of him or her that peruses them now.
LG1856	3510	I WANDER all night in my vision,
LG1856	3511	Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noise-lesslynoiselessly stepping and stopping,
LG1856	3512	Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
LG1856	3513	Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assortedill-assorted, contradictory,
LG1856	3514	Pausing, gazing, bending, stopping.
LG1856	3515	How solemn they look there, stretched and still!
LG1856	3516	How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles!
LG1856	3517	The wretched features of ennuyees, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunk-ardsdrunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
LG1856	3518	The gashed bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-doored rooms, the sacred idiots,
LG1856	3519	The new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,
LG1856	3520	The night pervades them and enfolds them.
LG1856	3521	The married couple sleep calmly in their bed — he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
LG1856	3522	The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
LG1856	3523	The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
LG1856	3524	And the mother sleeps with her little child care-fullycarefully wrapped.
LG1856	3525	The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
LG1856	3526	The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the run-awayrunaway son sleeps,
LG1856	3527	The murderer that is to be hung next day—how does he sleep?
LG1856	3528	And the murdered person—how does he sleep?
LG1856	3529	The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
LG1856	3530	And the male that loves unrequited sleeps;
LG1856	3531	The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
LG1856	3532	And the enraged and treacherous dispositions sleep.
LG1856	3533	I stand with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and restless,
LG1856	3534	I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
LG1856	3535	The restless sink in their beds—they fitfully sleep.
LG1856	3536	The earth recedes from me into the night,
LG1856	3537	I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.
LG1856	3538	I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers, each in turn,
LG1856	3539	I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
LG1856	3540	And I become the other dreamers.
LG1856	3541	I am a dance—Play up, there! the fit is whirling me fast!
LG1856	3542	I am the ever-laughing—it is new moon and twilight,
LG1856	3543	I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts whichever way I look,
LG1856	3544	Cache, and cache again, deep in the ground and sea, and where it is neither ground or sea.
LG1856	3545	Well do they do their jobs, those journeymen divine,
LG1856	3546	Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,
LG1856	3547	I reckon I am their boss, and they make me a pet besides,
LG1856	3548	And surround me and lead me, and run ahead when I walk,
LG1856	3549	To lift their cunning covers, to signify me with stretched arms, and resume the way;
LG1856	3550	Onward we move! a gay gang of blackguards! with mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants of joy!
LG1856	3551	I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the poli-ticianpolitician,
LG1856	3552	The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,
LG1856	3553	He who has been famous, and he who shall be famous after today,
LG1856	3554	The stammerer, the well-formed person, the wasted or feeble person.
LG1856	3555	I am she who adorned herself and folded her hair expectantly,
LG1856	3556	My truant lover has come, and it is dark.
LG1856	3557	Double yourself and receive me, darkness!
LG1856	3558	Receive me and my lover too—he will not let me go without him.
LG1856	3559	I roll myself upon you, as upon a bed—I resign myself to the dusk.
LG1856	3560	He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
LG1856	3561	He rises with me silently from the bed.
LG1856	3562	Darkness, you are gentler than my lover! his flesh was sweaty and panting,
LG1856	3563	I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
LG1856	3564	My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,
LG1856	3565	I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.
LG1856	3566	Be careful, darkness! already, what was it touched me?
LG1856	3567	I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one,
LG1856	3568	I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.
LG1856	3569	O hot-cheeked and blushing! O foolish hectic!
LG1856	3570	O for pity's sake, no one must see me now! my clothes were stolen while I was abed,
LG1856	3571	Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?
LG1856	3572	Pier that I saw dimly last night, when I looked from the windows!
LG1856	3573	Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you and stay! I will not chafe you,
LG1856	3574	I feel ashamed to go naked about the world.
LG1856	3575	I am curious to know where my feet stand—and what this is flooding me, childhood or man-hoodmanhood—and the hunger that crosses the bridge between.
LG1856	3576	The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,
LG1856	3577	Laps life-swelling yolks—laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just ripened;
LG1856	3578	The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,
LG1856	3579	And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touch-ingtouching glasses, and the best liquor afterward.
LG1856	3580	I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
LG1856	3581	Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.
LG1856	3582	It is my face yellow and wrinkled, instead of the old woman's,
LG1856	3583	I sit low in a straw-bottom chair, and carefully darn my grand-son's stockings.
LG1856	3584	It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,
LG1856	3585	I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.
LG1856	3586	A shroud I see, and I am the shroud—I wrap a body and lie in the coffin,
LG1856	3587	It is dark here underground, it is not evil or pain here, it is blank here, for reasons.
LG1856	3588	It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
LG1856	3589	Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
LG1856	3590	I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,
LG1856	3591	His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,
LG1856	3592	I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
LG1856	3593	I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks.
LG1856	3594	What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
LG1856	3595	Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?
LG1856	3596	Steady and long he struggles,
LG1856	3597	He is baffled, banged, bruised—he holds out while his strength holds out,
LG1856	3598	The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood — they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him,
LG1856	3599	His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruised on rocks,
LG1856	3600	Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.
LG1856	3601	I turn, but do not extricate myself,
LG1856	3602	Confused, a past-reading, another, but with dark-nessdarkness yet.
