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Leaves of Grass (1860)

Leaves
of
Grass.

Boston,

Thayer and Eldridge,

year 85 of The States,(1860-61)

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860,
BY WALT WHITMAN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

ELECTROTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

PRINTED BY
GEORGE C. RAND & AVERY.

PROTO-LEAF	......	5 to 22
WALT WHITMAN	......	23 104
CHANTS DEMOCRATIC and Native American Numbers 1 to 21	......	105 194
LEAVES OF GRASS Numbers 1 to 24	......	195 to 242
SALUT AU MONDE	......	243 258
POEM OF JOYS	......	259 268
A WORD OUT OF THE SEA	......	269 277
A Leaf of Faces	......	278 282
Europe, the 72d and 73d Years T. S.	......	283
ENFANS D'ADAM Numbers 1 to 15	......	287 to 314
POEM OF THE ROAD	......	315 328
TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS	......	329 336
A Boston Ballad, the 78th Year T. S.	......	337
CALAMUS Numbers 1 to 45	......	341 to 378
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY	......	379 388
Longings for Home	......	389
MESSENGER LEAVES.
To You, Whoever You Are	......	391
To a foiled Revolter or Revoltress	......	394
To Him That was Crucified	......	397
To One Shortly To Die	......	398
To a Common Prostitute	......	399
To Rich Givers	......	399
To a Pupil	......	400
To The States, to Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad	......	400
To a Cantatrice	......	401
Walt Whitman's Caution	......	401
To a President	......	402
To Other Lauds	......	402
To Old Age	......	402
To You	......	403
To You	......	403

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Contents.
Mannahatta	......	404
France, the 18th Year T. S.	......	406
THOUGHTS Numbers 1 to 7	......	408 to 411
Unnamed Lands	......	412
Kosmos	......	414
A Hand Mirror	......	415
Beginners Tests	......	416
Savantism Perfections	......	417
Says	......	418
Debris	......	421
SLEEP-CHASINGS	......	426 to 439
BURIAL	......	440 448
To My Soul	......	449
So long	......	451

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PROTO-LEAF.

¹ FREE, fresh, savage,

Fluent, luxuriant, self-content, fond of persons and
places,

Fond of fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,

Fond of the sea—lusty-begotten and various,

Boy of the Mannahatta, the city of ships, my city,

Or raised inland, or of the south savannas,

Or full-breath'd on Californian air, or Texan or
Cuban air,

Tallying, vocalizing all—resounding Niagara—
resounding Missouri,

Or rude in my home in Kanuck woods,

Or wandering and hunting, my drink water, my diet
meat,

Or withdrawn to muse and mediate in some deep
recess,

Far from the clank of crowds, an interval passing,
rapt and happy,

Stars, vapor, snow, the hills, rocks, the Fifth Month
flowers, my amaze, my love,

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Aware of the buffalo, the peace-herds, the bull,
strong-breasted and hairy,

Aware of the mocking-bird of the wilds at day-
break,

Solitary, singing in the west, I strike up for a new
world.

² Victory, union, faith, identity, time, the Soul, your-
         self, the present and future lands, the indisso-
         luble compacts, riches, mystery, eternal progress,
         the kosmos, and the modern reports.

³ This then is life,

Here is what has come to the surface after so many
throes and convulsions.

⁴ How curious! How real!

Underfoot the divine soil—Overhead the sun.

⁵ See, revolving,

The globe—the ancestor-continents, away, grouped
together,

The present and future continents, north and south,
with the isthmus between.

⁶ See, vast, trackless spaces,

As in a dream, they change, they swiftly fill,

Countless masses debouch upon them,

They are now covered with the foremost people, arts,
institutions known.

⁷ See projected, through time,

For me, an audience interminable.

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⁸ With firm and regular step they wend—they never
stop,

Successions of men, Americanos, a hundred millions,

One generation playing its part and passing on,

And another generation playing its part and passing
on in its turn,

With faces turned sideways or backward toward me
to listen,

With eyes retrospective toward me.

⁹ Americanos! Masters!

Marches humanitarian! Foremost!

Century marches! Libertad! Masses!

For you a programme of chants.

¹⁰ Chants of the prairies,

Chants of the long-running Mississippi,

Chants of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa,
and Minnesota,

Inland chants—chants of Kanzas,

Chants away down to Mexico, and up north to
Oregon—Kanadian chants,

Chants of teeming and turbulent cities—chants of
mechanics,

Yankee chants—Pennsylvanian chants—chants of
Kentucky and Tennessee,

Chants of dim-lit mines—chants of mountain-tops,

Chants of sailors—chants of the Eastern Sea and the
Western Sea,

Chants of the Mannahatta, the place of my dearest
love, the place surrounded by hurried and
sparkling currents,

Health chants—joy chants—robust chants of young
men,

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Chants inclusive—wide reverberating chants,

Chants of the Many In One.

