SONG ABOUT YOURSELF TEXT — A LE X KE M P

SONG ABOUT YOURSELF (1982 version) is a ‘translation’ of Walt Whitman’s poem. Using various software, I copied the poem from english into 5 languages including russian, pashto and others, then translated them back into english. Line by line, I wove together the mistranslations back into the shape of the original text.

Song About Yourself (1892 version)

BY WALT WHITMAN

I celebrate myself, and myself, sing,

What I think you will think, because whatever

for me every nuclear energy is good.

I'm safe and invite my soul, forward

I'm easily looking at the grassy spear of summer.

My tongue, any of my blood, comes from this land, this air,

Which is born here, is born from the mother and father of here, and the mother and father of her mother said, "

My tongue, every atom in my blood is formed from this soil. This kind of air, the parents born here are born here like parents. Like their parents,

I am now 37 years old. Good health, start,

hope hope not to stop until death.

Fortresses and retired schools,

retreating for a while,

and the rebound back while it was enough, but never forget,

I live in good or bad condition, I speak in every danger,

nature without checking the original energy.

A house full of fragrances, houses full of incense,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and I like it, the

distillation will add me to the addiction, I'm too scared, but I will not allow it.

The atmosphere is not an aroma, it has no taste of distillation, it has no smell.

This is for me forever, I'm in love with it,

I'll go to the shore by the tree and become naked and naked,

I'm crazy to be in touch with me.

Smoke my breath own,

echoes, ripples, whispering buzz'd, love root, silk thread, crotch and vine,

Mymymymy

sweet flesh,lips,lips,flesh,,,

my head my head my breath, my heart, my blood, my legs and your legs are moving. The colors of green leaves and dry leaves, as well as coastal and dark-colored sea rocks and hay in a shed,

a few light kisses, a few spiders, revolves around the arms, a

play of brilliance and remained on trees as one engulfs splendor,

Delicious only on the street, or on the far side of the garden mountain,

health effect, full morning, I am rising from the bed and meet the sun.

Are you a part of one billion dollars? Are you a lot of land?

Have you not learned so much to read?

Did you realize that to win the meaning of the poems?

Smoke my breath own,

echoes, ripples, whispering buzz'd, love root, silk thread, crotch and vine,

my breath and inspiration,beatingmy heart, the deathblood and air throughlungs,

andinhalationgreen leavesdry leaves, beachesmarine rocks dark, And the

voice of the words belch'd out of my voice loosed to the wind vortexes,

a few light kisses, a few spiders, revolves around the arms, a

play of brilliance and remained on trees as one engulfs splendor,

joy alone or in the street rush,

Stop this day and night with me and you will have the origin of all poems, you will have the

right to earth and sun, (millions of sun is left),

you no longer use second-hand or three-handed things, nor through the deceased. Look at your eyes, don't rely on the ghosts in the book,

don't look through my eyes, and don't take things out of me.

You should listen to all sides and filter out your self.

I will speak at the beginning and the end of the report we were talking, I hear,

but I do not talk about the beginning or end.

But, there is no presence at all now,

there are no longer young or old,

it will never be perfecter than now,

nor even heaven or anything else.

Call and insist and insist, forbidden

Always emphasize that the customer requests a worldwide customer.

From an unprecedented misery to the point of becoming more and more common, having sex all the time, is usually a sign of

personality, often making a difference, always kind of life.

There is no advantage to expand, and learning and forgetting will make it feel like this.

Certainly, of course, in the upper part, it is plucked, well-endangered, the beam is

broken, a horse, affectionate, arrogant, electrical,

me and this mystery here we are standing.

Sober and sweet is my soul and clear and sweet is everything that is not my soul.

Lack of a lack of both, invisible things are proven

until they become invisible and accept evidence.

The best of the worst ages is to divide the best and divide it,

to know the right fitness and the similarity of things, while they discuss that I am silent, and take a shower and praise myself.

Welcome every part and my qualities, that everyone is happy and pure, not one wild beast or one wild beast is bad, and nobody knows better than others.

I am satisfied, I see, dance, laugh, sing;

As the cuddly hugging and loving staying with me all night, and withdrew at daybreak with a stupid step,

I get back to the nervousness leaving baskets covered with white towels swelling the house with their abundance,

Should I postpone my acceptance and realize and cry to my eyes,

Let them turn away to look down and down the road,

And immediately encrypt and show me to a cent,

Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and who is ahead?