LG1856	3603	The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns sound,
LG1856	3604	The tempest lulls—the moon comes floundering through the drifts.
LG1856	3605	I look where the ship helplessly heads end on—I hear the burst as she strikes—I hear the howls of dismay—they grow fainter and fainter.
LG1856	3606	I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,
LG1856	3607	I can but rush to the surf, and let it drench me and freeze upon me.
LG1856	3608	I search with the crowd—not one of the company is washed to us alive;
LG1856	3609	In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.
LG1856	3610	Now of the old war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
LG1856	3611	Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the entrenched hills amid a crowd of officers,
LG1856	3612	His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the weeping drops, he lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color is blanched from his cheeks,
LG1856	3613	He sees the slaughter of the southern braves con-fidedconfided to him by their parents.
LG1856	3614	The same, at last and at last, when peace is declared,
LG1856	3615	He stands in the room of the old tavern—the well-beloved soldiers all pass through,
LG1856	3616	The officers speechless and slow draw near in their turns,
LG1856	3617	The chief encircles their necks with his arm, and kisses them on the cheek,
LG1856	3618	He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another —he shakes hands, and bids good-bye to the army.
LG1856	3619	Now I tell what my mother told me today as we sat at dinner together,
LG1856	3620	Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with her parents on the old homestead.
LG1856	3621	A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old homestead,
LG1856	3622	On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for rush-bottoming chairs,
LG1856	3623	Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse, half-enveloped her face,
LG1856	3624	Her step was free and elastic, her voice sounded exquisitely as she spoke.
LG1856	3625	My mother looked in delight and amazement at the stranger,
LG1856	3626	She looked at the beauty of her tall-borne face, and full and pliant limbs,
LG1856	3627	The more she looked upon her she loved her,
LG1856	3628	Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and purity,
LG1856	3629	She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the fire-place, she cooked food for her,
LG1856	3630	She had no work to give her, but she gave her remembrance and fondness.
LG1856	3631	The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the middle of the afternoon she went away,
LG1856	3632	O my mother was loth to have her go away!
LG1856	3633	All the week she thought of her—she watched for her many a month,
LG1856	3634	She remembered her many a winter and many a summer,
LG1856	3635	But the red squaw never came, nor was heard of there again.
LG1856	3636	Now Lucifer was not dead—or if he was, I am his sorrowful terrible heir!
LG1856	3637	I have been wronged—I am oppressed—I hate him that oppresses me!
LG1856	3638	I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.
LG1856	3639	Damn him! how he does defile me!
LG1856	3640	How he informs against my brother and sister, and takes pay for their blood!
LG1856	3641	How he laughs when I look down the bend, after the steamboat that carries away my woman!
LG1856	3642	Now the vast dusk bulk that is the whale's bulk, it seems mine,
LG1856	3643	Warily, sportsman! though I lie so sleepy and sluggish, my tap is death.
LG1856	3644	A show of the summer softness! a contact of something unseen! an amour of the light and air!
LG1856	3645	I am jealous, and overwhelmed with friendli-nessfriendliness,
LG1856	3646	And will go gallivant with the light and air myself,
LG1856	3647	And have an unseen something to be in contact with them also.
LG1856	3648	O love and summer! you are in the dreams, and in me,
LG1856	3649	Autumn and winter are in the dreams—the far-merfarmer goes with his thrift,
LG1856	3650	The droves and crops increase, the barns are well-filled.
LG1856	3651	Elements merge in the night, ships make tacks in the dreams, the sailor sails, the exile returns home,
LG1856	3652	The fugitive returns unharmed, the immigrant is back beyond months and years,
LG1856	3653	The poor Irishman lives in the simple house of his childhood with the well-known neighbors and faces,
LG1856	3654	They warmly welcome him, he is bare-foot again, he forgets he is well-off;
LG1856	3655	The Dutchman voyages home, and the Scotchman and Welchman voyage home, and the native of the Mediterranean voyages home,
LG1856	3656	To every port of England, France, Spain, enter well-filled ships,
LG1856	3657	The Swiss foots it toward his hills, the Prussian goes his way, the Hungarian his way, the Pole his way,
LG1856	3658	The Swede returns, and the Dane and Norwegian return.
LG1856	3659	The homeward bound, and the outward bound,
LG1856	3660	The beautiful lost swimmer, the ennuyee, the onanist, the female that loves unrequited, the money-maker,
LG1856	3661	The actor and actress, those through with their parts, and those waiting to commence,
LG1856	3662	The affectionate boy, the husband and wife, the voter, the nominee that is chosen, and the nominee that has failed,
LG1856	3663	The great already known, and the great any-time after today,
LG1856	3664	The stammerer, the sick, the perfect-formed, the homely,
LG1856	3665	The criminal that stood in the box, the judge that sat and sentenced him, the fluent lawyers, the jury, the audience,
LG1856	3666	The laugher and weeper, the dancer, the midnight widow, the red squaw,
LG1856	3667	The consumptive, the erysipalite, the idiot, he that is wronged,
LG1856	3668	The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark,
LG1856	3669	I swear they are averaged now—one is no better than the other,
LG1856	3670	The night and sleep have likened them and re-toredretored them.
