FACING west from California's shores, Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar, Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled; For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere, From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero, From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands, Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd, Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous. (But where is what I started for so long ago? And why is it yet unfound?) 1860. I HEAR AMERICA SINGING I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, 1 For Whitman the date of publication in book form is the most important. This has therefore been added, in parentheses, when the poem was published earlier in a periodical. 2 In the 1860 edition, without separate sub-title, as No. 10 of the section entitled Enfans d'Adam. In this edition the poem began with what is now the second line. The first line was added in 1867. The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day - at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs. POETS TO COME 1860. COME, I will make the continent indissoluble, I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, 1 This and the eight following poems belong to the section of Whitman's work devoted to the celebration of the dear love of comrades,' and entitled Calamus.' The Sweet Flag or Calamus,' says W. S. Kennedy, in explaining Whitman's use of this title, 'belongs among the grasses, and like them suggests equality and brotherhood. It is found in vast masses in marshy ground, growing in fascicles of three, four, or five blades, which cling together for support, shoulder to shoulder and back to back, the delicate "pink-tinged" roots exhaling a faint fragrance, not only when freshly gathered, but after having been kept many years.' With these poems should be read the volume entitled Calamus, a Series of Letters written during the Years 1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend. For you O Democracy' is a revised and improved version of the last lines of a much longer poem with the title States,' in the 1860 edition, the whole of which is worth preserving : arms, These to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held together. The old breath of life, ever new, Here! I pass it by contact to you, America. O mother! have you done much for me? There shall from me be a new friendship-It shall be called after my name, It shall circulate through The States, indifferent of place, It shall twist and intertwist them through and around each other Compact shall they be, showing new signs, Affection shall solve every one of the problems of freedom, Those who love each other shall be invincible, They shall finally make America completely victorious, in my name. One from Massachusetts shall be comrade to a Missourian, One from Maine or Vermont, and a Carolinian and an Oregonese, shall be friends triune, more precious to each other than all the riches of the earth. To Michigan shall be wafted perfume from Florida, Not the perfume of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death. No danger shall balk Columbia's lovers, If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one, I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other's necks, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! For you, for you I am trilling these songs. 1860. RECORDERS AGES HENCE RECORDERS ages hence,2 Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I will tell you what to say of me, Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend the lover's portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest, The Kanuck shall be willing to lay down his life for the Kansian, and the Kansian for the Kanuck, on due need. It shall be customary in all directions, in the houses and streets, to see manly affection, The departing brother or friend shall salute the remaining brother or friend with a kiss. The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly, The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, The continuance of Equality shall be comrades. These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron. I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! henceforth with the love of lovers tie you. I will make the continent indissoluble, I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon, I will make divine magnetic lands I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks. For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme ! For you! for you, I am trilling these songs. 2 Instead of this line, the edition of 1860 reads: You bards of ages hence when you refer to me, mind not so much my poems, Nor speak of me that I prophesied of The States, and led them the way of their glories. Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him, and freely pour'd it forth, Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men, Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd with his arm the shoulder of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also. 1860. WHEN I HEARD AT THE CLOSE OF THE DAY WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that follow'd, And else when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd, still I was not happy, But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh'd, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light, When I wander'd alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise, And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish'd me more, and the beautiful day pass'd well, And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend, And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores, I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me, For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night, I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder❜d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not, And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room, It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,) Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near, I know very well I could not. 1860. I HEAR IT WAS CHARGED AGAINST ME I HEAR it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them ?) Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard, And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades. 1860. THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING THE prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breathing, I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command, leading not following, Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors, as to say Who are you? Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient, Those of inland America.1 1860. 1 If you care to have a word from me, I should speak it about these very prairies; they impress me most, of all the objective shows I have seen on this, my first real visit to the West. . . . As I have . . . launch'd my view across broad expanses of living green, in every direction I have again been most impress'd, I say, and shall remain for the rest of my life most impress'd, with... that vast Something, stretching out on its own unbounded scale, unconfined, which there is in these prairies, combining the real and the ideal, and beautiful as dreams. I wonder indeed if the people of this continental inland West know how much of first-class art they have in these prairies - how original and all your ownhow much of the influences of a character for your future humanity, broad, patriotic, heroic, and new? how entirely they tally on land the grandeur and superb monotony of the skies of heaven, and the ocean with its waters? how freeing, soothing, nourishing they are to the soul? Then is it not subtly they who have given us our leading modern Americans, Lincoln and Grant? - vastspread, average men - their foregrounds of character altogether practical and real, yet (to those who have eyes to see) with finest backgrounds of the ideal, towering high as any. And do we not see, in them, foreshadowings of the future races that shall fill these prairies? Not but what the Yankee and Atlantic States, and every other part- Texas, and the States flanking the south-east and the Gulf of Mexico-the Pacific shore empire the Territories and Lakes, and the Canada line (the day is not yet, but it will come, including Canada entire)—are equally and integrally and indis WHEN I PERUSE THE CONQUER'D FAME WHEN I peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house, But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them, How together through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long, Through youth and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were, Then I am pensive-I hastily walk away fill'd with the bitterest envy. 1860. I DREAM'D IN A DREAM 2 I DREAM'D in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, solubly this Nation, the sine qua non of the human, political and commercial New World. But this favor'd central area of (in round numbers) two thousand miles square seems fated to be the home both of what I would call America's distinctive ideas and distinctive realities. (WHITMAN, Specimen Days, The Prairies.' Complete Prose Works, Small, Maynard & Co., pp. 134, 135.) 2 Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachment of man to man- which, hard to define, underlies the lessons and ideals of the profound saviours of every land and age, and which seems to promise, when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated and recognized in manners and literature, the most substantial hope and safety of the future of these States, will then [when the true poet comes] be fully express'd. A strong fibred joyousness and faith, and the sense of health al fresco, may well enter into the preparation of future noble American authorship.. It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it), that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences: but I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carried to degrees hitherto unknown -- not only giving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself. In my opinion, it is by a fervent, accepted develop Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest, It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words. FULL OF LIFE NOW FULL of life now, compact, visible, 1860. I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States, To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence, To you yet unborn these, seeking you. When you read these I that was visible am become invisible, Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me, Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade; Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.) 1860. TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you, You are to die - let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you there is no escape for you. Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it, I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it, I sit quietly by, I remain faithful, I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor, I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is eternal, you yourself will surely escape, The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious. ment of comradeship, the beautiful and sane affection of man for man, latent in all the young fellows, north and south, east and west-it is by this, I say, and by what goes directly and indirectly along with it, that the United States of the future (I cannot too often repeat), are to be most effectually welded together, intercalated, anneal'd into a living union. (WHITMAN, in his Preface to the 1876 edition of Leaves of Grass. Complete Prose Works, Small, Maynard & Co., pp. 239, 240, and 277, 278.) |