No More Learning

While yet a child
the family moved to Brooklyn, where the father worked at his trade
of carpentering, and where young Whitman attended the common
school till his thirteenth year. About this time he found employment
in a printing-office and learned to set type, and formed there tastes
and associations with printers and newspaper work that were strong
with him ever after. At the age of seventeen he became a country
school-teacher on Long Island, and began writing for newspapers and
magazines. We next hear of him about 1838-40 as editor and pub-
lisher of a weekly newspaper at Huntington, Long Island. After this
enterprise was abandoned, he found employment for five or six years
mainly in printing-offices as compositor, with occasional contributions
to the periodical literature of the day. He also wrote novels; only
.
the title of one of them — Frank Evans, a temperance tale — being
1
ness,
1


## p. 15887 (#223) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15887
preserved. In 1846–7 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.
It was during this decade, or from his twentieth to his thirtieth
year, that he seems to have entered so heartily and lovingly into
the larger, open-air life of New York: familiarizing himself with all
classes of workingmen and all trades and occupations; fraternizing
with drivers, pilots, mechanics; going, as he says in his poems, with
“powerful uneducated persons,” — letting his democratic proclivities
have full swing, and absorbing much that came to the surface later
in his 'Leaves of Grass. He was especially fond of omnibus drivers,
a unique class of men who have now disappeared. It is reported
of him that he once took the place of a disabled driver and drove
for him all winter, that the man's family might not suffer while he'
was recovering in the hospital. During this period he occasionally
appeared as a stump speaker at political mass-meetings in New York
and on Long Island, and was much liked.
When about thirty years of age, he set out on an extended and
very leisurely tour through the Middle, Western, and Southern States,
again absorbing material for his future work, and fetching up finally
in New Orleans, where he tarried a year or more, and where he
found employment on the editorial staff of the Crescent newspaper.
In 1850 we find him again in Brooklyn, where he started the Free-
man, an organ of the Free-Soilers. But the paper was short-lived.
Whitman had little business capacity, and was ill suited to any task
that required punctuality, promptness, or strict business methods.
He was a man, as he says in his “Leaves,' “preoccupied of his own
soul”; and money-getting and ordinary worldly success attracted him
but little. From 1851 to 1854 he turned his hand to his father's trade
of carpentering, building, and selling small houses to workingmen.
It is said that he might have prospered in this business had he con-
tinued in it. But other schemes filled his head.
He was already big with the conception of Leaves of Grass,' for
which consciously and unconsciously he had been many years get-
ting ready. He often dropped his carpentering to write away at his
Leaves. Finally, after many rewritings, in the spring of 1855 he
went to press with his book, setting up most of the type himself.
It came out as a thin quarto of ninety-four pages, presenting a
curious appearance to the eye and making a still more curious im-
pression upon the reader's mind. It attracted little attention save
ridicule, till Emerson wrote the author a letter containing a magnifi-
cent eulogium of the book, which Dana of the Tribune persuaded
Whitman to publish,- to Emerson's subsequent annoyance, since the
letter was made to cover a later edition of the Leaves) in which
was much more objectionable matter than in the first. This letter
brought the volume into notice, and helped to launch it and subsequent


## p. 15888 (#224) ##########################################

15888
WALT WHITMAN
enlarged editions of it upon its famous career, in both hemispheres.
So utterly out of keeping with the current taste in poetry was Whit-
man's work, that the first impression of it was, and in many minds
still is, to excite mirth and ridicule. This was partly because it took
no heed of the conventionalities of poetry or of human life, and partly
because of the naive simplicity of the author's mind.
In his poetry
he seems as untouched by our modern sophistications, and the over-
refinements of modern culture, as any of the Biblical writers.
In the second year of the Civil War, Whitman left Brooklyn and
became a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals in Washington. To
this occupation he gave much of his time and most of his substance
till after the close of the war. It is claimed for him that he person-
ally visited and ministered to over one hundred thousand sick and
wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. Out of this experience
grew his Drum Taps,' a thin volume of poems published in 1866.
It was subsequently incorporated with his 'Leaves. These were not
battle-pieces, or songs of triumph over a fallen foe,
“But a little book containing night's darkness, and blood-dripping wounds,
And psalms of the dead. ”
During these hospital years Whitman supported himself mainly by
writing letters to the New York Times. His Hospital Memoranda'
include most of this material. He wrote copious letters to his mother
at the same time, which were issued in book form during the fall of
1897 by his new Boston publishers, and named “The Wound-Dresser. ?
From 1865 to 1873 Whitman occupied the desk of a government clerk
in the Treasury Department. Previous to that time he had been dis-
missed from a position in the Interior Department, by its head, James
Harlan, because he was the author of Leaves of Grass. '
His services in the army hospitals impaired his health, and early
in 1873 he had a light stroke of paralysis. In the spring of that
year he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his brother, Colonel
George Whitman, was living. Camden now became his permanent
home. His health was much impaired, his means very limited, but his
serenity and cheerfulness never deserted him. Many foreign trav-
elers made pilgrimages to Camden to visit him. He was generally
regarded by Europeans as the one distinctive American poet, the true
outcome in literature of modern democracy. He died March 26th,
1892, and his body is buried in a Camden cemetery, in an imposing
granite tomb of his own designing. Whitman never married. He was
always poor, but he was a man much beloved by young and old of
both sexes, while in a small band of men and women he inspired
an enthusiasm and a depth of personal attachment rare in any age.
In person he was a man of large and fine physical proportions, and