LG1856	3671	I swear they are all beautiful!
LG1856	3672	Every one that sleeps is beautiful—every thing in the dim light is beautiful,
LG1856	3673	The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace.
LG1856	3674	Peace is always beautiful,
LG1856	3675	The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.
LG1856	3676	The myth of heaven indicates the soul;
LG1856	3677	The soul is always beautiful—it appears more or it appears less—it comes or it lags behind,
LG1856	3678	It comes from its embowered garden, and looks pleasantly on itself, and encloses the world,
LG1856	3679	Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting, and perfect and clean the womb cohering,
LG1856	3680	The head well-grown, proportioned, plumb, and the bowels and joints proportioned and plumb.
LG1856	3681	The soul is always beautiful,
LG1856	3682	The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place,
LG1856	3683	What is arrived is in its place, and what waits is in its place;
LG1856	3684	The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits,
LG1856	3685	The child of the glutton or venerealee waits long, and the child of the drunkard waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long,
LG1856	3686	The sleepers that lived and died wait—the far advanced are to go on in their turns, and the far behind are to go on in their turns,
LG1856	3687	The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and unite—they unite now.
LG1856	3688	The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
LG1856	3689	They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed,
LG1856	3690	The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American are hand in hand,
LG1856	3691	Learned and unlearned are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand,
LG1856	3692	The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they press close without lust, his lips press her neck,
LG1856	3693	The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love,
LG1856	3694	The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,
LG1856	3695	The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarmed by friend,
LG1856	3696	The scholar kisses the teacher, and the teacher kisses the scholar—the wronged is made right,
LG1856	3697	The call of the slave is one with the master's call, and the master salutes the slave,
LG1856	3698	The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is relieved,
LG1856	3699	The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the con-sumptiveconsumptive are resumed, the poor distressed head is free,
LG1856	3700	The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,
LG1856	3701	Stiflings and passages open, the paralysed become supple,
LG1856	3702	The swelled and convulsed and congested awake to themselves in condition,
LG1856	3703	They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night, and awake.
LG1856	3704	I too pass from the night!
LG1856	3705	I stay awhile away O night, but I return to you again, and love you!
LG1856	3706	Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
LG1856	3707	I am not afraid—I have been well brought forward by you,
LG1856	3708	I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,
LG1856	3709	I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you—but I know I came well, and shall go well.
LG1856	3710	I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,
LG1856	3711	I will duly pass the day, O my mother, and duly return to you.
LG1856	3712	SAUNTERING the pavement or riding the country by-road, here then are faces!
LG1856	3713	Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
LG1856	3714	The spiritual prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face,
LG1856	3715	The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top,
LG1856	3716	The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanched faces of ortho-doxorthodox citizens,
LG1856	3717	The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face,
LG1856	3718	The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the hand-somehandsome detested or despised face,
LG1856	3719	The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children,
LG1856	3720	The face of an amour, the face of veneration,
LG1856	3721	The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,
LG1856	3722	The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a cas-tratedcastrated face,
LG1856	3723	A wild hawk, his wings clipped by the clipper,
LG1856	3724	A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.
LG1856	3725	Sauntering the pavement or crossing the ceaseless ferry, here then are faces!
LG1856	3726	I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.
LG1856	3727	Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finale?
LG1856	3728	This now is too lamentable a face for a man
LG1856	3729	Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,
LG1856	3730	Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.
LG1856	3731	This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage;
LG1856	3732	Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
LG1856	3733	This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
LG1856	3734	Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.
LG1856	3735	This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no label,
LG1856	3736	And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard.
LG1856	3737	This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
LG1856	3738	Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show nothing but their whites,
LG1856	3739	Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turned-in nails,
LG1856	3740	The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he speculates well.
LG1856	3741	This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
LG1856	3742	And this is some murderer's knife with a half-pulledhalfpulled scabbard.
LG1856	3743	This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
LG1856	3744	An unceasing death-bell tolls there.
LG1856	3745	Those then are really men, the bosses and tufts of the great round globe!
LG1856	3746	Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creased and cadaverous march?
LG1856	3747	Well, you cannot trick me.
LG1856	3748	I see your rounded never-erased flow,
LG1856	3749	I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.
LG1856	3750	Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tan-glingtangling fores of fishes or rats,
LG1856	3751	You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.
LG1856	3752	I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had at the asylum,
LG1856	3753	And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,
LG1856	3754	I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
LG1856	3755	The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,
LG1856	3756	And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
LG1856	3757	And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every inch as good as myself.
LG1856	3758	The Lord advances, and yet advances!
LG1856	3759	Always the shadow in front! always the reached hand bringing up the laggards!
LG1856	3760	Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see what is coming,
LG1856	3761	I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of runners clearing the way,
LG1856	3762	I hear victorious drums.
LG1856	3763	This face is a life-boat,
LG1856	3764	This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest,
LG1856	3765	This face is flavored fruit, ready for eating,
LG1856	3766	This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.
LG1856	3767	These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
LG1856	3768	They show their descent from the Master himself.
LG1856	3769	Off the word I have spoken I except not one — red, white, black, all are deific,
LG1856	3770	In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand years.
