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Leaves of Grass (1891-92)
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SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL.
1
| COME said the Muse, |
| Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, |
| Sing me the universal. |
| In this broad earth of ours, |
| Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, |
| Enclosed and safe within its central heart, |
| Nestles the seed perfection. |
| By every life a share or more or less, |
|
None born but it is born, conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is
waiting. |
2
| Lo! keen-eyed towering science, |
| As from tall peaks the modern overlooking, |
| Successive absolute fiats issuing. |
| Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science, |
| For it has history gather'd like husks around the globe, |
| For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky. |
| In spiral routes by long detours, |
| (As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,) |
| For it the partial to the permanent flowing, |
| For it the real to the ideal tends. |
| For it the mystic evolution, |
| Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified. |
| Forth from their masks, no matter what, |
| From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears, |
| Health to emerge and joy, joy universal. |
| Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow, |
|
Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and
states, |
| Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all, |
| Only the good is universal. |
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3
| Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow, |
| An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, |
| High in the purer, happier air. |
| From imperfection's murkiest cloud, |
| Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, |
| One flash of heaven's glory. |
| To fashion's, custom's discord, |
| To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies, |
| Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, |
| From some far shore the final chorus sounding. |
| O the blest eyes, the happy hearts, |
| That see, that know the guiding thread so fine, |
| Along the mighty labyrinth. |
4
| And thou America, |
| For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality, |
| For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. |
| Thou too surroundest all, |
|
Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad
and new, |
| To the ideal tendest. |
| The measur'd faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past, |
| Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, |
| Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all, |
| All eligible to all. |
| All, all for immortality, |
| Love like the light silently wrapping all, |
| Nature's amelioration blessing all, |
| The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, |
| Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening. |
| Give me O God to sing that thought, |
| Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith, |
| In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us, |
| Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, |
| Health, peace, salvation universal. |
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| Is it a dream? |
| Nay but the lack of it the dream, |
| And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, |
| And all the world a dream. |