## p. 15889 (#225) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15889
striking appearance. His tastes were simple, his wants few. He was
a man singularly clean in both speech and person. He loved primi-
tive things; and his strongest attachments were probably for simple,
natural, uneducated, but powerful persons. The common, the univer-
sal, that which all may have on equal terms, was as the breath of
his nostrils. In his "Leaves) he identifies himself fully with these
elements, declaring that -
«What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me. "
He aimed to put himself into a book, not after the manner of the
gossiping essayist like Montaigne, but after the manner of poetic
revelation; and sought to make his pages give an impression analo-
gous to that made by the living, breathing man. The Leaves' are
not beautiful like a statue, or any delicate and elaborate piece of carv-
ing; but beautiful, and ugly too if you like, as the living man or wo-
man is beautiful or ugly. The appeal is less to our abstract æsthetic
sense, and more to our concrete every-day sense of real things. This
is not to say that our æsthetic perceptions are not stimulated; but
only that they are appealed to in a different way, a less direct and
premeditated way, than they are in the popular poetry. Without the
emotion of the beautiful there can be no poetry; but beauty may
be the chief aim and gathered like flowers into nosegays, as in most
of the current poetry, or it may be subordinated, and left as it were
abroad in the air and landscape, as was Whitman's aim.
His con-
viction was that beauty should follow the poet — never lead him.
Whitman aimed at a complete human synthesis, and left the
reader to make of it what he could; and he is not at all disturbed if
he finds the bad there as well as the good, as in life itself. A good
deal of mental pressure must be brought to bear upon him before
his full meaning and significance comes out.
Readers who idly dip into him for poetic tidbits or literary mor-
ceaux, or who open his 'Leaves) expecting to be regaled with flowers
and perfumes, will surely be disappointed, if not shocked. His work
does not belong to the class of literary luxuries or delicacies. It
is primary and fundamental, and is only indirectly poetic; that is, it
does not seek beauty so much as it seeks that which makes beauty.
Its method is not exclusive, but inclusive. It is the work of a power-
ful spirit that seeks to grasp life and the universe as a whole, and
to charge the conception with religious and poetic emotion; perhaps
I should say religious emotion alone, as Whitman clearly identifies
the two. Light readers only find now and then a trace of the poetic
in his work: they fail to see the essentially poetic character of the
whole; and they fail to see that there is a larger poetry than that
of gems and flowers. The poetry of pretty words and fancies is one
XXVII-994
-


## p. 15890 (#226) ##########################################

15890
WALT WHITMAN
thing; the poetry of vast conceptions and enthusiasm, and of religious
and humanitarian emotion, is quite another.
Our pleasure in the rhymed, measured, highly wrought verse of
the popular poets is doubtless more acute and instant than it is in
the irregular dithyrambic periods of Whitman: the current poetry
is more in keeping with the thousand and one artificial things with
which the civilized man surrounds himself, — perfumes, colors, music;
the distilled, the highly seasoned, the elaborately carved, — wine,
sweetmeats, cosmetics, etc. , etc. Whitman, in respect to his art and
poetic quality, is more like simple natural products, or the every-day
family staples meat, bread, milk, or the free unhoused elements frost,
| rain, spray. There is little in him that suggests the artificial in life,
or that takes note of or is the outcome of the refinements of our
civilization. Though a man of deep culture, yet culture cannot claim
him as her own, and in many of her devotees repudiates him en-
tirely. He let nature speak, but in a way that the uncultured man
never could. In its tone and spirit his 'Leaves of Grass' is as primi-
tive as the antique bards, while it yet implies and necessitates mod-
ern civilization.
It is urged that his work is formless, chaotic. On the other hand,
it may be claimed that a work that makes a distinct and continuous
impression, that gives a sense of unity, that holds steadily to an
,
ideal, that is never in doubt about its own method and aims, and
that really grips the reader's mind or thought, is not in any deep
sense formless. Leaves of Grass' is obviously destitute of the arbi-
trary and artificial form of regular verse; it makes no account of the
prosodical system: but its admirers claim for it the essential, innate
form of all vital organic things. There are imitations of Whitman
that are formless: one feels no will or purpose in them; they make
no more impact upon the reader's mind than vapor upon his hand.
A work is formless that has no motives, no ideas, no vertebra, no
central purpose controlling and subordinating all the parts. In his
plan, as I have said, Whitman aimed to outline a human life, his
own life, here in democratic America in the middle of the nineteenth
century; giving not merely its æsthetic and spiritual side, but its car-
nal and materialistic side as well, and imbuing the whole with poetic
passion. In working out this purpose we are not to hold him to a
mechanical definiteness and accuracy: he may build freely and range
far and wide; a man is made up of many and contradictory ele-
ments, and his life is a compound of evil and of good. The forces
that shape him are dynamic and not mechanic. If Whitman has
confused his purpose, if all the parts of his work are not related
more or less directly to this central plan, then is he in the true
sense formless. The trouble with Whitman is, his method is that of


