Leaves of Grass

by Walt Whitman

All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any, (What is less or more than a touch?) Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. (Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, Only what nobody denies is so.)

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 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 unhappy over the whole earth.

I Hear It Was Charged Against Me I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, But really I am neither for nor against institutions, (What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?) Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard, And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades.

Superb-faced Manhattan!

The question, O me! so sad, recurring — What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here — that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

City of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here, All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out with eddies and foam! City of wharves and stores — city of tall facades of marble and iron! Proud and passionate city — mettlesome, mad, extravagant city! Spring up O city — not for peace alone, but be indeed yourself, warlike! Fear not — submit to no models but your own O city! Behold me — incarnate me as I have incarnated you! I have rejected nothing you offer’d me — whom you adopted I have adopted, Good or bad I never question you — I love all — I do not condemn any thing, I chant and celebrate all that is yours — yet peace no more, In peace I chanted peace, but now the drum of war is mine, War, red war is my song through your streets, O city!

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows, Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape, Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content,

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave, The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it, And now with rosy and new blood, Moves to-day in a new country.

Manhattan’s streets I saunter’d pondering, On Time, Space, Reality — on such as these, and abreast with them Prudence.

Unfolded out of the folds of the woman’s brain come all the folds of the man’s brain, duly obedient, Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded, Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy; A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.

Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God, But with the mystery of God we dare not dally.

To those who’ve fail’d, in aspiration vast, To unnam’d soldiers fallen in front on the lead, To calm, devoted engineers — to over-ardent travelers — to pilots on their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without recognition — I’d rear laurel-cover’d monument, High, high above the rest — To all cut off before their time, Possess’d by some strange spirit of fire, Quench’d by an early death.

Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?