Leaves of Grass

by Walt Whitman

One’s-Self I Sing

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 true realities, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn’d professor, Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics, Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The entities of entities, eidolons.

The body lurking there within thy body,

Beginning My Studies

This then is life, Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

Dead poets, philosophs, priests, Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since, Language-shapers on other shores,

I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left wafted hither, I have perused it, own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it,) Think nothing can ever be greater, nothing can ever deserve more than it deserves, Regarding it all intently a long while, then dismissing it, I stand in my place with my own day here.

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future, 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,

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

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,

I and this mystery here we stand.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,

it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. Vivas to those who have fail’d! And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them, No more modest than immodest.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,

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

Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles, Speeding with tail’d meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest, Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,

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

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.

I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

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

I too am untranslatable,

We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,

O you shunn’d persons, I at least do not shun you, I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

Be not afraid of my body.

my dear friend my lover was on his way coming,

the flames of me, consuming, burning for his love whom I love,

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,

A Glimpse

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also, I think I could stop here myself and do miracles, I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me, I think whoever I see must be happy.

The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them, The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.

O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself, receiving identity through materials and loving them, observing characters and absorbing them, My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,

My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,

You untold life of me,

All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,

At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession, A swarming and busy race settling and organizing everywhere, Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the whole world,