LG1856	3771	Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,
LG1856	3772	Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,
LG1856	3773	I read the promise and patiently wait.
LG1856	3774	This is a full-grown lily's face,
LG1856	3775	She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the gar-dengarden pickets,
LG1856	3776	Come here, she blushingly cries—Come nigh to me, limber-hipp'd man, and give me your finger and thumb,
LG1856	3777	Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
LG1856	3778	Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,
LG1856	3779	Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.
LG1856	3780	The old face of the mother of many children!
LG1856	3781	Whist! I am fully content.
LG1856	3782	Lulled and late is the smoke of the Sabbath morning,
LG1856	3783	It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
LG1856	3784	It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the cat-brier under them.
LG1856	3785	I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
LG1856	3786	I heard what the singers were singing so long,
LG1856	3787	Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-blue.
LG1856	3788	Behold a woman!
LG1856	3789	She looks out from her quaker cap—her face is clearer and more beautiful than the sky.
LG1856	3790	She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farm-house,
LG1856	3791	The sun just shines on her old white head.
LG1856	3792	Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
LG1856	3793	Her grand-sons raised the flax, and her grand-daughtersgranddaughters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.
LG1856	3794	The melodious character of the earth!
LG1856	3795	The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to go!
LG1856	3796	The justified mother of men!
LG1856	3797	THE friend I am happy with,
LG1856	3798	The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
LG1856	3799	The hill-side whitened with blossoms of the mountain ash,
LG1856	3800	The same, late in autumn—the gorgeous hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark green,
LG1856	3801	The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimmed bank—the primitive apples—the pebble-stones,
LG1856	3802	Beautiful dripping fragments—the negligent list of one after another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them,
LG1856	3803	The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
LG1856	3804	The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
LG1856	3805	This poem, drooping shy and unseen, that I al-waysalways carry, and that all men carry,
LG1856	3806	(Know, once for all, avowed on purpose, wherever are men like me, are our lusty, lurking, mas-culinemasculine poems,)
LG1856	3807	Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and the climbing sap,
LG1856	3808	Arms and hands of love—lips of love—phallic thumb of love—breasts of love—bellies, pressed and glued together with love,
LG1856	3809	Earth of chaste love—life that is only life after love,
LG1856	3810	The body of my love—the body of the woman I love—the body of the man—the body of the earth,
LG1856	3811	Soft forenoon airs that blow from the south-west,
LG1856	3812	The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and hankers up and down—that gripes the full-grown lady-flowerlady-flower, curves upon her with amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself tremulous and tight upon her till he is satis-fiedsatisfied,
LG1856	3813	The wet of woods through the early hours,
LG1856	3814	Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other,
LG1856	3815	The smell of apples, aromas from crushed sage-plantsage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
LG1856	3816	The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming,
LG1856	3817	The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still and content to the ground,
LG1856	3818	The no-formed stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,
LG1856	3819	The hubbed sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any one,
LG1856	3820	The sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers, that only privileged feelers may be intimate where they are,
LG1856	3821	The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,
LG1856	3822	The limpid liquid within the young man,
LG1856	3823	The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,
LG1856	3824	The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
LG1856	3825	The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in others,
LG1856	3826	The young woman that flushes and flushes, and the young man that flushes and flushes,
LG1856	3827	The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot hand seeking to repress what would master him—the strange half-welcome pangs, vis-ionsvisions, sweats—the pulse pounding through palms and trembling encirling fingers—the young man all colored, red, ashamed, angry;
LG1856	3828	The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
LG1856	3829	The merriment of the twin-babes that crawl over the grass in the sun, the mother never turn-ingturning her vigilant eyes from them,
LG1856	3830	The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripen-ingripening or ripened long-round walnuts,
LG1856	3831	The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
LG1856	3832	The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent,
LG1856	3833	The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity,
LG1856	3834	The oath of procreation I have sworn,
LG1856	3835	The greed that eats in me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I saturate what shall pro-duceproduce boys to fill my place when I am through,
LG1856	3836	The wholesome relief, repose, content,
LG1856	3837	And this bunch plucked at random from myself,
LG1856	3838	It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.
LG1856	3839	WHO learns my lesson complete?
LG1856	3840	Boss, journeyman, apprentice? churchman and atheist?
LG1856	3841	The stupid and the wise thinker? parents and offspring? merchant, clerk, porter, and cus-tomercustomer? editor, author, artist, and school-boyschoolboy?
LG1856	3842	Draw nigh and commence,
LG1856	3843	It is no lesson, it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
LG1856	3844	And that to another, and every one to another still.
LG1856	3845	The great laws take and effuse without argument,
LG1856	3846	I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
LG1856	3847	I love them quits and quits—I do not halt and make salaams.
LG1856	3848	I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things,
LG1856	3849	They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
LG1856	3850	I cannot say to any person what I hear—I cannot say it to myself—it is very won-derfulwonderful.
LG1856	3851	It is no little matter, this round and delicious globe moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever without one jolt or the untruth of a single second,
LG1856	3852	I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten decillions of years,
LG1856	3853	Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and builds a house.
LG1856	3854	I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
LG1856	3855	Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
LG1856	3856	Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me or any one else.
