Published Works
Manuscripts
Biography & Correspondence
Criticism
Resources
Pictures & Sound
About the Archive
Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
contents
|
previous
|
next
View Page 245
contents
|
previous
|
next
GIVE ME THE SPLENDID SILENT SUN.
1
| GIVE me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, |
| Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, |
| Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows, |
| Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape, |
|
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals
teaching content, |
|
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the
Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars, |
|
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I
can walk undisturb'd, |
|
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should
never tire, |
|
Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the
world a rural domestic life, |
|
Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my
own ears only, |
|
Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your
primal sanities! |
|
These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement,
and rack'd by the war-strife,) |
| These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart, |
| While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city, |
View Page 245
| Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets, |
|
Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me
up, |
|
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me
forever faces; |
| (O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries, |
| I see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for.) |
2
| Keep your splendid silent sun, |
|
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the
woods, |
|
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and
orchards, |
|
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month
bees hum; |
|
Give me faces and streets—give me these phantoms incessant
and endless along the trottoirs! |
|
Give me interminable eyes—give me women—give me comrades
and lovers by the thousand! |
|
Let me see new ones every day—let me hold new ones by the
hand every day! |
| Give me such shows—give me the streets of Manhattan! |
|
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching—give me the
sound of the trumpets and drums! |
|
(The soldiers in companies or regiments—some starting away,
flush'd and reckless, |
|
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very
old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;) |
|
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black
ships! |
| O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied! |
| The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! |
|
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
torchlight procession! |
|
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military
wagons following; |
| People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants, |
|
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums
as now, |
|
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets,
(even the sight of the wounded,) |
| Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! |
| Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. |