## p. 15891 (#227) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15891
the poet and not that of the essayist or philosopher. He is not the
least bit didactic; he never explains or apologizes. The reader must
take him on the wing, or not at all. He does not state his argu-
ment so much as he speaks out of it and effuses its atmosphere.
Then he is avowedly the poet of vista: to open doors and win-
dows, to let down bars rather than to put them up, to dissolve forms,
to escape boundaries, to plant the reader on a hill rather than in a
corner, — this fact is the explanation of the general character of his
work in respect to form.
Readers who have a keen sense of what is called artistic form in
poetry, meaning the sense of the deftly carved or shaped, are apt to
be repelled by the absence of all verse architecture in the poems.
A hostile critic might say they are not builded up, but heaped up.
But this would give a wrong impression, inasmuch as a piece of true
literature bears no necessary analogy to a house or the work of the
cabinet-maker. It may find its type or suggestion in a tree, a river,
or in any growing or expanding thing. Verse perfectly fluid, and
without any palpable, resisting extrinsic form whatever, or anything to
take his readers' attention away from himself and the content of his
page, was Whitman's aim.
Opinion will doubtless long be divided about the value of his
work. He said he was willing to wait to be understood by the
growth of the taste of himself. That this taste is growing, that the
new generations are coming more and more into his spirit and atmo-
sphere, that the mountain is less and less forbidding, and looms up
more and more as we get farther from it, is obvious enough. That
he will ever be in any sense a popular poet is in the highest degree
improbable: but that he will kindle enthusiasm in successive minds;
that he will be an enormous feeder to the coming poetic genius of
his country; that he will enlarge criticism, and make it easy for every
succeeding poet to be himself and to be American; and finally that
he will take his place among the few major poets of the race, I have
not the least doubt.
Josu
Aurroughs


## p. 15892 (#228) ##########################################

15892
WALT WHITMAN
[The following selections are used by permission of the legal representatives
of the estate of Walt Whitman. ]
I HEARD YOU SOLEMN-SWEET PIPES OF THE ORGAN
I
HEARD you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn
I passed the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walked the woods at dusk I heard your
long-stretched sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of
the wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you when all was still ringing little bells last
night under my ear.
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I
Foot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
AF
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am filled with them, and I will fill them in return. )
2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all
that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.


## p. 15893 (#229) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15893
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseased, the illiterate
person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the
drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping
couple,
The early marketman, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the
town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them
shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to
me.
You flagged walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges !
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you tirnber-lined
sides! you distant ships !
You rows of houses! you window-pierced façades! you roofs !
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touched you I believe you have imparted to
yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to
me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive sur-
faces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and ami-
cable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is
not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the
road.


## p. 15894 (#230) ##########################################

15894
WALT WHITMAN
O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not — if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love
you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and all free
poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.
5
From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say, .
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
[mine.
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to
me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I
go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze
me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appeared it would not
astonish me.


## p. 15895 (#231) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15895
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room.
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
authority and all argument against it. )
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under
the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing
currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied — he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love if they are vacant of you, you
are vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashioned, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers ?
Do you know the talk of those turning eyeballs ?
7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embowered gates
ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why
are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the
sunlight expands my blood ?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?


## p. 15896 (#232) ##########################################

15896
WALT WHITMAN
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious
thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and
always drop fruit as I pass :)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers ?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side ?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk
by and pause ?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what
gives me to be free to mine ?
8
The efflux of the Soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The Auid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of
man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day
out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and
sweet continually out of itself. )
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the
love of young and old,
From it falls distilled the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.
9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude
and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well enveloped,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can
tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling
we cannot remain here,
However sheltered this port and however calm these waters we must
not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted
to receive it but a little while.


