Poems By Walt Whitman Part 5

Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering.

On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up: Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the hills--or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink;

In a lonesome inlet, a sheldrake, lost from the flock, sitting on the water, rocking silently; In farmers' barns, oxen in the stable, their harvest labour done--they rest standing--they are too tired; Afar on arctic ice, the she-walrus lying drowsily, while her cubs play around; The hawk sailing where men have not yet sailed--the farthest polar sea, ripply, crystalline, open, beyond the floes; White drift spooning ahead, where the s.h.i.+p in the tempest dashes.

On solid land, what is done in cities, as the bells all strike midnight together; In primitive woods, the sounds there also sounding--the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the hoa.r.s.e bellow of the elk; In winter beneath the hard blue ice of Moosehead Lake, in summer visible through the clear waters, the great trout swimming; In lower lat.i.tudes, in warmer air, in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard floating slowly, high beyond the tree-tops, Below, the red cedar, festooned with tylandria--the pines and cypresses, growing out of the white sand that spreads far and flat; Rude boats descending the big Pedee--climbing plants, parasites, with coloured flowers and berries, enveloping huge trees, The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved by the wind; The camp of Georgia waggoners, just after dark--the supper-fires, and the cooking and eating by whites and negroes, Thirty or forty great waggons--the mules, cattle, horses, feeding from troughs, The shadows, gleams, up under the leaves of the old sycamore-trees--the flames--also the black smoke from the pitch-pine, curling and rising; Southern fishermen fis.h.i.+ng--the sounds and inlets of North Carolina's coast--the shad-fishery and the herring-fishery--the large sweep- seines--the windla.s.ses on sh.o.r.e worked by horses--the clearing, curing, and packing houses; Deep in the forest, in piney woods, turpentine dropping from the incisions in the trees--There are the turpentine works, There are the negroes at work, in good health--the ground in all directions is covered with pine straw.

--In Tennessee and Kentucky, slaves busy in the coalings, at the forge, by the furnace-blaze, or at the corn-shucking; In Virginia, the planter's son returning after a long absence, joyfully welcomed and kissed by the aged mulatto nurse.

On rivers, boatmen safely moored at nightfall, in their boats, under shelter of high banks, Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle--others sit on the gunwale, smoking and talking; Late in the afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp-there are the greenish waters, the resinous odour, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree.

--Northward, young men of Mannahatta--the target company from an excursion returning home at evening--the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play--or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi--he ascends a knoll and sweeps his eye around.

California life--the miner, bearded, dressed in his rude costume--the staunch California friends.h.i.+p--the sweet air--the graves one, in pa.s.sing, meets, solitary, just aside the horse-path; Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the negro-cabins--drivers driving mules or oxen before rude carts--cotton-bales piled on banks and wharves.

Encircling all, vast-darting, up and wide, the American Soul, with equal hemispheres--one Love, one Dilation or Pride.

--In arriere, the peace-talk with the Iroquois, the aborigines--the calumet, the pipe of good-will, arbitration, and endors.e.m.e.nt, The sachem blowing the smoke first toward the sun and then toward the earth, The drama of the scalp-dance enacted with painted faces and guttural exclamations, The setting-out of the war-party--the long and stealthy march, The single-file--the swinging hatchets--the surprise and slaughter of enemies.

--All the acts, scenes, ways, persons, att.i.tudes, of these States-- reminiscences, all inst.i.tutions, All these States, compact--Every square mile of these States, without excepting a particle--you also--me also.

Me pleased, rambling in lanes and country fields, Paumanok's fields, Me, observing the spiral flight of two little yellow b.u.t.terflies, shuffling between each other, ascending high in the air; The darting swallow, the destroyer of insects--the fall-traveller southward, but returning northward early in the spring; The country boy at the close of the day, driving the herd of cows, and shouting to them as they loiter to browse by the roadside; The city wharf--Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans, San Francisco, The departing s.h.i.+ps, when the sailors heave at the capstan; Evening--me in my room--the setting sun, The setting summer sun s.h.i.+ning in my open window, showing the swarm of flies, suspended, balancing in the air in the centre of the room, darting athwart, up and down, casting swift shadows in specks on the opposite wall, where the s.h.i.+ne is.

The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners; Males, females, immigrants, combinations--the copiousness--the individuality of the States, each for itself--the money-makers; Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces--the windla.s.s, lever, pulley-- All certainties, The certainty of s.p.a.ce, increase, freedom, futurity; In s.p.a.ce, the sporades, the scattered islands, the stars--on the firm earth, the lands, my lands!

O lands! O all so dear to me--what you are (whatever it is), I become a part of that, whatever it is.

