Leaves of Grass

by Walt Whitman

When I Read the Book 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.)

We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the body and the soul, Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic, And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return, And may be just as much as the seasons.

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

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?

How curious! how real! Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun. See revolving the globe, The ancestor-continents away group’d together, The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus between.

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.

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems, And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality, For I think I shall then supply myself with the poems of my soul and of immortality.

I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is — and I say there is in fact no evil, (Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or to me, as any thing else.)

do you concentrate in me, for I am determin’d to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious, 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, 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.

(I may have to be persuaded many times before I consent to give myself really to you, but what of that? Must not Nature be persuaded many times?)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

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,)

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

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.)

The city sleeps and the country sleeps, The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

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, Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,

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.

This hour I tell things in confidence, I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

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

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d 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 elbow’d earth — rich apple-blossom’d earth! Smile, for your lover comes.

We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land, Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.

I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. 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.

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy, To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.

How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men; All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine, I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

Enough! enough! enough! Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back! Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping, I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.

Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines, Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth, The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.

Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d head, laughter, and naivete, Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations, They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers, They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.

I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me, You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.

Sermons, creeds, theology — but the fathomless human brain, And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

You are also asking me questions and I hear you, I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

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

I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons, And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns, In him the start of populous states and rich republics, Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments. How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries? (Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?)

Have you ever loved the body of a woman? Have you ever loved the body of a man? Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking. Sex contains all, bodies, souls, Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk, All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth, These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.

I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now, I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you, For I could not die till I once look’d on you, For I fear’d I might afterward lose you. Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe, Return in peace to the ocean my love, I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated, Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!

As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different. Who is he that would become my follower? Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks, By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades.

But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve, I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving.

And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy, O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well, And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems.