The Walt Whitman Archive
Published Works
Books by Whitman
contents
| previous
| next
View Page 285
View Page 286
View Page 287
View Page 288
View Page 289
contents
| previous
| next
View Page 285
LEAVES OF GRASS.
1.
| 1 THINK of the Soul; |
| I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your Soul somehow to live in other spheres; |
| I do not know how, but I know it is so. |
| 2 Think of loving and being loved; |
| I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you. |
| 3 Think of the past; |
| I warn you that in a little while, others will find their past in you and your times. |
| 4
The race is never separated—nor man nor woman escapes; |
| All is inextricable—things, spirits, nature, nations, you too—from precedents you come. |
| 5
Recall the ever-welcome defiers, (The mothers pre- cede them;) |
| Recall the sages, poets, saviors, inventors, lawgivers, of the earth; |
| Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons—brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseas'd persons. |
| 6 Think of the time when you was not yet born; |
| Think of times you stood at the side of the dying; |
| Think of the time when your own body will be dying. |
View Page 286
| 7 Think of spiritual results, |
| Sure as the earth swims through the heavens, does every one of its objects pass into spiritual results. |
| 8 Think of manhood, and you to be a man; |
| Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing? |
| 9 Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman; |
| The creation is womanhood; |
| Have I not said that womanhood involves all? |
| Have I not told how the universe has nothing better than the best womanhood? |
2.
| UNFOLDED out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded; |
| Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth, is to come the superbest man of the earth; |
| Unfolded out of the friendliest woman, is to come the friendliest man; |
| Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman, can a man be form'd of perfect body; |
| Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of the wo- man, can come the poems of man—(only thence have my poems come;) |
| Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence can appear the strong and arrogant man I love; |
| Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman I love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man; |
| Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's brain, come all the folds of the man's brain, duly obedient; |
View Page 287
| Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all justice is unfolded; |
| Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy: |
| A man is a great thing upon the earth, and through eternity—but every jot of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman, |
| First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself. |
3.
| 1 NIGHT on the prairies; |
| The supper is over—the fire on the ground burns low; |
| The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets; |
| I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realized before. |
| 2 Now I absorb immortality and peace, |
| I admire death, and test propositions. |
| 3 How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé! |
| The same Old Man and Soul—the same old aspira- tions, and the same content. |
| 4
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. |
| 5
Now, while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me, I will measure myself by them; |
| And now, touch'd with the lives of other globes, ar- rived as far along as those of the earth, |
View Page 288
| Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd 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. |
| 6
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. |
4.
| THE world below the brine; |
| Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, |
| Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds— the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, |
| Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold—the play of light through the water, |
| Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment of the swimmers, |
| Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom, |
| The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, |
| The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray; |
| Passions there—wars, pursuits, tribes—sight in those ocean-depths—breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do; |
| The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed by beings like us, who walk this sphere; |
| The change onward from ours, to that of beings who walk other spheres. |
View Page 289
5.
| I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; |
| I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at an- guish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done; |
| I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate; |
| I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; |
| I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the earth; |
| I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; |
| I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors cast- ing lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest; |
| I observe the slights and degradations cast by arro- gant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; |
| All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, |
| See, hear, and am silent. |