Poems By Walt Whitman Part 22

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you novices!

We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward; Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us; We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within us; We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also; You furnish your parts toward eternity; Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

_NIGHT AND DEATH._

1.

Night on the prairies.

The supper is over--the fire on the ground burns low; The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapped in their blankets; I walk by myself--I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realised before.

Now I absorb immortality and peace, I admire death, and test propositions.

How plenteous! How spiritual! How _resume_!

The same Old Man and Soul--the same old aspirations, and the same content.

2.

I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not day exhibited, I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes.

Now, while the great thoughts of s.p.a.ce and eternity fill me, I will measure myself by them: And now, touched with the lives of other globes, arrived as far along as those of the earth, Or waiting to arrive, or pa.s.sed on farther than those of the earth, I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life, Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.

3.

O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me-as the day cannot, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

_ELEMENTAL DRIFTS._

1.

Elemental drifts!

O I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me.

As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the sh.o.r.es I know, As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoa.r.s.e and sibilant, Where the fierce old Mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by this eternal self of me, out of the pride of which I have uttered my poems, Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender winrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Sc.u.m, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide; Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok, there and then, as I thought the old thought of likenesses.

These you presented to me, you fish-shaped Island, As I wended the sh.o.r.es I know, As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types.

2.

As I wend to the sh.o.r.es I know not, As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked, As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, I too but signify, at the utmost, a little washed-up drift, A few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written, Pointing in silence to all these songs, and then to the sand beneath.

Now I perceive I have not understood anything--not a single object--and that no man ever can.

I perceive Nature, here in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me, to dart upon me, and sting me, Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.

3.

You oceans both! I close with you; These little shreds shall indeed stand for all.

You friable sh.o.r.e, with trails of debris!

You fish-shaped Island! I take what is underfoot; What is yours is mine, my father.

I too, Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your sh.o.r.es; I too am but a trail of drift and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped Island.

I throw myself upon your breast, my father, I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, I hold you so firm till you answer me something.

Kiss me, my father, Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love, Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring I envy.

4.

Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return.) Cease not your moaning, you fierce old Mother, Endlessly cry for your castaways--but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoa.r.s.e and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or gather from you.

I mean tenderly by you, I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine.

Me and mine!

We, loose winrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, (See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!

See--the prismatic colours, glistening and rolling!) Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell; Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil; Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown; A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random; Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature; Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets; We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you, You, up there, walking or sitting, Whoever you are--we too lie in drifts at your feet.

_WONDERS._

1.

Who learns my lesson complete?

Boss, journeyman, apprentice--churchman and atheist, The stupid and the wise thinker--parents and offspring--merchant, clerk, porter, and customer, Editor, author, artist; and schoolboy--Draw nigh and commence; It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson, And that to another, and every one to another still.

2.

The great laws take and effuse without argument; I am of the same style, for I am their friend, I love them quits and quits--I do not halt and make salaams.

I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of things; They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.

I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--it is very wonderful.