Leaves of Grass

"A song of the rolling earth, and of words according, Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea, They are in the air, they are in you."

"Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?"

"The earth neither lags nor hastens, It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump, It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as much as perfections show."

"The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection does not fail, Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail."

"Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, For none more than you are the present and the past, For none more than you is immortality."

"Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality; No one can acquire for another — not one, Not one can grow for another — not one."

"The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him, The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him."

"No man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own."

"I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete, The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken."

"I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words, All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth, Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth, Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch."

"I swear I see what is better than to tell the best, It is always to leave the best untold."

"The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow, all or any is best, It is not what you anticipated, it is cheaper, easier, nearer, Things are not dismiss'd from the places they held before, The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before, Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before, But the soul is also real, it too is positive and direct, No reasoning, no proof has establish'd it, Undeniable growth has establish'd it."

"I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best, I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold."

"Ever and ever yet the verses owning — as, first, I here and now Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name, Walt Whitman"

"I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall, I swear to you they will understand you and justify you, The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all and is faithful to all, He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they, You shall be fully glorified in them."

"Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands…"

"Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear. I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you."

"I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, None has understood you, but I understand you, None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself, None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you, None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you, I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself."

"O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life, Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time, What you have done returns already in mockeries, (Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?) The mockeries are not you, Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, I pursue you where none else has pursued you…"

"There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you, There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you, No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you, No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you."

"As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you, I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you."

"Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you…"

"The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency, Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself, Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted, Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way."

"On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky."

"Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal…"

"The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine."

"Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades."

"When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."

"What you give me I cheerfully accept, A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I rendezvous with my poems, A traveler's lodging and breakfast as journey through the States, — why should I be ashamed to own such gifts? why to advertise for them? For I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman, For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the gifts of the universe."

"Roaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality, And the vast all that is call'd Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead."

"Hast never come to thee an hour, A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth? These eager business aims — books, politics, art, amours, To utter nothingness?"

"Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling…"

"Say on, sayers! sing on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear."

"One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. …The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing."

"I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr'd and wavering, (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world, For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, I above all promote brave soldiers."

"Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny, You not a reminiscence of the land alone, You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith, Consort to every ship that sails, sail you! Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it here in every leaf;) Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves, Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea, This song for mariners and all their ships."

"Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be, I project the history of the future."

"To thee old cause! Thou peerless, passionate, good cause, Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands, After a strange sad war, great war for thee, (I think all war through time was really fought, and ever will be really fought, for thee,) These chants for thee, the eternal march of thee."

"I met a seer, Passing the hues and objects of the world, The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean eidolons. Put in thy chants said he, No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in, Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all, That of eidolons."

"All space, all time, (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill'd with eidolons only. The noiseless myriads, The infinite oceans where the rivers empty, The separate countless free identities, like eyesight, The true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, Nor these the universes, they the universes, Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, Eidolons, eidolons."

"Thy very songs not in thy songs, No special strains to sing, none for itself, But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating, A round full-orb'd eidolon."

"For him I sing, I raise the present on the past, (As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,) With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws, To make himself by them the law unto himself."

"When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)"

"Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion, The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love, The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much, I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther, But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs."

"How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,) How dear and dreadful they are to the earth, How they inure to themselves as much as to any — what a paradox appears their age, How people respond to them, yet know them not, How there is something relentless in their fate all times, How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase."

"Shut not your doors to me proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing, A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page."

"Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come! Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me. I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness. I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you."

"STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"

"I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love. (6)"

"I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake. (7)"