From
Leaves of Grass, by
Walt Whitman:
1
O take my hand Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next,
Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.
What widens within you Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding?
What climes? what persons and cities are here?
Who are the infants, some playing, some
slumbering?
Who are the girls? who are the married women?
Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms
about each other's necks?
What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
What are the mountains call'd that rise so high in the mists?
What
myriads of dwellings are they fill'd with dwellers?
2
Within me
latitude widens, longitude lengthens,
Asia,
Africa,
Europe, are to the east — America is provided
for in the west,
Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,
Curiously north and south turn the
axis-ends,
Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings,
it does not set for months,
Stretch'd in due time within me the
midnight sun just rises
above the horizon and sinks again,
Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,
Malaysia,
Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.
3
What do you hear Walt Whitman?
I hear the workman singing and the farmer's wife singing,
I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals
early in the day,
I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,
I hear the Spanish dance with
castanets in the chestnut shade,
to the rebeck and guitar,
I hear continual echoes from the
Thames,
I hear fierce
French liberty songs,
I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old
poems,
I hear the locusts in
Syria as they strike the grain and grass
with the showers of their terrible clouds,
I hear the
Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling
on the breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,
I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the
mule,
I hear the
Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,
I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I
hear the responsive base and
soprano,
I hear the cry of the
Cossack, and the sailor's voice putting to
sea at Okotsk,
I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as
the husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten'd
together with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,
I hear the
Hebrew reading his records and psalms,
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong
legends of the Romans,
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the
beautiful God the
Christ,
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,
adages, transmitted safely to this day from
poets who
wrote three thousand years ago.
4
What do you see Walt Whitman?
Who are they you salute, and that one after another
salute you?
I see a great round wonder rolling through space,
I see diminute farms,
hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,
palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads
upon the surface,
I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are
sleeping, and the sunlit part on the other side,
I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,
I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them
as my land is to me.
I see plenteous waters,
I see mountain peaks, I see the
sierras of Andes where they
range,
I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,
I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,
I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,
I see the Pyrenees, Balks,
Carpathians, and to the north the
Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecla,
I see
Vesuvius and
Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the
Red mountains of Madagascar,
I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,
I see huge dreadful
Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,
I see the superior oceans and the interior ones, the Atlantic
and Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the
sea of
Peru,
The waters of Hindustan, the China sea, and the gulf of
Guinea,
The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of
Nagasaki land-lock'd
in its mountains,
The spread of the
Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores,
and the bay of Biscay,
The clear-sunn'd Mediterranean, and from one to another of
its islands,
The White sea, and the sea around Greenland.
I behold the mariners of the world,
Some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the
lookout,
Some drifting helplessly, some with
contagious diseases.
I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in
clusters in port, some on their voyages,
Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others
capes Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,
Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others
cape Lopatka, others Behring's straits,
Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along
Cuba or Hayti, others
Hudson's bay or Baffin's bay,
Others pass the straits of
Dover, others enter the Wash,
others the firth of Solway, others round cape Clear,
others the
Land's End,
Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,
Others as comers and goers at
Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,
Others sternly push their way through the northern winterpacks,
Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,
Others the Niger or the
Congo, others the Indus, the
Burampooter and
Cambodia,
Others wait steam'd up ready to start in the ports of
Australia,
Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles,
Lisbon,
Naples, Hamburg,
Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague,
Copenhagen,
Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.
5
I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,
I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,
I see them in Asia and in Africa.
I see the
electric telegraphs of the earth,
I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses,
gains, passions, of my race.
I see the long river-stripes of the earth,
I see the
Amazon and the Paraguay,
I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow
River, the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl,
I see where the Seine flows, and where the
Danube, the Loire,
the Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,
I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian
along the Po,
I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.
6
I see the sight of the old empire of
Assyria, and that of
Persia, and that of India,
I see the falling of the
Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.
I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by
avatars
in human forms,
I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth,
oracles, sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, Ilamas, monks,
muftis, exhorters,
I see where
druids walk'd the groves of Mona, I see the
mistletoe and
vervain,
I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods, I see the
old signifiers.
I see Christ eating the bread of his last supper in the midst of
youths and old persons,
I see where the strong divine young man the
Hercules toil'd
faithfully and long and then died,
I see the place of the innocent rich life and hapless fate of the
beautiful nocturnal son, the full-limb'd
Bacchus,
I see
Kneph, blooming, drest in blue, with the crown of
feathers on his head,
I see
Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-belov'd, saying to the
people Do not weep for me,
This is not my true country, I have lived banish'd from my true
country, I now go back there,
I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn.
7
I see the battle-fields of the earth, grass grows upon them and
blossoms and corn,
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions.
I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the
unknown events, heroes, records of the
earth.
I see the places of the sagas,
I see pine-trees and fir-trees torn by northern blasts,
I see
granite bowlders and
cliffs, I see green meadows and
lakes,
I see the burial-cairns of
Scandinavian warriors,
I see them raised high with stones by the marge of restless
oceans, that the dead men's spirits when they wearied of
their quiet graves might rise up through the mounds and
gaze on the tossing billows, and be refresh'd by storms,
immensity,
liberty, action.
