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Leaves of Grass (1867)

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A LEAF OF FACES.

1

¹ SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-
road—lo! such faces!

Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity,
ideality;

The spiritual prescient face—the always welcome,
common, benevolent face,

The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of
natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-
top;

The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—
the shaved blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens;

The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's
face;

The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome
detested or despised face;

The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the
mother of many children;

The face of an amour, the face of veneration;

The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;

The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated
face;

A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper;

A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife
of the gelder.

² Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the
ceaseless ferry, faces, and faces, and faces:

I see them, and complain not, and am content with
all.

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³ Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I
thought them their own finale?

⁴ This now is too lamentable a face for a man;

Some abject louse, asking leave to be—cringing for it;

Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to
its hole.

⁵ This face is a dog's snout, sniffing for garbage;

Snakes nest in that mouth—I hear the sibilant threat.

⁶ This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea;

Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

⁷ This is a face of bitter herbs—this an emetic—they
need no label;

And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or
hog's-lard.

⁸ This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives
out the unearthly cry,

Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till
they show nothing but their whites,

Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the
turn'd-in nails,

The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground
while he speculates well.

⁹ This face is bitten by vermin and worms,

And this is some murderer's knife with a half-pull'd
scabbard.

¹⁰ This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee;

An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

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¹¹ Those then are really men—the bosses and tufts of
the great round globe!

¹² Features of my equals, would you trick me with
your creas'd and cadaverous march?

Well, you cannot trick me.

¹³ I see your rounded never-erased flow;

I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean dis-
guises.

¹⁴ Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling
fores of fishes or rats;

You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

¹⁵ I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering
idiot they had at the asylum;

And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;

I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my
brother,

The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen
tenement;

And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,

And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and un-
harm'd, every inch as good as myself.

4

¹⁶ The Lord advances, and yet advances;

Always the shadow in front—always the reach'd hand
bringing up the laggards.

¹⁷ Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O su-
perb! I see what is coming;

I see the high pioneer-caps—I see the staves of run-
ners clearing the way,

I hear victorious drums.

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¹⁸ This face is a life-boat;

This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no
odds of the rest;

This face is flavor'd fruit, ready for eating;

This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of
all good.

¹⁹ These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake;

They show their descent from the Master himself.

²⁰ Off the word I have spoken I except not one—red,
white, black, are all deific;

In each house is the ovum—it comes forth after a
thousand years.

²¹ Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me;

Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to
me;

I read the promise, and patiently wait.

²² This is a full-grown lily's face,

She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden
pickets,

Come here, she blushingly cries— Come nigh to me, lim-
ber-hipp'd man,

Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,

Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,

Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and
shoulders .

5

²³ The old face of the mother of many children!

Whist! I am fully content.

²⁴ Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day
morning,

It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,

It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and
the cat-brier under them.

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²⁵ I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,

I heard what the singers were singing so long,

Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white
froth and the water-blue.

²⁶ Behold a woman!

She looks out from her quaker cap—her face is clearer
and more beautiful than the sky.

²⁷ She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of
the farm-house,

The sun just shines on her old white head.

²⁸ Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,

Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daugh-
ters spun it with the distaff and the wheel.

²⁹ The melodious character of the earth,

The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and
does not wish to go,

The justified mother of men.

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The Walt Whitman Archive

Leaves of Grass (1867)

A LEAF OF FACES.

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