Leaves of Grass Part 2

What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?

Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal, And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery, And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

Still Though the One I Sing

Still though the one I sing, (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality, I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!)

Shut Not Your Doors

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing, A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

Poets to Come

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future, I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face, Leaving it to you to prove and define it, Expecting the main things from you.

To You

Stranger, if you pa.s.sing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?

And why should I not speak to you?

Thou Reader

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I, Therefore for thee the following chants.

BOOK II

Starting from Paumanok 1 Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother, After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas, Or a soldier camp'd or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner in California, Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the spring, Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess, Far from the clank of crowds intervals pa.s.sing rapt and happy, Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of mighty Niagara, Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and strong-breasted bull, Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow, my amaze, Having studied the mocking-bird's tones and the flight of the mountain-hawk, And heard at dawn the unrivall'd one, the hermit thrush from the swamp-cedars, Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

2 Victory, union, faith, ident.i.ty, time, The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery, Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.

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

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.

See, vast trackless s.p.a.ces, As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill, Countless ma.s.ses debouch upon them, They are now cover'd with the foremost people, arts, inst.i.tutions, known.

See, projected through time, For me an audience interminable.

With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop, Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions, One generation playing its part and pa.s.sing on, Another generation playing its part and pa.s.sing on in its turn, With faces turn'd sideways or backward towards me to listen, With eyes retrospective towards me.

3 Americanos! conquerors! marches humanitarian!

Foremost! century marches! Libertad! ma.s.ses!

For you a programme of chants.

Chants of the prairies, Chants of the long-running Mississippi, and down to the Mexican sea, Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, Chants going forth from the centre from Kansas, and thence equidistant, Shooting in pulses of fire ceaseless to vivify all.

4 Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North, Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own off-spring, Surround them East and West, for they would surround you, And you precedents, connect lovingly with them, for they connect lovingly with you.

I conn'd old times, I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me.

In the name of these States shall I scorn the antique?

Why these are the children of the antique to justify it.

5 Dead poets, philosophs, priests, Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since, Language-shapers on other sh.o.r.es, Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or desolate, 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.

Here lands female and male, Here the heir-s.h.i.+p and heiress-s.h.i.+p of the world, here the flame of materials, Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow'd, The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms, The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing, Yes here comes my mistress the soul.

6 The soul, Forever and forever-longer than soil is brown and solid-longer than water ebbs and flows.

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 will make a song for these States that no one State may under any circ.u.mstances be subjected to another State, And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by night between all the States, and between any two of them, And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with menacing points, And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces; And a song make I of the One form'd out of all, The fang'd and glittering One whose head is over all, Resolute warlike One including and over all, (However high the head of any else that head is over all.)

I will acknowledge contemporary lands, I will trail the whole geography of the globe and salute courteously every city large and small, And employments! I will put in my poems that with you is heroism upon land and sea, And I will report all heroism from an American point of view.

I will sing the song of companions.h.i.+p, I will show what alone must finally compact these, I believe these are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me, I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me, I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires, I will give them complete abandonment, I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love, For who but I should understand love with all its sorrow and joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?

7 I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races, I advance from the people in their own spirit, Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may, I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also, 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.)

I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, I descend into the arena, (It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the winner's pealing shouts, Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.)

Each is not for its own sake, I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.