Leaves of Grass
These carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,
For completion I dedicate to the Invisible World.
Now Finale to the Shore
Now finale to the shore,
Now land and life finale and farewell,
Now Voyager depart, (much, much for thee is yet in store,)
Often enough hast thou adventur’d o’er the seas,
Cautiously cruising, studying the charts,
Duly again to port and hawser’s tie returning;
But now obey thy cherish’d secret wish,
Embrace thy friends, leave all in order,
To port and hawser’s tie no more returning,
Depart upon thy endless cruise old Sailor.
So Long!
To conclude, I announce what comes after me.
I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all,
I would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference to consummations.
When America does what was promis’d,
When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
When the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them,
When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,
Then to me and mine our due fruition.
I have press’d through in my own right,
I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and
the songs of life and death,
And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births.
I have offer’d my style to every one, I have journey’d with confident step;
While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long!
And take the young woman’s hand and the young man’s hand for the last time.
I announce natural persons to arise,
I announce justice triumphant,
I announce uncompromising liberty and equality,
I announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride.
I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only,
I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble,
I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics
of the earth insignificant.
I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d,
I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.
I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (So long!)
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste,
affectionate, compassionate, fully arm’d.
I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.
I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded,
I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.
O thicker and faster--(So long!)
O crowding too close upon me,
I foresee too much, it means more than I thought,
It appears to me I am dying.
Hasten throat and sound your last,
Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more.
Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,
At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,
Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
Curious envelop’d messages delivering,
Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping,
Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring,
To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving,
To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set
promulging,
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection
me more clearly explaining,
To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of
their brains trying,
So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,
Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making
me really undying,)
The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I have
been incessantly preparing.
What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended with
unshut mouth?
Is there a single final farewell?
My songs cease, I abandon them,
From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you.
Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this touches a man,
(Is it night? are we here together alone?)
It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.
O how your fingers drowse me,
Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans
of my ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot,
Delicious, enough.
Enough O deed impromptu and secret,
Enough O gliding present--enough O summ’d-up past.
Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,
I give it especially to you, do not forget me,
I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,
I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras
ascending, while others doubtless await me,
An unknown sphere more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts
awakening rays about me, So long!
Remember my words, I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY
Mannahatta
My city’s fit and noble name resumed,
Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,
A rocky founded island--shores where ever gayly dash the coming,
going, hurrying sea waves.
Paumanok
Sea-beauty! stretch’d and basking!
One side thy inland ocean laving, broad, with copious commerce,
steamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic’s wind caressing, fierce or gentle--mighty hulls
dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of sweet brooks of drinking-water--healthy air and soil!
Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!
From Montauk Point
I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
Eastward the sea absorbing, viewing, (nothing but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps--that inbound urge and urge
of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.
To Those Who’ve Fail’d
To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast,
To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers--to over-ardent travelers--to pilots on
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition--I’d rear
laurel-cover’d monument,
High, high above the rest--To all cut off before their time,
Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench’d by an early death.
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
A carol closing sixty-nine--a resume--a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, Poetry;
Of you, my Land--your rivers, prairies, States--you, mottled Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain’d entire--Of north, south, east and west, your
items all;
Of me myself--the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck’d, old, poor and paralyzed--the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish’d faith--the groups of loving friends.
The Bravest Soldiers
Brave, brave were the soldiers (high named to-day) who lived through
the fight;
But the bravest press’d to the front and fell, unnamed, unknown.
A Font of Type
This latent mine--these unlaunch’d voices--passionate powers,
Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout,
(Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,)
These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,
Or sooth’d to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,
Within the pallid slivers slumbering.
As I Sit Writing Here
As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities,
Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,
May filter in my dally songs.
My Canary Bird
Did we count great, O soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books,
Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?
But now from thee to me, caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble,
Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,
Is it not just as great, O soul?
Queries to My Seventieth Year
Approaching, nearing, curious,
Thou dim, uncertain spectre--bringest thou life or death?
Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?
Or haply cut me short for good? Or leave me here as now,
Dull, parrot-like and old, with crack’d voice harping, screeching?
The Wallabout Martyrs
Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
Those cart loads of old charnel ashes, scales and splints of mouldy bones,
Once living men--once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,
The stepping stones to thee to-day and here, America.
The First Dandelion
Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass--innocent, golden, calm
as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.
America
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
Memories
How sweet the silent backward tracings!
The wanderings as in dreams--the meditation of old times resumed
--their loves, joys, persons, voyages.
To-Day and Thee
The appointed winners in a long-stretch’d game;
The course of Time and nations--Egypt, India, Greece and Rome;
The past entire, with all its heroes, histories, arts, experiments,
Its store of songs, inventions, voyages, teachers, books,
Garner’d for now and thee--To think of it!
The heirdom all converged in thee!
After the Dazzle of Day
After the dazzle of day is gone,
Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars;
After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,
Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.
Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
To-day, from each and all, a breath of prayer--a pulse of thought,
To memory of Him--to birth of Him.
Out of May’s Shows Selected
Apple orchards, the trees all cover’d with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The yellow, golden, transparent haze of the warm afternoon sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.
Halcyon Days
Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs
really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!
FANCIES AT NAVESINK
[I] The Pilot in the Mist
Steaming the northern rapids--(an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,
A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,
Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)
Again ’tis just at morning--a heavy haze contends with daybreak,
Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me--I press through
foam-dash’d rocks that almost touch me,
Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman
Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.
[II] Had I the Choice
Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,