Customers and inquirers around me,

People I meet, feelings that affect me during my childhood or wing and city where I live, or nation,

last dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,

my dinner, confusion, associates, looks, compliments, receivables,

The real or fancied apathy of some man or woman I see Love,

The illness of one of my folks or myself, or illness or death or lack of money, or Air or exaltation,

War, terrorism of the fratricidal war, the fever of the good news, the important things;

this Come to me days and nights and go from me Again,

but they are not myself.

Aside from pulling and transport stands what I am,

Stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, unitary,

looks down, is trained, or bends an arm on a certain impalpable rest,

Looking with curvy curious head what will follow,

both in and out of the game and watch and wonder.

In the reverse, I see in my own days when I was sweating in the fog with linguists and suitors,

I have no mockery or arguments, I am a witness and I am waiting.

I believe that you are my soul. On the other hand, I cannot devalue yourself.

You cannot feel depressed about the other side.

Eat with me in the grass, loosening the stop from your throat,

not words, not the music or rhythm I want, not culture or communication, not even the best,

only the peace I like, your curse sound.

I have an idea that once we come in such a transparent summer,

how do you press your hip and gradually turn to me, separated the noise from my

bone and breast and plunged your tongue in my heart naked?

And I reached until you felt my beard, and reached until you held my feet.

Quickly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the arguments of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of mine,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of the mine,

and all the men who are born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and my lovers,

and X in creation is love,

no limits The leaves are harsh or drooping in the fields, the

brown ants in the small wells below them, the

oblong rubble of the fence, the heap'd stones, the sheikh, the mullein and the wook-weed.

One child says What is the grass? take it with the full hand;

How can I handle the kid? I do not know what it is like.

I think it will be a standard of my well-being, of green things hope woven.

Or I think it is a handkerchief of the Lord, a

fragrant protection gift designed comfortably, and note,

bearing the name of the owner in the corners, so that we can see and say, and say Who?

Or I suppose the grass is itself a child, a baby of plant production.

Or I guess it's a single hieroglyphic,

And that means that Germination is like wide areas and narrow zones.

Growing among blacks, as among whites,

Kanak, Takaho, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I get them the same.

And now it seems to me a beautiful undigested hair grave.

Or I think it is a unified hieroglyphic,

that is, germinate both in large areas and narrow areas,

grow among black people as among the whites,

Kanok, Tuckahoe, Congressman, cuff, give them the same, I receive them the same.

Now it seems to me that the hair is a nice reaper.

Gentle, I can use you as a teenager,

You from the breasts of young men,

If I know them, I might love them.

Maybe you are old, or offspring soon out of the towers of their mothers,

And here you are the mother's lap.

This grass is the darkness from the grandparents of the old,

darker than the colorless beard of old men,

the faintness of the mouth is dark below the red space.

OH I perceive after so many profane languages,

and I see that they do not come from the roofs of the mouths for nothing.

I would like to be able to translate the hints about the dead young men and women,

and the allusions about old men and mothers, and the offspring kidnapped soon from their knees.

How do you think about the young and the old?

How do you think about women and children?

They live in every place, the

tiny sprout shows that he does not die,

if he ever lives, but does not expect the end to hold it,

or at that time there is life.

Everything goes on and out, nothing fails,

and death is different from what everyone thinks, and who is happy.

Is anyone lucky to be born?

I will tell him or she is dead, I know.

I spent the life with the new washing babe and pass the death with birth, and not between my hat and shoe,

and carefully read all kinds of items, no two are similar and everyone is very good, the

earth is very good The stars are very good, and their part-time job is very good.

I am not a planet, nor an appendage to the earth.

I am a human partner and a companion. They are as immortal and unfathomable as me.

(They don't know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind of self and his own advantage for me male and female,

for me those who were boys who love women,

for me man who feels proud and feel how the stings will die,

for me the cute heart old maid, for me mothers and mothers mothers,

for me lips that smiled, and eyes that shed tears,

for me children and begetters children.

Be! You are not guilty to me, neither old nor

deserted, I see through the canvas of broadcloth and the gingham whether it is or not, and impartial

I am, solid, accessible, impossible, and can not be disposed of.

small sleeping in his cradle,

I lift it up and look long enough, and with my own hand I fly.

A teenager and a red girl climbed the mountain,

looking at them from above.

The suicide bomber and the blood of the room,

I see the body on his hair, and I know the guns fall.

The size of the equipment, current cars, etc. is the other, those who are searching for

it in its conversations, current and human,

crystalline, loud shouting, snow-balls, joke, animal skin

The hurrahs for popular popularity, anger of the rous'd team,

The flap of the curtain'd-drowning sea, a sick man who was in the hospital,

meeting enemies, a sudden vow, blows and falls.