Southward there, I screaming, with wings slow-flapping, with the myriads of gulls wintering along the coasts of Florida--or in Louisiana, with pelicans breeding, Otherways, there, atwixt the banks of the Arkansaw, the Rio Grande, the Nueces, the Brazos, the Tombigbee, the Red River, the Saskatchewan, or the Osage, I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running; Northward, on the sands, on some shallow bay of Paumanok, I, with parties of snowy herons wading in the wet to seek worms and aquatic plants; Retreating, triumphantly twittering, the king-bird, from piercing the crow with its bill, for amus.e.m.e.nt--And I triumphantly twittering; The migrating flock of wild geese alighting in autumn to refresh themselves--the body of the flock feed--the sentinels outside move around with erect heads watching, and are from time to time relieved by other sentinels--And I feeding and taking turns with the rest; In Canadian forests, the moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, rising desperately on his hind-feet, and plunging with his fore-feet, the hoofs as sharp as knives--And I plunging at the hunters, cornered and desperate; In the Mannahatta, streets, piers, s.h.i.+pping, store-houses, and the countless workmen working in the shops, And I too of the Mannahatta, singing thereof--and no less in myself than the whole of the Mannahatta in itself, Singing the song of These, my ever-united lands--my body no more inevitably united part to part, and made one ident.i.ty, any more than my lands are inevitably united, and made ONE IDENt.i.tY; Nativities, climates, the gra.s.s of the great pastoral plains, Cities, labours, death, animals, products, good and evil--these me,-- These affording, in all their particulars, endless feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pa.s.s the clue of the union of them, to afford the like to you?

Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am?

How can I but, as here, chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage of these States?

[Footnote 1: 1858-59.]

_THE PAST-PRESENT._

I was looking a long while for the history of the past for myself, and for these chants--and now I have found it.

It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;) It is no more in the legends than in all else; It is in the present--it is this earth to-day; It is in Democracy--in this America--the Old World also; It is the life of one man or one woman to-day, the average man of to-day; It is languages, social customs, literatures, arts; It is the broad show of artificial things, s.h.i.+ps, machinery, politics, creeds, modern improvements, and the interchange of nations, All for the average man of to-day.

_YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED._

Years of the unperformed! your horizon rises--I see it part away for more august dramas; I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation but other nations embattling; I see tremendous entrances and exits--I see new combinations--I see the solidarity of races; I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world's stage; Have the old forces played their parts? are the acts suitable to them closed?

I see Freedom, completely armed, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law by her side, both issuing forth against the idea of caste; --What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?

I see men marching and countermarching by swift millions!

I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old aristocracies broken; I see the landmarks of European kings removed; I see this day the People beginning their landmarks, all others give way; Never were such sharp questions asked as this day; Never was average man, his soul, more energetic, more like a G.o.d.

Lo! how he urges and urges, leaving the ma.s.ses no rest; His daring foot is on land and sea everywhere--he colonises the Pacific, the archipelagoes; With the steam-s.h.i.+p, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the wholesale engines of war, With these, and the world-spreading factories, he interlinks all geography, all lands; --What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you, pa.s.sing under the seas?

Are all nations communing? is there going to be but one heart to the globe?

Is humanity forming _en ma.s.se_?--for lo! tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim; The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a general divine war; No one knows what will happen next--such portents fill the days and nights.

Years prophetical! the s.p.a.ce ahead as I walk, as I vainly try to pierce it, is full of phantoms; Unborn deeds, things soon to be, project their shapes around me; This incredible rush and heat--this strange ecstatic fever of dreams, O years!

Your dreams, O years, how they penetrate through me! (I know not whether I sleep or wake!) The performed America and Europe grow dim, retiring in shadow behind me, The unperformed, more gigantic than ever, advance, advance upon me.

_FLUX._

Of these years I sing, How they pa.s.s through convulsed pains, as through parturitions; How America ill.u.s.trates birth, gigantic youth, the promise, the sure fulfilment, despite of people--Ill.u.s.trates evil as well as good; How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience, compulsion, and to infidelity; How few see the arrived models, the athletes, the States--or see freedom or spirituality--or hold any faith in results.

But I see the athletes--and I see the results glorious and inevitable--and they again leading to other results; How the great cities appear--How the Democratic ma.s.ses, turbulent, wilful, as I love them, How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding, keep on and on; How society waits unformed, and is between things ended and things begun; How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the Democracies, and of the fruits of society, and of all that is begun; And how the States are complete in themselves--And how all triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead onward, And how these of mine, and of the States, will in their turn be convulsed, and serve other parturitions and transitions.

And how all people, sights, combinations, the Democratic ma.s.ses, too, serve--and how every fact serves, And how now, or at any time, each serves the exquisite transition of Death.

_TO WORKING MEN._

1.

Come closer to me; Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess; Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.

This is unfinished business with me--How is it with you?

(I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.)

Male and Female!

I pa.s.s so poorly with paper and types, I must pa.s.s with the contact of bodies and souls.

American ma.s.ses!

I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me--I know that it is good for you to do so.

2.

This is the poem of occupations; In the labour of engines and trades, and the labour of fields, I find the developments, And find the eternal meanings.

Workmen and Workwomen!

Were all educations, practical and ornamental, well displayed out of me, what would it amount to?

Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to?

Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms; A man like me, and never the usual terms.

Neither a servant nor a master am I; I take no sooner a large price than a small price--I will have my own, whoever enjoys me; I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.

If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop; If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend; If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome; If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake; If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds?

If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table; If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her--why I often meet strangers in the street, and love them.

Why, what have you thought of yourself?

Is it you then that thought yourself less?

Is it you that thought the President greater than you?

Or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief, Or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prost.i.tute, or are so now; Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in print, Do you give in that you are any less immortal?

3.

Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching; It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no; I own publicly who you are, if n.o.body else owns.

Grown, half-grown, and babe, of this country and every country, indoors and outdoors, one just as much as the other, I see, And all else behind or through them.