## p. 15897 (#233) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15897
IO
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper
speeds by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage
the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determined bodies,
No diseased person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted
here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence. )
II
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough 'new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destined, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are called by an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those
who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reached hands
toward you.
I 2
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road — they are the swift and majestic men-
they are the greatest women,


## p.
15898 (#234) ##########################################

15898
WALT WHITMAN
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habituès of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of child-
ren, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of
coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious
years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded
and well-grained manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpassed, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or woman-
hood.
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the
universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights
they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it
and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, how-
ever long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without
låbor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstract-
ing one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant
villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple,
and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you
go,


## p. 15899 (#235) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15899
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter
them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave
them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments
- all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches
and corners before the procession of souls, along the
grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand
roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed
emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dis-
satisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they
go,
But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimmed
faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and worldless through the streets of the cities, polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bed-
room, everywhere,


## p. 15900 (#236) ##########################################

15900
WALT WHITMAN
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial
flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself.
14
Allons! through struggles and wars !
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded ?
What has succeeded ? yourself? your nation ? Nature ?
Now understand me well — it is provided in the essence of things
that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come forth something to make a greater struggle neces-
sary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well armed,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry en-
emies, desertions.
15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well — be not
detained!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the
shelf unopened!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain un-
earned!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live ?


## p. 15901 (#237) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15901
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
T"
"He last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finished Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.
Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the housetops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.
I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-keyed bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.
I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums
Strikes me through and through.
For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father drop together,
And the double grave awaits them. )
Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.
In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumined.
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing. )
O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.


## p. 15902 (#238) ##########################################

15902
WALT WHITMAN
WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR-YARD BLOOMED
I
HEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the
night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
WF
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night -0 moody, tearful night!
O great star disappeared -0 the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless - O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul!
-
3
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the whitewashed
palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich
green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong
I love,
With every leaf a miracle; — and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song. -
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die).


## p. 15903 (#239) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15903
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped
from the ground, spotting the gray débris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the end-
less grass,
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the
dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled women
standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the
unbared heads,
With the waiting dépôt, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong
and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where amid these
you journey,
With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,-
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring;
For, fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you, O sane
and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, o death. )


## p. 15904 (#240) ##########################################

15904
WALT WHITMAN
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walked,
As I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after
night,
As you drooped from the sky low down as if to my side (while the
other stars all looked on),
As we wandered together the solemn night (for something. I know
not what, kept me from sleep),
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full
you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent
night,
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the netherward black
of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you, sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you;
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detained me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
IO
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has
gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till
there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
II
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ?


## p. 15905 (#241) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15905
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid
and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,
burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves
of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a
wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky,
and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chim-
neys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen
homeward returning.
I 2
Lo, body and soul — this land,
My, own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides,
and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light,
Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading, bathing all, the fulfilled noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses; pour your chant from the
bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous singer!
You only I hear — yet the star holds me (but will soon depart),
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
XXVII–995


## p. 15906 (#242) ##########################################

15906
WALT WHITMAN
14
Now while I sat in the day and looked forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and
the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and
forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the perturbed winds and the
storms),
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the
voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sailed,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy
with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its
meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbbed, and the cities pent-
lo, then and there,
[rest,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the
Appeared the cloud, appeared the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands
of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dim-
ness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest received me,
The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands iny comrades in the night,
And the voice of iny spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come, lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death.


## p. 15907 (#243) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15907
Praised be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love -- but praise! praise ! praise !
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach, strong deliveress!
When it is so, when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Lazed in the flood of thy bliss, O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee, I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee;
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night -
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering ware whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies
wide,
Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading, filling the night,
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I
saw them,


## p. 15908 (#244) ##########################################

15908
WALT WHITMAN
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence),
And the staffs all splintered and broken.
-
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them;
I saw the débris and débris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought, -
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not:
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my
soul,
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding
the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again
bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing
with thee,
O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe.
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep,
for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands — and this for
his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.


## p. 15909 (#245) ##########################################

WALT WHITMAN
15909
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O
CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is
won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
Wnile follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells:
Rise up! - for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills,
- -
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the shores a-crowd-
ing;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has nor pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY
(May 4th, 1865)
USHED be the camps to-day,
And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate
Our dear commander's death.
H
No more for him life's stormy conflicts,
Nor victory, nor defeat;- no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky,


## p. 15910 (#246) ##########################################

15910
WALT WHITMAN
But sing, poet, in our name,
Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller in camps,
know it truly.
As they invault the coffin there,
Sing as they close the doors of earth upon him
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.
one verse,
«DAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL »
D
AREST thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not, O soul,
Nor dost thou; all is a blank before us;
All waits undreamed-of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all! ) them to fulfill, O soul.
A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
A
NOISELESS patient spider
I marked, where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how, to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament; filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, () my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to con-
nect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you Aling catch somewhere, O my soul.


## p. 15910 (#247) ##########################################



## p. 15910 (#248) ##########################################


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