An agitated crowd, a policeman with his star, quickly paving his way into the center of the crowd, other

rocks that welcomed and returned to many people.

what frenzied fountains or half stars that fall or

what exclamations of women took suddenly, who rush home and give birth to babies,

what living and buried speeches always vibrate here, what kind of armies have refrained from decoration,

arrests of criminals, weaknesses, adulteries, rejectings with protruding lips,

I mean them or the show or the resonance of coming and going.

doors of the large barn in the country are open and open,

and the dried grass for harvest time carries a slow drag cart,

and the pure light plays on the gray-green and interlaced color, the

arms stretched by the shaky alarm.

I'm there, I'll help, I stumbled upon the load,

I felt its soft jerks, one leg fell back on the other,

I jump off the cross and grab the clover and timothy,

And rolling on his heels and mistake my hair full of tracks.

The Wanderer amazed by my own ease and joy,

In the late afternoon choosing a safe place to spend the night,

firing the fire and baking the fresh kill'd game,

falling asleep with my dog and gun beside me.

Yankee's clitoris box is under her heavenly sails, she cuts the shine and the rock,

my eyes twisting the ground, and I praise her forehead or shout joyously from the deck.

The riders and the warriors ridden early and stood up to me,

I ducked at the ends in my shoes and went and had a good time.

We had to be with us that day for a chowder chowder tour.

I saw the fisherman's outdoor marriage in the far west. The bride was a red girl,

and her father and his friends sat next to the hanging smoking. They had moccaline shoes on their feet and large thick blankets hanging

over one of the lounging lounges. And the curls protect his neck, and he was holding his bride in his hand, naked, and locks

and long eyelashes, and her head was straight, the waist was down on the sensory limbs and reach to her feet.

The servant came to my house and stood outside, his movements, and I heard the clipping of the branches from the wood,

through the half-door of the kitchen I saw him smiling and weak and

went where he sat on a record and led him in and assured him, and

brought water and filled a basin of his corpulent body and feet, He gave him some clean clothes,

completely remembered his circle of eyes and embarrassment, and

remembered putting plasters on the balls of his neck and ankles.

He visited me a week before he recovered him and passed him north. He sat sitting

me and was next to him on the table, and he spent the fire in the corner.

Twenty-eight young men bathe in the sea,

twenty-eight young people and all are so friendly;

Twenty-eight years of feminine life and so lonely.

She owns the beautiful house by the rise of the bank,

She hides beautiful and richly drest behind the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like best?

Ah, the most beautiful of them is beautiful for her.

Where are you going, ma'am? for I see you,

you splash in the water, and you remain motionless in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,

the rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men shone with wet, it ran with their long hair, ran

small streams over their whole body.

An invisible hand also passed over their bodies.

She descended trembling from their temples and their ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell in the sun, they do not ask who quickly gets hold of them,

They do not know who's eating and declines with pendant and arch bending,

They do not think about who they water.

The butcher boy puts down his hunting clothes, or sharpens his knife in the market stall,

I loiter taking advantage of his distribution, his movement and his collapse.

Wheelchairs and greasy beams around the dog's house,

each with its main points, all of them exhausted, burned with fire.

From the threshold dotted with ashes, I am their movements,

The slight curve of their size plays even with their massive arms.

The hammers sway, flat, so slowly, so sure,

They do not hurry, everyone gets involved.

The

Negro holds the reins of the four his horse is stuck on top of his chain,

Negro, which drives the long handle of the stone yard, stable and tall standing on one leg on the rope - The

blue shirt reveals its huge neck and chest and looses over the hip-strip, the

look he is calm and commanding, he throws the ball on his hat from his forehead, the

sun falls on his crisp hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polite and perfect limbs.

I see the picturesque giant and I love him, and I do not stop there,

I also go with the team.

In me the caressing of life wherever it moves, backwards and forwards,

to a stranger and junior bending, not a person or object missing,

Absorbing everything for me and for this song.

The oxen shaking the yoke and the chain or stopping in the leafy shade, what do you express in your eyes?

It seems to me more than all the print that I have read in my life.

My step scares the wooden dragon and the wood duck on my distant and long day.

They rise together, slowly walk around.

I believe in these plans,

And recognize the red, the yellow, the white, playing in me,

And consider the green and purple and the intentional tufted crown,

And do not call the unworthy turtle because it is not something else,

and jay the woods have never studied the range, but it seems to me pretty good,

and the look of the bay makes me ashamed.

Wild geese led his flock to spend a cool night, says

Hunk, and takes me

by his call. This

may make it meaningless, but I will listen carefully,

find its purpose and move there in the cold direction.

