Song of Myself

by Walt Whitman

The feeling of health . . . . the full-noon trill . . . . the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much? Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left, 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, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourself.

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.

I and this mystery here we stand. Clear and sweet is my soul . . . . and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

[20] Who goes there! hankering, gross, mystical, nude? How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, Else it were time lost listening to me. I do not snivel that snivel the world over, That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth, That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears. Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids . . . . conformity goes to the fourth-removed, I cock my hat as I please indoors or out. Shall I pray? Shall I venerate and be ceremonious? I have pried through the strata and analyzed to a hair, And counselled with doctors and calculated close and found no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. And I know I am solid and sound, To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow, All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. And I know I am deathless, I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass, I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night. I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, I see that the elementary laws never apologize, I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all. I exist as...

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night! Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth! Smile, for your lover comes! Prodigal! you have given me love! . . . . therefore I to you give love! O unspeakable passionate love! Thruster holding me tight and that I hold tight! We hurt each other as the bridegroom and the bride hurt each other.

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, Disorderly fleshy and sensual . . . . eating drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist . . . . no stander above men and women or apart from them . . . . no more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return. Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index. I speak the password primeval . . . . I give the sign of democracy; By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of slaves, Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons, Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised, Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung. Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts . . . . voices veiled, and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured. I do not press my finger across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than deat...

I hear the violincello or man’s heart 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 orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. I hear the trained soprano . . . . she convulses me like the climax of my love-grip; The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies, It wrenches unnamable ardors from my breast, It throbs me to gulps of the farthest down horror, It sails me . . . . I dab with bare feet . . . . they are licked by the indolent waves, I am exposed . . . . cut by bitter and poisoned hail, Steeped amid honeyed morphine . . . . my windpipe squeezed in the fakes of death, Let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels, And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

I rise extatic through all, and sweep with the true gravitation, The whirling and whirling is elemental within me.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands, Say old topknot! what do you want?

Putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows!

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? Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs . . . . its buckets are rising forever and ever, They pour and they pour and they exhale away. 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. I do not call one greater and one smaller, That which fills its period and place is equal to any. Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or my sister? I am sorry for you . . . . they are not murderous or jealous upon me; All has been gentle with me . . . . I keep no account with lamentation; What have I to do with lamentation? I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be. 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. Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, the vapor from the nostrils of death, I know I was even there . . . . I waited unseen and always, And slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist, And took my time . . . . and took no hurt from the foetid carbon. Long I ...

Old age superbly rising! Ineffable grace of dying days!

My left hand hooks you round the waist, My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road. 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 every where on water and on land. Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth; Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip, And in due time you shall repay the same service to me; For after we start we never lie by again.

And I said to my spirit, When we become the enfolders of the those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then? And my spirit said No, we 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.

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

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, 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, And any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes. And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God, For I who am curious about each am not curious about God, No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death. I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. 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 dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

There is that in me . . . . I do not know what it is . . . . but I know it is in me. Wrenched and sweaty . . . . calm and cool then my body becomes; I sleep . . . . I sleep long. I do not know it . . . . it is without name . . . . it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary or utterance or symbol. Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. Perhaps I might tell more . . . . Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters. Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death . . . . it is form and union and plan . . . . it is eternal life . . . . it is happiness.

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me . . . . he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed . . . . I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air . . . . I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop some where waiting for you