LG1856	3857	Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal,
LG1856	3858	I know it is wonderful—but my eye-sight is equally wonderful, and how I was con-ceivedconceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,
LG1856	3859	And how I was not palpable once, but am now — and was born on the last day of May in the Year 43 of America—and passed from a
LG1856	3860	babe, in the creeping trance of three summers and three winters, to articulate and walk — all this is equally wonderful,
LG1856	3861	And that I grew six feet high, and that I have become a man thirty-six years old in the Year 79 of America, and that I am here anyhow, are all equally wonderful,
LG1856	3862	And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful,
LG1856	3863	And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
LG1856	3864	And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to be true, is just as wonderful,
LG1856	3865	And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is equally wonderful,
LG1856	3866	And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally wonderful.
LG1856	3867	Come! I should like to hear you tell me what there is in yourself that is not just as won-derfulwonderful,
LG1856	3868	And I should like to hear the name of anything between Sunday morning and Saturday night that is not just as wonderful.
LG1856	3869	RESPONDEZ! Respondez!
LG1856	3870	Let every one answer! Let all who sleep be waked! Let none evade—not you, any more than others!
LG1856	3871	Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was behind advance to the front and speak!
LG1856	3872	Let murderers, thieves, tyrants, bigots, unclean persons, offer new propositions!
LG1856	3873	Let the old propositions be postponed!
LG1856	3874	Let faces and theories be turned inside out! Let meanings be criminal as well as results! (Say! can results be criminal, and meanings not criminal?)
LG1856	3875	Let there be no suggestion besides the suggestion of drudgery!
LG1856	3876	Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?)
LG1856	3877	Let trillions of men and women be mocked with bodies and mocked with souls!
LG1856	3878	Let the love that waits in them, wait! Let it die, or pass still-born to other spheres!
LG1856	3879	Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other spheres!
LG1856	3880	Let contradictions prevail! Let one thing con-tradictcontradict another! and let one line of my poem contradict another!
LG1856	3881	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!
LG1856	3882	Let the theory of America be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other theory would you?)
LG1856	3883	Let them that distrust birth and death lead the rest! (Say! why shall they not lead you?)
LG1856	3884	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!
LG1856	3885	Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all made!
LG1856	3886	Let the heart of the young man 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!
LG1856	3887	Let the sun and moon go! Let scenery take the applause of the audience! Let there be apathy under the stars!
LG1856	3888	Let freedom prove no man's inalienable right! Every one who can tyrannize, let him tyran-nizetyrannize to his satisfaction!
LG1856	3889	Let none but infidels be countenanced!
LG1856	3890	Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust, be taken for granted above all! Let poems, judges, governments, households, religions, philosophies, take such for granted above all!
LG1856	3891	Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!
LG1856	3892	Let priests still play at immortality!
LG1856	3893	Let death be inaugurated!
LG1856	3894	Let nothing remain upon the earth except teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and learned and polite persons!
LG1856	3895	Let him who is without my poems be assas-sinatedassassinated!
LG1856	3896	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-fishpig-fish—Let these, and the like of these, be put on a perfect equality with man and woman!
LG1856	3897	Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the most filthy of diseases!
LG1856	3898	Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools!
LG1856	3899	Let men among themselves talk obscenely of wo-menwomen! and let women among themselves talk obscenely of men!
LG1856	3900	Let every man doubt every woman! and let every woman trick every man!
LG1856	3901	Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in pub-licpublic, naked, monthly, at the peril of our lives! Let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses!
LG1856	3902	Let nothing but love-songs, pictures, statues, ele-gantelegant works, be permitted to exist upon the earth!
LG1856	3903	Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever hence-forthhenceforth be mentioned the name of God!
LG1856	3904	Let there be no God!
LG1856	3905	Let there be money, business, railroads, imports, exports, custom, authority, precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief!
LG1856	3906	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 trans-posedtransposed?)
LG1856	3907	Let the slaves be masters! Let the masters become slaves!
LG1856	3908	Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! Let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands!
LG1856	3909	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-willgoodwill!
LG1856	3910	Let there be no living wisdom! Let such be scorned and derided off from the earth!
LG1856	3911	Let a floating cloud in the sky—Let a wave of the sea—Let one glimpse of your eye-sight upon the landscape or grass—Let growing mint, spinach, onions, tomatoes—Let these be exhibited as shows at a great price for admission!
LG1856	3912	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!
LG1856	3913	Let shadows be furnished with genitals! Let substances be deprived of their genitals!
LG1856	3914	Let there be immense cities—but through any of them, not a single poet, saviour, knower, lover!
LG1856	3915	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 breed-ingbreeding faith!
LG1856	3916	Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! Let them dance on, while seeming lasts! (O seeming! seeming! seeming!)
LG1856	3917	Let the preachers recite creeds! Let the preach-erspreachers of creeds never dare to go meditate upon the hills, alone, by day or by night! (If one ever once dare, he is lost!)
LG1856	3918	Let insanity have charge of sanity!
LG1856	3919	Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds!
LG1856	3920	Let the portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
LG1856	3921	Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself! Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons!