The scarlet scarves of the north, cats on the windowsill of the house, tits, prairie dogs,

when they pull her nipples, licking the sow's garbage,

turkey hens and her hens her wings

I saw the same old law in them and myself.

Pressing your feet on the ground will cause a hundred emotions, and

they laugh at the best I can do to connect them.

I really like outdoor

life,

from men who live among cows or the taste of the ocean or forest,

builders, shipguards, the holders of the axes and scorpions, and horse engines.

I can sleep with them a week a week.

What is the most common, cheaper, closer, easier, is me,

I am going to my opportunity, spending huge returns,

I salute myself to give myself the first thing that will take me,

do not ask heaven to come down to my good intentions, scatter it

freely forever.

The pure controller sings in the organ loft,

the carpenter dresses his board, the tongue of his foreground blew wildly rising teeth,

The married and single children return home for their Thanksgiving dinner,

The pilot seizes the pivot he gets up with a strong arm,

the comrade stands in the whale-boat, the spear and the harpoon are ready,

the duck-shooter walks by silent and prudent sections,

the deacons are ordered with hands crossed at the altar,

spinning- The girl backs off and advances to the roar of the big wheel.

The farmer stops in front of the bars walking on a heath of the first day and looks at the oats and the rye.

The fool is finally brought to the asylum in a confirmed case,

(He will not sleep as he did in the bed of his mother's bedroom;)

The printer with a gray head and blunt jaws works to his box.

He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blur the manuscript;

The malformed limbs are attached to the surgeon's desk.

and the

removed something falls horribly in the bucket;

the quartet is sold in the auction stand, the drunkards are fired from the bar room's stove, the mechanic wraps his sleeves, the policeman travels his time, the gatekeeper marks,

the young man drives the express car, (I love him , although I do not know him;)

tapes wild boars on his light boots to compete in the race,

Western archery attracts young and old, some rely on their rifles, some sit on logs,

Out of the crowd, the shooter takes his position, leveling his room;

New immigrant groups cover the wharf or dike.

Like the woolly hoes in the sugar field, the supervisor sees them from his saddle,

The bugle calls in the ballroom, the gentlemen run for their partners, the Dancers greet each other,

The youth is awake in the roof attic cedar and bends to the musical rain.

Wolverine sets traps on the stream that helps fill Huron.

The squaw wrapped in its yellow fabric is hemmed, offering loafers and bags bags,

the peers of connoisseurs long the exhibition gallery with their eyes folded half-fold,

the deck-hands quickly make the steamer the board is thrown for the passengers in terrecours,

the younger sister tends the skein while the elder sister curls into a ball, and stops from time to time for the knots,

The one-year-old woman is recovering and happy to have carried her first child a week ago,

The clean-haired Yankee girl is working with her sewing machine or in the factory or the mill, the

paver leans on his pestle with both hands, the mine of the reporter passes quickly over the notebook, the painter-signboard is in blue and gold letters,

the boy of the canal trots on the towpath, the accountant counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,

The chief battles for the group and all the artists follow him,

the child is baptized, the convert makes his first professions,

the regatta is spread over the bay, running is started, (how the brilliance of the white sails!)

the drover watching his chase sang to those who would derogate,

the peddler sweats with his sack on his back, (the bargain buyer on the odd hundred;)

the bride unrumples her dress white, the minute to the clock slowly moves,

the maneuver opium penchearrière avectête rigid and lips opened,

The prostitute drags his shawl, his hat bobs on his neck and tipsy,

Pimply the laughter dries to his oaths of rascals, the Men and laugh at each other,

(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths or make fun of you;)

The president holding a council of cabinet is surrounded by the great secretaries,

On the piazza walk three majestic and friendly matrons with twisted arms,

The crew of the pack of fish splits repeated layers of halibut In the hold,

the Missourian crosses the plain and transports her goods and her cattle.

At the moment when the tax collector goes on the train, he signals by the rustling of the change.

The men on the floor are laying the floor, the tinsers are sealing the roof. the masons call for the mortar,

In Indian file, each carrying his hod passes in front of the workmen;

The seasons that continue, the indescribable crowd is reunited, it is the fourth of the seventh month (what greetings of guns and small arms!)

Seasons that continue the plows, the clippers, the falls of winter in the ground;

On the lakes, the stitcher observes the hole in the frozen surface.