¹¹ In the Year 80 of The States,

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from
this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here,

From parents the same, and their parents' parents
the same,

I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health,
begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

¹² Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but
never forgotten,

With accumulations, now coming forward in front,

Arrived again, I harbor, for good or bad—I permit
to speak,

Nature, without check, with original energy.

¹³ Take my leaves, America!

Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are
your own offspring;

Surround them, East and West! for they would
surround you,

And you precedents! connect lovingly with them, for
they connect lovingly with you.

¹⁴ I conned old times,

I sat studying at the feet of the great masters;

Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might
return and study me!

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¹⁵ In the name of These States, shall I scorn the
antique?

Why These are the children of the antique, to
justify it.

¹⁶ Dead poets, philosophs, priests,

Martyrs, artists, inventors, governments long since,

Language-shapers, on other shores,

Nations once powerful, now reduced, withdrawn, or
desolate,

I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you
have left, wafted hither,

I have perused it—I own it is admirable,

I think nothing can ever be greater—Nothing can
ever deserve more than it deserves;

I regard it all intently a long while,

Then take my place for good with my own day and
race here.

¹⁷ Here lands female and male,

Here the heirship and heiress-ship of the world—
Here the flame of materials,

Here Spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avowed,

The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,

The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing,

Yes, here comes the mistress, the Soul.

¹⁸ The SOUL!

Forever and forever—Longer than soil is brown and
solid—Longer than water ebbs and flows.

¹⁹ I will make the poems of materials, for I think they
are to be the most spiritual poems,

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And I will make the poems of my body and of
mortality,

For I think I shall then supply myself with the
poems of my Soul and of immortality.

²⁰ I will make a song for These States, that no one
State may under any circumstances be subjected
to another State,

And I will make a song that there shall be comity by
day and by night between all The States, and
between any two of them,

And I will make a song of the organic bargains of
These States—And a shrill song of curses on
him who would dissever the Union;

And I will make a song for the ears of the President,
full of weapons with menacing points,

And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces.

²¹ I will acknowledge contemporary lands,

I will trail the whole geography of the globe, and
salute courteously every city large and small;

And employments! I will put in my poems, that
         with you is heroism, upon land and sea—And I
         will report all heroism from an American point
         of view;

And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in
me—For I am determined to tell you with
courageous clear voice, to prove you illustrious.

²² I will sing the song of companionship,

I will show what alone must compact These,

I believe These are to found their own ideal of manly
love, indicating it in me;

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I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires
that were threatening to consume me,

I will lift what has too long kept down those smoul-
dering fires,

I will give them complete abandonment,

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and
of love,

(For who but I should understand love, with all its
sorrow and joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

²³ I am the credulous man of qualities, ages, races,

I advance from the people en-masse in their own
spirit,

Here is what sings unrestricted faith.

²⁴ Omnes! Omnes!

Let others ignore what they may,

I make the poem of evil also—I commemorate that
part also,

I am myself just as much evil as good—And I say
there is in fact no evil,

Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to
the earth, or to me, as anything else.

²⁵ I too, following many, and followed by many, inau-
gurate a Religion—I too go to the wars,

It may be I am destined to utter the loudest cries
thereof, the conqueror's shouts,

They may rise from me yet, and soar above every
thing.

²⁶ Each is not for its own sake,

I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are
for Religion's sake.

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²⁷ I say no man has ever been half devout enough,

None has ever adored or worship'd half enough,

None has begun to think how divine he himself is,
and how certain the future is.

²⁸ I specifically announce that the real and perma-
nent grandeur of These States must be their
Religion,

Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur.

²⁹ What are you doing, young man?

Are you so earnest—so given up to literature,
science, art, amours?

These ostensible realities, materials, points?

Your ambition or business, whatever it may be?

³⁰ It is well—Against such I say not a word—I am
their poet also;

But behold! such swiftly subside—burnt up for
Religion's sake,

For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame,
the essential life of the earth,

Any more than such are to Religion.

³¹ What do you seek, so pensive and silent?

What do you need, comrade?

Mon cher! do you think it is love?

³² Proceed, comrade,

It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to
excess—yet it satisfies—it is great,

But there is something else very great—it makes the
whole coincide,

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It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous
hands, sweeps and provides for all.

³³ O I see the following poems are indeed to drop in the
earth the germs of a greater Religion.

³⁴ My comrade!

For you, to share with me, two greatnesses—And a
third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent,

The greatness of Love and Democracy—and the
greatness of Religion.

³⁵ Melange mine!

Mysterious ocean where the streams empty,

Prophetic spirit of materials shifting and flickering
around me,

Wondrous interplay between the seen and unseen,

Living beings, identities, now doubtless near us, in
the air, that we know not of,

Extasy everywhere touching and thrilling me,

Contact daily and hourly that will not release me,

These selecting—These, in hints, demanded of me.

³⁶ Not he, adhesive, kissing me so long with his daily
kiss,

The Walt Whitman Archive

Leaves of Grass (1860)

Boston,

year 85 of The States,(1860-61)

CONTENTS

PROTO-LEAF.