LG1856	3922	Let the white person tread the black person under his heel! (Say! which is trodden under heel, after all?)
LG1856	3923	Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors! Let the things them-selvesthemselves continue unstudied!
LG1856	3924	Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself! Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself! (Say! what real happiness have you had one single time through your whole life?)
LG1856	3925	Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years of death! (Say! what do you suppose death will do, then?)
LG1856	3926	EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words,
LG1856	3927	Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future—these are vast words.
LG1856	3928	Were you thinking that those were the words — those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?
LG1856	3929	No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
LG1856	3930	They are in the air—they are in you.
LG1856	3931	Were you thinking that those were the words — those delicious sounds out of your friends' mouths?
LG1856	3932	No, the real words are more delicious than they.
LG1856	3933	Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
LG1856	3934	In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped, natural, gay,
LG1856	3935	Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame
LG1856	3936	Air, soil, water, fire, these are words,
LG1856	3937	I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs—my name is noth-ingnothing to them,
LG1856	3938	Though it were told in the three thousand lan-guageslanguages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?
LG1856	3939	A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings, meanings,
LG1856	3940	The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women are sayings and meanings also.
LG1856	3941	The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth,
LG1856	3942	The great masters, the sayers, know the earth's words, and use them more than the audible words.
LG1856	3943	Syllables are not the earth's words,
LG1856	3944	Beauty, reality, manhood, time, life—the realities of such as these are the earth's words.
LG1856	3945	Amelioration is one of the earth's words,
LG1856	3946	The earth neither lags nor hastens,
LG1856	3947	It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in it-selfitself from the jump,
LG1856	3948	It is not half beautiful only—defects and excres-cencesexcrescences show just as much as perfections show.
LG1856	3949	The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,
LG1856	3950	The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed either,
LG1856	3951	They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,
LG1856	3952	They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly,
LG1856	3953	Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth —I utter and utter,
LG1856	3954	I speak not, yet if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you?
LG1856	3955	To bear—to better—lacking these, of what avail am I?
LG1856	3956	Accouche! Accouchez!
LG1856	3957	Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?
LG1856	3958	Will you squat and stifle there?
LG1856	3959	The earth does not argue,
LG1856	3960	Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
LG1856	3961	Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
LG1856	3962	Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
LG1856	3963	Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,
LG1856	3964	Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.
LG1856	3965	The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself—possesses still underneath,
LG1856	3966	Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves,
LG1856	3967	Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bar-gainersbargainers,
LG1856	3968	Underneath these possessing the words that never fail.
LG1856	3969	To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail,
LG1856	3970	The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail,
LG1856	3971	Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.
LG1856	3972	Of the interminable sisters,
LG1856	3973	Of the ceaseless cotillions of sisters,
LG1856	3974	Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,
LG1856	3975	The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.
LG1856	3976	With her ample back toward every beholder,
LG1856	3977	With the fascinations of youth and the equal fas-cinationsfascinations of age,
LG1856	3978	Sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undis-turbedundisturbed,
LG1856	3979	Holding up in her hand what has the character
LG1856	3980	of a mirror, her eyes glancing back from it,
LG1856	3981	Glancing thence as she sits, inviting none, denying none,
LG1856	3982	Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.
LG1856	3983	Seen at hand, or seen at a distance,
LG1856	3984	Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,
LG1856	3985	Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a companion,
LG1856	3986	Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with them,
LG1856	3987	From the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance,
LG1856	3988	From the open countenances of animals, from in-animateinanimate things,
LG1856	3989	From the landscape or waters, or from the exqui-siteexquisite apparition of the sky,
LG1856	3990	From our own countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them,
LG1856	3991	Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same companions.
LG1856	3992	Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and sixty-five resistlessly round the sun,
LG1856	3993	Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they.
LG1856	3994	Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading,
LG1856	3995	Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, forever withstanding, passing, carrying,
LG1856	3996	The soul's realization and determination still in-heritinginheriting,
LG1856	3997	The liquid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
LG1856	3998	No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking,
LG1856	3999	Swift, glad, content, unbereaved, nothing losing,
LG1856	4000	Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account,
LG1856	4001	The divine ship sails the divine sea.
LG1856	4002	Whoever you are! motion and reflection are espe-ciallyespecially for you,
LG1856	4003	The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.
LG1856	4004	Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
LG1856	4005	You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
LG1856	4006	For none more than you are the present and the past,
LG1856	4007	For none more than you is immortality.
LG1856	4008	Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the
LG1856	4009	word of immortality,
LG1856	4010	Not one can acquire for another—not one!
LG1856	4011	Not one can grow for another—not one!
LG1856	4012	The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
LG1856	4013	The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
LG1856	4014	The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
LG1856	4015	The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
LG1856	4016	The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
LG1856	4017	The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail,
LG1856	4018	The oration is to the orator, and the acting is to the actor and actress, not to the audience,
LG1856	4019	And no man understands any greatness or good-nessgoodness but his own, or the indication of his own.
LG1856	4020	I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete!
LG1856	4021	I swear the earth remains broken and jagged only to him or her who remains broken and jagged!
LG1856	4022	I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth!
LG1856	4023	I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the theory of the earth!
