Poems By Walt Whitman Part 24

Hour prophetic--hour resuming the past: Inflating my throat--you, divine Average!

You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.

2.

Open mouth of my soul, uttering gladness, Eyes of my soul, seeing perfection, Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; Corroborating for ever the triumph of things.

3.

Ill.u.s.trious every one!

Ill.u.s.trious what we name s.p.a.ce--sphere of unnumbered spirits; Ill.u.s.trious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect; Ill.u.s.trious the attribute of speech--the senses--the body; Ill.u.s.trious the pa.s.sing light! Ill.u.s.trious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky!

Ill.u.s.trious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.

Good in all, In the satisfaction and _aplomb_ of animals, In the annual return of the seasons, In the hilarity of youth, In the strength and flush of manhood, In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age, In the superb vistas of Death.

Wonderful to depart; Wonderful to be here!

The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood, To breathe the air, how delicious!

To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!

To prepare for sleep, for bed--to look on my rose-coloured flesh, To be conscious of my body, so happy, so large, To be this incredible G.o.d I am, To have gone forth among other G.o.ds--those men and women I love.

Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!

How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!

How the clouds pa.s.s silently overhead!

How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!

How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!) How the trees rise and stand up--with strong trunks--with branches and leaves!

Surely there is something more in each of the trees--some living soul.

O amazement of things! even the least particle!

O spirituality of things!

O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents--now reaching me and America!

I take your strong chords--I intersperse them, and cheerfully pa.s.s them forward.

I too carol the sun, ushered, or at noon, or, as now, setting, I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of the earth, I too have felt the resistless call of myself.

As I sailed down the Mississippi, As I wandered over the prairies, As I have lived--As I have looked through my windows, my eyes, As I went forth in the morning--As I beheld the light breaking in the east; As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea; As I roamed the streets of inland Chicago-whatever streets I have roamed; Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.

I sing the Equalities; I sing the endless finales of things; I say Nature continues--Glory continues; I praise with electric voice: For I do not see one imperfection in the universe; And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come, I still warble under you unmitigated adoration.

_LONGINGS FOR HOME._

O Magnet South! O glistening, perfumed South! my South!

O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! good and evil! O all dear to me!

O dear to me my birth-things--all moving things, and the trees where I was born,[1] the grains, plants, rivers; Dear to me my own slow, sluggish rivers, where they flow distant over flats of silvery sands or through swamps; Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa, and the Sabine-- O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their banks again.

Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes--I float on Okeechobee--I cross the hummock land, or through pleasant openings or dense forests.

I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree, and the blossoming t.i.ti.

Again, sailing in my coaster, on deck, I coast off Georgia, I coast up the Carolinas; I see where the live-oak is growing--I see where the yellow-pine, the scented bay-tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, the graceful palmetto.

I pa.s.s rude sea-headlands, and enter Pamlico Sound through an inlet, and dart my vision inland; O the cotton plant! the growing fields of rice, sugar, hemp!

The cactus, guarded with thorns--the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; The range afar--the richness and barrenness--the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom--the awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his concealed hut; O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impa.s.sable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake; The mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing all the forenoon--singing through the moon-lit night, The humming-bird, the wild-turkey, the racc.o.o.n, the opossum; A Tennessee corn-field--the tall, graceful, long-leaved corn--slender, flapping, bright green, with ta.s.sels--with beautiful ears, each well-sheathed in its husk; An Arkansas prairie--a sleeping lake, or still bayou.

O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs--I can stand them not--I will depart!

O to be a Virginian, where I grew up! O to be a Carolinian!

O longings irrepressible! O I will go back to old Tennessee, and never wander more!

[Footnote 1: These expressions cannot be understood in a literal sense, for Whitman was born, not in the South, but in the State of New York. The precise sense to be attached to them may be open to some difference of opinion.]

_APPEARANCES._

Of the terrible doubt of appearances, Of the uncertainty after all--that we may be deluded, That maybe reliance and hope are but speculations after all, That maybe ident.i.ty beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, Maybe the things I perceive--the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, The skies of day and night--colours, densities, forms--Maybe these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known; (How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me!

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them!) Maybe seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem) as from my present point of view--And might prove (as of course they would) naught of what they appear, or naught anyhow, from entirely changed points of view; --To me, these, and the like of these, are curiously answered by my lovers, my dear friends.

When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the hand, When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom--I am silent--I require nothing further, I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of ident.i.ty beyond the grave; But I walk or sit indifferent--I am satisfied, He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

_THE FRIEND._

Recorders ages hence!

Come, I will take you down underneath this impa.s.sive exterior--I will tell you what to say of me; Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover, The friend, the lover's portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest, Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love within him--and freely poured it forth, Who often walked lonesome walks, thinking of his dear friends, his lovers, Who pensive, away from one he loved, often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he loved might secretly be indifferent to him, Whose happiest days were far away, through fields, in woods, on hills, he and another, wandering hand in hand, they twain, apart from other men, Who oft, as he sauntered the streets, curved with his arm the shoulder of his friend--while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.

_MEETING AGAIN._

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been received with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for me that followed; And else, when I caroused, or when my plans were accomplished, still I was not happy.

But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refreshed, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light, When I wandered alone over the beach, and undressing bathed, laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sunrise, And when I thought how my dear friend, my lover, was on his way coming, O then I was happy; O then each breath tasted sweeter--and all that day my food nourished me more--and the beautiful day pa.s.sed well, And the next came with equal joy--and with the next, at evening, came my friend; And that night, while all was still, I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the sh.o.r.es, I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands, as directed to me, whispering, to congratulate me; For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night, In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me, And his arm lay lightly around my breast--and that night I was happy.

_A DREAM._

Of him I love day and night, I dreamed I heard he was dead; And I dreamed I went where they had buried him I love--but he was not in that place; And I dreamed I wandered, searching among burial-places, to find him; And I found that every place was a burial-place; The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now;) The streets, the shipping, the places of amus.e.m.e.nt, the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the dead as of the living, And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living.

--And what I dreamed I will henceforth tell to every person and age, And I stand henceforth bound to what I dreamed; And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them; And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied; And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly rendered to powder, and poured in the sea, I shall be satisfied; Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.

_PARTING FRIENDS._

What think you I take my pen in hand to record?

The battle-ship, perfect-modelled, majestic, that I saw pa.s.s the offing to- day under full sail?