Poems By Walt Whitman Part 30

No politics, art, religion, behaviour, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rect.i.tude, of the earth.

I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love!

It is that which contains itself--which never invites, and never refuses.

I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!

I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth; Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the truths of the earth; Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch.

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best; It is always to leave the best untold.

When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot, My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man.

The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow--all or any is best; It is not what you antic.i.p.ated--it is cheaper, easier, nearer; Things are not dismissed from the places they held before; The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before; Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before; But the Soul is also real,--it too is positive and direct; No reasoning, no proof has established it, Undeniable growth has established it.

6.

This is a poem for the sayers of words--these are hints of meanings, These are they that echo the tones of souls, and the phrases of souls; If they did not echo the phrases of souls, what were they then?

If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then?

I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best!

I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

7.

Say on, sayers!

Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!

Work on--it is materials you bring, not breaths; Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost!

It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use; When the materials are all prepared, the architects shall appear.

I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them and lead them; I swear to you they will understand you and justify you; I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all, and is faithful to all; I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you--they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they; I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them.

_VOICES._

1.

Now I make a leaf of Voices--for I have found nothing mightier than they are, And I have found that no word spoken but is beautiful in its place.

2.

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?

Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around the globe.

All waits for the right voices; Where is the practised and perfect organ? Where is the developed Soul?

For I see every word uttered thence has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms.

I see brains and lips closed--tympans and temples unstruck, Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies slumbering, for ever ready, in all words.

_WHOSOEVER._

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear those supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you, Your true Soul and Body appear before me, They stand forth out of affairs-out of commerce, shops, law, science, work, farms, clothes, the house, medicine, print, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

Oh! I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have understood you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you--you have not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect--I only find no imperfection in you; None but would subordinate you--I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you; I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, G.o.d, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all, From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light; But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold- coloured light; From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman, it streams, effulgently flowing for ever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

You have not known what you are--you have slumbered upon yourself all your life; Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?

The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk others, they do not baulk me.

The pert apparel, the deformed att.i.tude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like carefully to you; I sing the songs of the glory of none, not G.o.d, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

These shows of the east and west are tame compared to you; These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--you are immense and interminable as they; These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, pa.s.sion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency; Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulgates itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

_BEGINNERS._

How they are provided for upon the earth, appearing at intervals; How dear and dreadful they are to the earth; How they inure to themselves as much as to any--What a paradox appears their age; How people respond to them, yet know them not; How there is something relentless in their fate, all times; How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.

_TO A PUPIL._

1.

Is reform needed? Is it through you?

The greater the reform needed, the greater the PERSONALITY you need to accomplish it.

You! do you not see how it would serve to have eyes, blood, complexion, clean and sweet?