LG1856	4024	No politics, art, religion, behaviour, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the ampli-tudeamplitude of the earth,
LG1856	4025	Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth.
LG1856	4026	I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love!
LG1856	4027	It is that which contains itself, which never in-vitesinvites and never refuses.
LG1856	4028	I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!
LG1856	4029	I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth!
LG1856	4030	Toward him who sings the songs of the body, and of the truths of the earth,
LG1856	4031	Toward him who makes the dictionaries of the words that print cannot touch.
LG1856	4032	I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
LG1856	4033	It is always to leave the best untold.
LG1856	4034	When I undertake to tell the best, I find I can-notcannot,
LG1856	4035	My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
LG1856	4036	My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
LG1856	4037	I become a dumb man.
LG1856	4038	The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow—all or any is best,
LG1856	4039	It is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer,
LG1856	4040	Things are not dismissed from the places they held before,
LG1856	4041	The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before,
LG1856	4042	Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before,
LG1856	4043	But the soul is also real, it too is positive and direct,
LG1856	4044	No reasoning, no proof has established it,
LG1856	4045	Undeniable growth has established it.
LG1856	4046	This is a poem for the sayers of the earth — these are hints of meanings,
LG1856	4047	These are they that echo the tones of souls, and the phrases of souls;
LG1856	4048	If they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then?
LG1856	4049	If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then?
LG1856	4050	I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best!
LG1856	4051	I will have to do with that faith only that leaves the best untold.
LG1856	4052	Say on, sayers of the earth!
LG1856	4053	Delve! mould! pile the substantial words of the earth!
LG1856	4054	Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost,
LG1856	4055	It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use,
LG1856	4056	When the materials are all prepared, the archi-tectsarchitects shall appear,
LG1856	4057	I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them and lead them!
LG1856	4058	I swear to you they will understand you and justify you!
LG1856	4059	I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all, and is faithful to all!
LG1856	4060	I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you! they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they!
LG1856	4061	I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them!
LG1856	4062	To think of time! to think through the retro-spectionretrospection!
LG1856	4063	To think of today, and the ages continued hence-forwardhenceforward!
LG1856	4064	Have you guessed you yourself would not con-tinuecontinue? Have you dreaded those earth-beetlesearth-beetles?
LG1856	4065	Have you feared the future would be nothing to you?
LG1856	4066	Is today nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?
LG1856	4067	If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.
LG1856	4068	To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, real, alive! that every thing was alive!
LG1856	4069	To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part!
LG1856	4070	To think that we are now here, and bear our part!
LG1856	4071	Not a day passes, not a minute or second, without an accouchement!
LG1856	4072	Not a day passes, not a minute or second, without corpse!
LG1856	4073	The dull nights go over, and the dull days also,
LG1856	4074	The soreness of lying so much in bed goes over,
LG1856	4075	The physician, after long putting off, gives the silent and terrible look for an answer,
LG1856	4076	The children come hurried and weeping, and the brothers and sisters are sent for,
LG1856	4077	Medicines stand unused on the shelf—the cam-phor-smellcamphor-smell has pervaded the rooms,
LG1856	4078	The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,
LG1856	4079	The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,
LG1856	4080	The breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,
LG1856	4081	The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it,
LG1856	4082	It is palpable as the living are palpable.
LG1856	4083	The living look upon the corpse with their eye-sighteyesight,
LG1856	4084	But without eye-sight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse.
LG1856	4085	To think that the rivers will come to flow, and the snow fall, and fruits ripen, and act upon others as upon us now—yet not act upon us!
LG1856	4086	To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them—and we taking no interest in them!
LG1856	4087	To think how eager we are in building our houses!
LG1856	4088	To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent!
LG1856	4089	I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at most,
LG1856	4090	I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.
LG1856	4091	Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth—they never cease—they are the burial lines,
LG1856	4092	He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be buried.
LG1856	4093	Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf—posh and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in the streets, a gray discouraged sky overhead, the short last daylight of December,
LG1856	4094	A hearse and stages, other vehicles give place — the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.
LG1856	4095	Rapid the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is passed, the grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses,
LG1856	4096	The coffin is lowered and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovelled in —a minute, no one moves or speaks—it is done,
LG1856	4097	He is decently put away—is there anything more?
LG1856	4098	He was a good fellow, free-mouthed, quick-tem-peredquick-tempered, not bad-looking, able to take his own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of women, played some, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spiritedlow-spirited toward the last, sickened, was helped by a contribution, died aged forty-one years — and that was his funeral.
LG1856	4099	Thumb extended, finger uplifted, apron, cape, gloves, strap, wet-weather clothes, whip care-fullycarefully chosen, boss, spotter, starter, hostler, somebody loafing on you, you loafing on somebody, head-way, man before and man behind, good day's work, bad day's work, pet stock, mean stock, first out, last out, turning in at night,
LG1856	4100	To think that these are so much and so nigh to other drivers—and he there takes no interest in them!
LG1856	4101	The markets, the government, the working-man's wages—to think what account they are through our nights and days!
LG1856	4102	To think that other working-men will make just as great account of them—yet we make little or no account!
LG1856	4103	The vulgar and the refined, what you call sin and what you call goodness—to think how wide a difference!