The stumps are thick around the clearing, the squatter strikes deeply with his ax. The

boatmen rush towards dusk near the cotton or pecans,

coon researchers across the regions of the Red river or through those of Tennessee or those of Arkansas. The

torches glow in the darkness hanging on the Chattahooche or the Altamahaw. The

patriarchs sit down to supper with their sons and grandsons. grandchildren around them,

In walls of adobe, canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day of sport,

The city sleeps and the countryside 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 towards me, and I tend towards them,

and as I am, I am more or less,

And from these and all I am making a song about 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,

One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same,

A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live,

A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,

A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,

A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;

At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland,

At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking,

At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch,

Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners, (loving their big proportions,)

Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat,

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

A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,

Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,

A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,

Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,

Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,

And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,

The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,

The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

These are really 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 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 the common air that bathes the globe.

With music I am coming, with my cornets and drums,

I do not play steps for accepted winners, I play marches for conquered and killed people.

Have you heard that it is good to win the day?

I also say that it’s good to fall, battles are lost in the spirit in which they are won.

I also say that it is good to fall, the fight is lost in the same sense in which they are won.

I beat and pounded for the dead,

I am the strongest and the most ambitious for them through my own destiny.

Viva for those who have failed!

And for those whose war-ship sank in the sea!

And for those who drowned in the sea!

And for all the generals who had lost their engagement, and recovered from all the heroes!

And countless unknown heroes known to the great heroes!

This is not even hungry, it is natural, food,

He is just as bad, and I do with all the appointments,

I can not, in some way, or to the left,

to save the woman, sponger, thief, you are invited,

a slave of heavy lippa is invited, venerialia is invited;

There should be no difference between them and the rest.

It is the shy hand press, it is the float and the smell of hair.

This is the touch of my lips to yours, this is the murmur of longing.

This is the far depth and height, reflecting my own face.

This is a thoughtful merger of me and exit again.

Do you guess that I have some intricate goal?

Well, I have, for the Fourth rainstorm, and mica on the side of the rock.

You see, I would be surprised?

Does daylight shine? does an early redhead crackle through the forest?

I'm more surprised than them?

This clock tell things in secret,

I may not tell everyone, but I will tell you.

Who goes there? Screaming, gross, inner, nude.

How can I extract the strength of the beef I eat?

What is a man anyway? what am I? What are you?

All that is distinguished is that you will modify it yourself,

Otherwise, the time spent listening to me.

I do not eat this world, months

The spaces are ground, but glowing and dirty.

The hammer and the truck are compressed with powders for the disabled, the compliance takes place in the fourth quarter,

I wear my hat as I want indoors or out.

Why should I pray? Why should I be proud and be famous?

After sneaking through the layers, I analyzed the hair, advised my doctors, and calculated close,

I do not find any more sweet fat than stick to my own bones.

In all the people I see myself no one, not one barley less,

good or bad, what I say about myself, I say about them.

I know I'm solid and healthy,

For me, the united objects of the universe are constantly flowing,

Everyone has written to me and I have to get what writing means.

I know I am without death,

I know this my orbit can not be darkened by the carpenter's compass,

I know it will not pass like a kid's caracock, cut with a burned rod at night.

I know I'm August,

I do not worry myself to defend myself or to understand,

I see that the primary laws never apologize,

(I think I act no more proud than the level I plant my house before, after all.)

I exist as I am, this is enough,

If no one else in the world is aware of sitting content,

And if everyone knows I'm sitting content.

One world realizes, to a large extent, that it is the greatest for me, and this is myself,

Whether I come to my country today or in ten or ten million years,

I can now eat it cheerfully, or just as cheerfully. .

My support is denim and is dead in granite,

I laugh at what you call disintegration,

and I know the amplitude of time.

I body, poet and songwriter,

Enjoy the sky with me, but with me the pains of hell,

taking bribes and myself, for the first time last increase, a new language, I translated.

As I am the same woman

wage for a woman to a man, I say, great,

I say there is nothing better than the mother.

I weep for dilation or pride, a

We ducking available on the label,

I shows that the volume of development.

If the outstript? You are the President?

He details, they were transferred from one place to another.

He walks with the tender and growing night.

by night, partly as call transfer, land and water

Press close bare-bosom'd night-press close magnetic nourishing night!

Several of the stars of the south wind-night Night!

However, the night-mad naked summer night sleep.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd!

Slumbering and liquid trees Earth!

Mountains foggy road-topt sun, earth, earth!

Vitreous was blue and vomiting out the full moon!

Lighting and prevent black spots on the river!

In order to clear my name and Gray clouds in the clear blue Earth!

Far-swooping elbow'd earth-rich apple-blossom'd!

I want to love you and smile.

Lost love, you give me good, so I gave!

unspeakable passionate love.

You sea! I resign myself to you too - I guess you mean,

I see the beach your twisted inviting fingers,

I think you refuse to return without feeling me,

We must turn together, I undress, hurry from the ground,

Cushion me soft, rock me in somnolent billowy,

Dash me with wet love, I can repay you.

