Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition (Illustrated)

by Walt Whitman

The latest news . . . discoveries, inventions, societies . . . authors old and new, My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues, The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, The sickness of one of my folks—or of myself . . . or ill-doing . . . or loss or lack of money . . . or depressions or exaltations, They come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself.

I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning; You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart, And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.

All goes onward and outward . . . and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me,

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, Regardless of others, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,

A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfulest,

These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing, If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing, If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing, If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing. This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe.

I play not a march for victors only . . . I play great marches for conquered and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall . . . battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I sound triumphal drums for the dead . . . I fling through my embouchures the loudest and gayest music to them, Vivas to those who have failed, and to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea, and those themselves who sank in the sea,

Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have . . . for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has.

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.

This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you, The facts are useful and real . . . they are not my dwelling . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.