LG1856	4104	To think the difference will still continue to oth-ersothers, yet we lie beyond the difference!
LG1856	4105	To think how much pleasure there is!
LG1856	4106	Have you pleasure from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems?
LG1856	4107	Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and elec-tionelection? or with your wife and family?
LG1856	4108	Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly house-work? or the beautiful maternal cares?
LG1856	4109	These also flow onward to others—you and I flow onward,
LG1856	4110	But in due time you and I shall take less interest in them.
LG1856	4111	Your farm, profits, crops—to think how engrossed you are!
LG1856	4112	To think there will still be farms, profits, crops — yet for you, of what avail?
LG1856	4113	What will be, will be well—for what is, is well,
LG1856	4114	To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.
LG1856	4115	The sky continues beautiful, the pleasure of men with women shall never be sated, nor the pleasure of women with men, nor the pleas-urepleasure from poems,
LG1856	4116	The domestic joys, the daily house-work or busi-nessbusiness, the building of houses—these are not phantasms, they have weight, form, location;
LG1856	4117	Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms,
LG1856	4118	The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
LG1856	4119	The earth is not an echo—man and his life, and all the things of his life, are well-considered.
LG1856	4120	You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely around yourself,
LG1856	4121	Yourself! Yourself! Yourself, forever and ever!
LG1856	4122	It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father—it is to identify you,
LG1856	4123	It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
LG1856	4124	Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you,
LG1856	4125	You are thenceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
LG1856	4126	The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is systematic.
LG1856	4127	The preparations have every one been justified,
LG1856	4128	The orchestra have tuned their instruments suffi-cientlysufficiently, the baton has given the signal.
LG1856	4129	The guest that was coming—he waited long for reasons—he is now housed,
LG1856	4130	He is one of those who are beautiful and happy — he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough.
LG1856	4131	The law of the past cannot be eluded!
LG1856	4132	The law of the present and future cannot be eluded!
LG1856	4133	The law of the living cannot be eluded—it is eternal!
LG1856	4134	The law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded!
LG1856	4135	The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded!
LG1856	4136	The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons, cannot be eluded!
LG1856	4137	Slow-moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
LG1856	4138	Northerner goes carried, and southerner goes car-riedcarried, and they on the Atlantic side, and they on the Pacific, and they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all over the earth.
LG1856	4139	The great masters and kosmos are well as they go—the heroes and good-doers are well,
LG1856	4140	The known leaders and inventors, and the rich owners and pious and distinguished, may be well,
LG1856	4141	But there is more account than that—there is strict account of all.
LG1856	4142	The interminable hordes of the ignorant and wicked are not nothing,
LG1856	4143	The barbarians of Africa and Asia are not nothing,
LG1856	4144	The common people of Europe are not nothing — the American aborigines are not nothing,
LG1856	4145	The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing—the murderer or mean person is not nothing,
LG1856	4146	The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go,
LG1856	4147	The prostitute is not nothing—the mocker of re-ligionreligion is not nothing as he goes.
LG1856	4148	I shall go with the rest—we have satisfaction,
LG1856	4149	I have dreamed that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed,
LG1856	4150	I have dreamed that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law,
LG1856	4151	And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present and past law,
LG1856	4152	For I have dreamed that the law they are under now is enough.
LG1856	4153	And I have dreamed that the satisfaction is not so much changed, and that there is no life without satisfaction;
LG1856	4154	What is the earth? what are body and soul, with-outwithout satisfaction?
LG1856	4155	I shall go with the rest,
LG1856	4156	We cannot be stopped at a given point—that is no satisfaction,
LG1856	4157	To show us a good thing, or a few good things, for a space of time—that is no satisfaction,
LG1856	4158	We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time.
LG1856	4159	If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung,
LG1856	4160	If maggots and rats ended us, then suspicion, treachery, death.
LG1856	4161	Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death, I should die now,
LG1856	4162	Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well-suitedwell-suited toward annihilation?
LG1856	4163	Pleasantly and well-suited I walk,
LG1856	4164	Whither I walk I cannot define, but I know it is good,
LG1856	4165	The whole universe indicates that it is good,
LG1856	4166	The past and the present indicate that it is good.
LG1856	4167	How beautiful and perfect are the animals! How perfect is my soul!
LG1856	4168	How perfect the earth, and the minutest thing upon it!
LG1856	4169	What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect,
LG1856	4170	The vegetables and minerals are all perfect, and the imponderable fluids are perfect;
LG1856	4171	Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and surely they yet pass on.
LG1856	4172	My soul! if I realize you, I have satisfaction,
LG1856	4173	Animals and vegetables! if I realize you, I have satisfaction,
LG1856	4174	Laws of the earth and air! if I realize you, I have satisfaction.
LG1856	4175	I cannot define my satisfaction, yet it is so,
LG1856	4176	I cannot define my life, yet it is so.
LG1856	4177	O I swear I think now that every thing has an eternal soul!
LG1856	4178	The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds of the sea have! the animals!
LG1856	4179	I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
LG1856	4180	That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebu-lousnebulous float is for it, and the cohering is for it!
LG1856	4181	And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and death are for it!