Sea of, La

Sea breathing broad and convulsive,

salt, and life on the graves unshovell'd but we are always ready,

howler and hurricanes, unstable and delicate measure scooperSea,

I am with you and I have different phases and stages of integral.

Partisan of influx and efflux I, extender of hatred and conciliation,

Extender of friends and those who sleep in each other's arms.

I confirm I am sorry for them,

(Do I have to make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them?)

I was wrong, I'm not good to be a poet, but I will not refuse to be an evil poet.

What is this talk show about virtue and bad habits?

Evil drives me, evil reforms have pushed me, I am indifferent,

my gait is not the gait of finding the wrong or rejecting,

I nourish all the roots of growth.

Did you fear some scratches from getting out of pregnancy?

Do you think that astronomical laws will not work have not been resolved and corrected?

I find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,

Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,

Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

There is no better than it and now.

What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder,

The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

Endless unfolding of words of ages!

And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.

A word of the faith that never balks,

Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.

It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all,

That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all.

I accept Reality and dare not question it,

Materialism first and last imbuing.

Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration!

Fetch stonecrop mixt with cedar and branches of lilac,

This is the lexicographer, this the chemist, this made a grammar of the old cartouches,

These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas.

This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

Gentlemen, to you the first honors always!

Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,

I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.

Less the reminders of properties told my words,

And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,

And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt,

And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,

No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,

No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,

And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,

By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,

Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,

Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,

Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,

And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,

And of the rights of them the others are down upon,

Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,

Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,

Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,

Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.

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.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,

Translucent mould of me it shall be you!

Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!

Firm masculine colter it shall be you!

Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!

You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!

Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!

My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!

Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you!

Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!

Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!

Sun so generous it shall be you!

Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!

You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!

Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!

Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you!

Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,

I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,

Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

To behold the day-break!

The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,

The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding,

Scooting obliquely high and low.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,

Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,

The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head,

The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,

If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.

We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun,

We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the daybreak.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,

With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself,

It provokes me forever, it says sarcastically,

Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,

Do you not know O speech how the buds beneath you are folded?

Waiting in gloom, protected by frost,

The dirt receding before my prophetical screams,

I underlying causes to balance them at last,

My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,

Happiness, (which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day.)

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,

Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,

I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,

I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,

With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Now I will do nothing but listen,

To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,

I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,

I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,

Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,

Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,

The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,

The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence,

The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,

The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,

The steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,

The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,

(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)

I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)

I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,

It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,

Ah this indeed is music—this suits me.

A tenor large and fresh as the creation fills me,

The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full.

I hear the train'd soprano (what work with hers is this?)

The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies,

It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them,

It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves,

I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath,

Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,

At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles,

And that we call Being.

To be in any form, what is that?

(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)

If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.

Mine is no callous shell,

I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,

They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

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.

Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,

Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,

Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,

My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,

On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,

Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,

Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,

Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,

Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist,

Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,

Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,

They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,

No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,

Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them a while,

Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,

They have left me helpless to a red marauder,

They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.

I am given up by traitors,

I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,

I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? my breath is tight in its throat,

Unclench your floodgates, you are too much for me.

Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch!

Did it make you ache so, leaving me?

Parting track'd by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan,

Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,

Landscapes projected masculine, full-sized and golden.

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.)

A minute and a drop of me settle my brain,

I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,

And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,

And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,

And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,

And until one and all shall delight us, and we them.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d'œuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,

And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,

And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,

But call any thing back again when I desire it.

In vain the speeding or shyness,

In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,

In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones,

In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,

In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,

In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,

In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,

In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,

In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador,

I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

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.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,

They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

I wonder where they get those tokens,

Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,

Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,

Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,

Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,

Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,

Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,

Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,

Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,

His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.

I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,

Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?

Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at,

What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass,

What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed,

And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps,

I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents,

I am afoot with my vision.

By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumbermen,

Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,

Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,

Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,

Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river,

Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,

Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish,

Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,

Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;

Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field,

Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters,

Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax,

Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,

Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;

Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,

Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,

Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,

Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great gold-bug drops through the dark,

Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,

Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides,

Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;

Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,

Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs,

Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, (floating in it myself and looking composedly down,)

Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,

Where the she-whale swims with her calf and never forsakes it,

Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its long pennant of smoke,

Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,

Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on unknown currents,

Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupting below;

Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments,

Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island,

Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,

Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,

Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,

At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter,

At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw,

At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,

At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;

Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps,

Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,

Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,

Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,

Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,

Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near,

Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,

Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh,

Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds,

Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out,

Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates of a cemetery,

Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees,

W here the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs,

Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon,

Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well,

Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,

Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or under conical firs,

Through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon, through the office or public hall;

Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd with the new and old,

Pleas'd with the homely woman as well as the handsome,

Pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,

Pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the whitewash'd church,

Pleas'd with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, impress'd seriously at the camp-meeting;

Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,

Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn'd up to the clouds, or down a lane or along the beach,

My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;

Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek'd bush-boy, (behind me he rides at the drape of the day,)

Far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print,

By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,

Nigh the coffin'd corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;

Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure,

Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any,

Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him,

Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,

Walking the old hills of Judæa with the beautiful gentle God by my side,

Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars,

Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles,

Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest,

Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,

Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,

Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,

I tread day and night such roads.

