Published Works In Whitman's Hand Life & Letters Commentary Resources Pictures & Sound About the Archive

contents   |   previous   |   next

View Page 208

4.

1   SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest,

I withdraw from the still woods I loved,

I will not go now on the pastures to walk,

I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my          lover the sea,

I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other          flesh, to renew me.

View Page 209

2   O Earth!

O how can the ground of you not sicken?

How can you be alive, you growths of spring?

How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots,          orchards, grain?

Are they not continually putting distempered corpses          in you?

Is not every continent worked over and over with sour          dead?

3   Where have you disposed of those carcasses of the          drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?

Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?

I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps          I am deceived,

I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press          my spade through the sod, and turn it up un-          derneath,

I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

4   Behold!

This is the compost of billions of premature corpses,

Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick          person—Yet behold!

The grass covers the prairies,

The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the          garden,

The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,

The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,

The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage          out of its graves,

The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mul-          berry-tree,

View Page 210

The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the          she-birds sit on their nests,

The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,

The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt          from the cow, the colt from the mare,

Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark          green leaves,

Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk;

The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above          all those strata of sour dead.

5   What chemistry!

That the winds are really not infectious,

That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of          the sea, which is so amorous after me,

That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all          over with its tongues,

That it will not endanger me with the fevers that          have deposited themselves in it,

That all is clean, forever and forever,

That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,

That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,

That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the          orange-orchard—that melons, grapes, peaches,          plums, will none of them poison me,

That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any          disease,

Though probably every spear of grass rises out of          what was once a catching disease.

6   Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and          patient,

It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,

View Page 211

It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such          endless successions of diseased corpses,

It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused          fetor,

It renews, with such unwitting looks, its prodigal,          annual, sumptuous crops,

It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts          such leavings from them at last.

contents   |   previous   |   next

Comments?

Published Works | In Whitman's Hand | Life & Letters | Commentary | Resources | Pictures & Sound

Support the Archive | About the Archive

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Ed Folsom & Kenneth M. Price, editors.