Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

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The mighty earth-eidolon.

       All space, all time,

       (The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,

       Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)

       Fill'd with eidolons only.

       The noiseless myriads,

       The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,

       The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,

       The true realities, eidolons.

       Not this the world,

       Nor these the universes, they the universes,

       Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,

       Eidolons, eidolons.

       Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,

       Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,

       Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,

       The entities of entities, eidolons.

       Unfix'd yet fix'd,

       Ever shall be, ever have been and are,

       Sweeping the present to the infinite future,

       Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

       The prophet and the bard,

       Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,

       Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,

       God and eidolons.

       And thee my soul,

       Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,

       Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,

       Thy mates, eidolons.

       Thy body permanent,

       The body lurking there within thy body,

       The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,

       An image, an eidolon.

       Thy very songs not in thy songs,

       No special strains to sing, none for itself,

       But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,

       A round full-orb'd eidolon.

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      For him I sing,

       I raise the present on the past,

       (As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present on the past,)

       With time and space I him dilate and fuse the immortal laws,

       To make himself by them the law unto himself.

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      When I read the book, the biography famous,

       And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?

       And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?

       (As if any man really knew aught of my life,

       Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,

       Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections

       I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

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      Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,

       The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,

       The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,

       The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,

       I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,

       But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

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      How they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals,)

       How dear and dreadful they are to the earth,

       How they inure to themselves as much as to any—what a paradox

       appears their age,

       How people respond to them, yet know them not,

       How there is something relentless in their fate all times,

       How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,

       And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same

       great purchase.

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      To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist

       much, obey little,

       Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,

       Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever

       afterward resumes its liberty.

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      On journeys through the States we start,

       (Ay through the world, urged by these songs,

       Sailing henceforth to every land, to every sea,)

       We willing learners of all, teachers of all, and lovers of all.

       We have watch'd the seasons dispensing themselves and passing on,

       And have said, Why should not a man or woman do as much as the

       seasons, and effuse as much?

       We dwell a while in every city and town,

       We pass through Kanada, the North-east, the vast valley of the

       Mississippi, and the Southern States,

       We confer on equal terms with each of the States,

       We make trial of ourselves and invite men and women to hear,

       We say to ourselves, Remember, fear not, be candid, promulge the

       body and the soul,

       Dwell a while and pass on, be copious, temperate, chaste, magnetic,

       And what you effuse may then return as the seasons return,

       And may be just as much as the seasons.

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