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product,

And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green.

I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,

My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

I help myself to material and immaterial,

No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.

I anchor my ship for a little while only,

My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.

I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

I ascend to the foretruck,

I take my place late at night in the crow's-nest,

We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough,

Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,

The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions,

The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them,

We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged,

We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution,

Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruin'd city,

The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.

I am a free companion, I bivouac by invading watchfires,

I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,

I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,

They fetch my man's body up dripping and drown'd.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,

The courage of present times and all times,

How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,

How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,

And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;

How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up,

How he saved the drifting company at last,

How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves,

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.

The disdain and calmness of martyrs,

The mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on,

The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover'd with sweat,

The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets,

All these I feel or am.

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,

Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,

I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin,

I fall on the weeds and stones,

The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,

Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone broken,

Tumbling walls buried me in their debris,

Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,

I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels,

They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,

Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so unhappy,

White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,

The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

Distant and dead resuscitate,

They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself.

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's bombardment,

I am there again.

Again the long roll of the drummers,

Again the attacking cannon, mortars,

Again to my listening ears the cannon responsive.

I take part, I see and hear the whole,

The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well-aim'd shots,

The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its red drip,

Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs,

The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explosion,

The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air.

Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand,

He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the entrenchments.

Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my early youth,

(I tell not the fall of Alamo,

Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,

The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo,)

'Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young men.

Retreating they had form'd in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks,

Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance,

Their colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone,

They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv'd writing and seal, gave up their arms and march'd back prisoners of war.

They were the glory of the race of rangers,

Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,

Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate,

Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free costume of hunters,

Not a single one over thirty years of age.

The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer,

The work commenced about five o'clock and was over by eight.

None obey'd the command to kneel,

Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,

A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together,

The maim'd and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw them there,

Some half-kill'd attempted to crawl away,

These were despatch'd with bayonets or batter'd with the blunts of muskets,

A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his assassin till two more came to release him,

The three were all torn and cover'd with the boy's blood.

At eleven o'clock began the burning of the bodies;

That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.

Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight?

Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars?

List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me.

Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you, (said he,)

His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be;

Along the lower'd eve he came horribly raking us.

We closed with him, the yards entangled, the cannon touch'd,

My captain lash'd fast with his own hands.

We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots under the water,

On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead.

Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark,

Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported,

The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves.

The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,

They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust.

Our frigate takes fire,

The other asks if we demand quarter?

If our colors are struck and the fighting done?

Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice of my little captain,

We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting.

Only three guns are in use,

One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's mainmast,

Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks.

The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top,

They hold out bravely during the whole of the action.

Not a moment's cease,

The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder-magazine.

One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking.

Serene stands the little captain,

He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low,

His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.

Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.

Stretch'd and still lies the midnight,

Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness,

Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer'd,

The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet,

Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin,

The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl'd whiskers,

The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below,

The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty,

Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,

Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,

Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent,

A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining,

Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,

The hiss of the surgeon's knife , the gnawing teeth of his saw,

Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan,

These so, these irretrievable.

You laggards there on guard! look to your arms!

In at the conquer'd doors they crowd! I am possess'd!

Embody all presences outlaw'd or suffering,

See myself in prison shaped like another man,

And feel the dull unintermitted pain.

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,

It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd to him and walk by his side,

(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.)

Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.

Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,

My face is ash-color'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.

Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,

I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

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.

That I could forget the mockers and insults!

That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!

That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning.

I remember now,

I resume the overstaid fraction,

The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,

Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.

I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,

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.

Eleves, I salute you! come forward!

Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.

The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?

Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

Is he some Southwesterner rais'd out-doors? is he Kanadian?

Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?

The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?

Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,

They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb'd head, laughter, and naiveté,

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.

Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask—lie over!

You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,

Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,

And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,

And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,

When I give I give myself.

You there, impotent, loose in the knees,

Open your scarf'd chops till I blow grit within you,

Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,

I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,

And any thing I have I bestow.

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.

To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,

On his right cheek I put the family kiss,

And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.

On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes.

(This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.)

To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door.

Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,

Let the physician and the priest go home.

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,

O despairer, here is my neck,

By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.

I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,

Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force,

Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.