I see the steppes of Asia,
I see the tumuli of Mongolia, I see the tents of Kalmucks
and Baskirs,
I see the
nomadic tribes with herds of oxen and cows,
I see the table-lands notch'd with ravines, I see the jungles
and deserts,
I see the camel, the wild steed, the
bustard, the fat-tail'd
sheep, the antelope, and the burrowing wolf.
I see the highlands of
Abyssinia,
I see flocks of goats feeding, and see the fig-tree,
tamarind,
date,
And see fields of teff-wheat and places of verdure and gold.
I see the Brazilian vaquero,
I see the Bolivian ascending mount Sorata,
I see the Wacho crossing the plains, I see the incomparable
rider of horses with his lasso on his arm,
I see over the pampas the pursuit of wild cattle for their hides.
8, [9]
I see the regions of snow and ice,
I see the sharp-eyed Samoiede and the Finn,
I see the seal-seeker in his boat poising his lance,
I see the Siberian on his slight-built sledge drawn by dogs,
I see the
porpoise-hunters, I see the whale-crews of the south
Pacific and the north Atlantic,
I see the cliffs,
glaciers, torrents, valleys, of Switzerland — I
mark the long winters and the isolation.
I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part
of them,
I am a real Parisian,
I am a habitan of Vienna, St. Petersburg,
Berlin,
Constantinople,
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne,
I am of London, Manchester,
Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick,
I am of Madrid,
Cadiz, Barcelona,
Oporto, Lyons, Brussels,
Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, Florence,
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw, or northward in
Christiania or Stockholm, or in Siberian Irkutsk, or in
some street in
Iceland,
I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them again.
10
I see vapors exhaling from unexplored countries,
I see the savage types, the bow and arrow, the poison'd
splint, the fetich, and the obi.
I see African and Asiatic towns,
I see Algiers,
Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo,
Monrovia,
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta,
Tokio,
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and
Ashanteeman in their huts,
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo,
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva and those of
Herat,
I see Teheran, I see Muscat and
Medina and the intervening
sands, I see the caravans toiling onward,
I see
Egypt and the Egyptians, I see the pyramids and obelisks,
I look on chisell'd histories, records of conquering kings,
dynasties, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on granite blocks.
I see at
Memphis mummy-pits containing mummies embalm'd,
swathed in linen-cloth, lying there many centuries,
I look on the fall'n Theban, the large-ball'd eyes, the
side-drooping neck, the hands folded across the breast.
I see all the menials of the earth, laboring,
I see all the prisoners in the prisons,
I see the defective
human bodies of the earth,
The blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots,
hunchbacks, lunatics,
The
pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of
the earth,
The helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
I see male and female everywhere,
I see the serene
brotherhood of philosophs,
I see the constructiveness of my race,
I see the results of the
perseverance and industry of my race,
I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, I go among
them, I mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.
11
You whoever you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in
Russia!
You dim-descended, black, divine-soul'd African, large,
fine-headed, nobly-form'd, superbly destin'd, on equal terms
with me!
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you
Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! (you stock
whence I myself have descended;)
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian!
farmer of Styria!
You neighbor of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you
working-woman too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian!
Bulgarian!
You Roman! Neapolitan! you Greek!
You lithe
matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or
Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions
feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian at full speed in the saddle
shooting arrows to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you
Tartar of
Tartary!
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to
stand once on Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your
Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the
Euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of
Nineveh! you
ascending
mount Ararat!
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle
of the minarets of
Mecca!
You sheiks along the stretch from
Suez to Bab-el-mandeb
ruling your families and tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of
Nazareth,
Damascus, or lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland or bargaining in the
shops of Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar,
Ceylon, Sumatra,
Borneo!
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe,
Australia,
indifferent of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the
archipelagoes of the
sea!
And you of centuries hence when you listen to me!
And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but
include just the same!
Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent!
Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless — each of us with his or her right upon
the earth,
Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
12
You
Hottentot with clicking palate! you woolly-hair'd
hordes!
You own'd persons dropping sweat-drops or
blood-drops!
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive
countenances of brutes!
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down
upon for all your glimmering
language and
spirituality!
You dwarf'd Kamtschatkan,
Greenlander,
Lapp!
You Austral
negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip,
groveling, seeking your food!
You Caffre,
Berber, Soudanese!
You haggard, uncouth, untutor'd Bedowee!
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul,
Cairo!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you
Patagonian! you
Feejee-man!
I do not prefer others so very much before you either,
I do not say one word against you, away back there where
you stand,
(You will come forward in due time to my side.)
13
My spirit has pass'd in
compassion and determination around
the whole earth,
I have look'd for
equals and lovers and found them ready for
me in all lands,
I think some divine
rapport has equalized me with them.
You vapors, I think I have risen with you, moved away
to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you you winds;
You waters I have finger'd every shore with you,
I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has
run through,
I have taken my stand on the bases of
peninsulas and on the
high embedded rocks, to cry thence:
Salut au monde!
What cities the light or warmth penetrates I penetrate those
cities myself,
All islands to which birds wing their way I wing my way
myself.
Toward you all, in
America's name,
I raise high the
perpendicular hand, I make the signal,
To remain after me in sight forever,
For all the haunts and homes of men.