Leaves Of Grass: The First Edition of 1855 + The Death Bed Edition of 1892

by Walt Whitman

What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man and all the instruments and books of the earth and all reasoning. What is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit and given audience to far and near and to the sunset and had all things enter with electric swiftness softly and duly without confusion or jostling or jam.

And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers . . . . and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love; And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the wormfence, and heaped stones, and elder and mullen and pokeweed.

I play not a march for victors only . . . . I play great marches for conquered and slain persons.

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions, There is no better than it and now.

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sunrise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sunrise out of me.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me. I hear the bravuras of birds . . . . the bustle of growing wheat . . . . gossip of flames . . . . clack of sticks cooking my meals. I hear the sound of the human voice . . . . a sound I love, 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; Talkative young ones to those that like them . . . . the recitative of fish-pedlars and fruit-pedlars . . . . the loud laugh of workpeople at their meals, The angry base of disjointed friendship . . . . the faint tones of the sick, The judge with hands tight to the desk, his shaky lips pronouncing a death-sentence, The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves . . . . the refrain of the anchor-lifters; The ring of alarm-bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights, The steam-whistle . . . . the solid roll of the train of approaching cars; The slow-march played at night at the head of the association, They go to guard some corpse . . . . the flag-tops are draped with black muslin. I hear the violincello or man’s heart’s complaint, And hear the keyed cornet or else the echo of sunset. I hear the chorus . . . . it is a grand-opera . . . . this indeed is music! A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me, The orbi...

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

He has been proven correct in this.

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied . . . . not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth. So they show their relations to me and I accept them; They bring me tokens of myself . . . . they evince them plainly in their possession.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps, All below duly traveled -- and still I mount and mount.

I know I have the best of time and space -- and that I was never measured, and never will be measured.

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe,

We thought our Union grand and our Constitution grand; I do not say they are not grand and good -- for they are, I am this day just as much in love with them as you, But I am eternally in love with you and with all my fellows upon the earth.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them and in the contact and odor of them that pleases the soul well, All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred . . . . it is no matter who, Is it a slave? Is it one of the dullfaced immigrants just landed on the wharf? Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the welloff . . . . just as much as you, Each has his or her place in the procession. All is a procession, The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.

I love this.

The sense of what is real . . . . the thought if after all it should prove unreal, The doubts of daytime and the doubts of nighttime . . . the curious whether and how, Whether that which appears so is so . . . . Or is it all flashes and specks?

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes and will always go forth every day, And these become of him or her that peruses them now.

Great are the myths . . . . I too delight in them,

Great is today, and beautiful, It is good to live in this age . . . . there never was any better.

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

The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is great, And there is another paradox. Great is life . . and real and mystical . . wherever and whoever, Great is death . . . . Sure as life holds all parts together, death holds all parts together; Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is great as life.

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to beautiful results, And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death, And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.

And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul, Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.

Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part of it!

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

Beautiful

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,

Yes it does. It is and has been a constant turmoil inside me. Wish I'd been more self-aware of it and compensated for it earlier in my life.

23 Endless unfolding of words of ages! And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse. A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism first and last imbuing. Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration! Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac, This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches, These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. This is the geologist, this works with the scalper, and this is a mathematician. Gentlemen, to you the first honors always! Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. Less the reminders of properties told my words, And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication, And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt, And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

Ah this indeed is music — this suits me. A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me, The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. I hear the train’d soprano (what work with hers is this?) The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess’d them, It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick’d by the indolent waves, I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath, Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,

Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering, See myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

What I do and say the same waits for them, Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

44 It is time to explain myself — let us stand up. What is known I strip away, I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown. The clock indicates the moment — but what does eternity indicate? We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers, There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, And other births will bring us richness and variety.

All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself. It is not far, it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven, 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 fill’d and satisfied then? And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond. You are also asking me questions and I hear you, I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe, And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.