Sleep—I and they keep guard all night,

Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,

I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,

And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.

I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,

And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

I heard what was said of the universe,

Heard it and heard it of several thousand years;

It is middling well as far as it goes—but is that all?

Magnifying and applying come I,

Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,

Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah,

Lithographing Kronos, Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,

Buying drafts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha,

In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved,

With Odin and the hideous-faced Mexitli and every idol and image,

Taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more,

Admitting they were alive and did the work of their days,

(They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,)

Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,

Discovering as much or more in a framer framing a house,

Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel,

Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any reve lation,

Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars,

Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction,

Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;

By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born,

Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists,

The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,

Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;

What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then,

The bull and the bug never worshipp'd half enough,

Dung and dirt more admirable than was dream'd,

The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes,

The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious;

By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator,

Putting myself here and now to the ambush'd womb of the shadows.

A call in the midst of the crowd,

My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.

Come my children,

Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,

Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on the reeds within.

Easily written loose-finger'd chords—I feel the thrum of your climax and close.

My head slues round on my neck,

Music rolls, but not from the organ,

Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.

Ever the hard unsunk ground,

Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides,

Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,

Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn'd thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,

Ever the vexer's hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth,

Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,

Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of death.

Here and there with dimes on the eyes walking,

To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,

Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going,

Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,

A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.

This is the city and I am one of the citizens,

Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools,

The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.

The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail'd coats,

I am aware who they are, (they are positively not worms or fleas,)

I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me,

What I do and say the same waits for them,

Every thought that flounders in me the same flounders in them.

I know perfectly well my own egotism,

Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,

And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine,

But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;

This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy?

The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?

The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers?

In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?

The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way?

The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?

Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,

And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?

I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,

My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,

Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,

Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,

Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,

Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,

Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,

Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,

Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,

Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,

Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,

To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew,

Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,

Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,

Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey.

Down-hearted doubters dull and excluded,

Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, atheistical,

I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief.

How the flukes splash!

How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood!

Be at peace bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers,

I take my place among you as much as among any,

The past is the push of you, me, all, precisely the same,

And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same.

I do not know what is untried and afterward,

But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.

Each who passes is consider'd, each who stops is consider'd, not a single one can it fail.

It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,

Nor the young woman who died and was put by his side,

Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again,

Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,

Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,

Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish koboo call'd the ordure of humanity,

Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,

Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,

Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,

Nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known.

It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.

What is known I strip away,

I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,

There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

Births have brought us richness and variety,

And other births will bring us richness and variety.

I do not call one greater and one smaller,

That which fills its period and place is equal to any.

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?

I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,

All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation,

(What have I to do with lamentation?)

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,

All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me,

Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I know I was even there,

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,

And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

Long I was hugg'd close—long and long.

Immense have been the preparations for me,

Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings,

They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me,

Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

O span of youth! ever-push'd elasticity!

O manhood, balanced, florid and full.

My lovers suffocate me,

Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin,

Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,

Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head,

Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,

Lighting on every moment of my life,

Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,

Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine.

Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days!

Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself,

And the dark hush promulges as much as any.

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,

And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems.

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,

Outward and outward and forever outward.

My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,

He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,

And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.

There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,

If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run,

We should surely bring up again where we now stand,

And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span or make it impatient,

They are but parts, any thing is but a part.

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,

Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,

The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,

The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be there.

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)

My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,

No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,

I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,

I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooking you round the waist,

My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,

You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,

Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,

Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,

And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,

For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven,

And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then?

And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,

I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

Sit a while dear son,

Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,

But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,

Now I wash the gum from your eyes,

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,

Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,

To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

I am the teacher of athletes,

He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right,

Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,

Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,

Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts,

First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,

Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over all latherers,

And those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun.

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?

I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,

My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat,

(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you,

Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd.)

I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house,

And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.

If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,

The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key,

The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.

No shutter'd room or school can commune with me,

But roughs and little children better than they.

The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,

The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day,

The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,

In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen and love them.

The soldier camp'd or upon the march is mine,

On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them,

On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me.

My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket,

The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,

The young mother and old mother comprehend me,

The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,

They and all would resume what I have told them.

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud,

And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe,

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,

For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,

(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.

To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,

I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting,

I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,

And mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me,

I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing,

I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts of melons.

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,

(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,

O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and promotions,

If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,

Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight,

Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck,

Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.

I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,

I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams reflected,

And debouch to the steady and central from the offspring great or small.

There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty—calm and cool then my body becomes,

I sleep—I sleep long.

I do not know it—it is without name—it is a word unsaid,

It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,

To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my brothers and sisters.

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?

It is not chaos or death—it is form, union, plan—it is eternal life—it is Happiness.

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them,

And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?

Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.