WALT WHITMAN Ultimate Collection: 500+ Works in Poetry & Prose - Walt Whitman

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singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

       The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

       The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

       The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand

       singing on the steamboat deck,

       The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as

       he stands,

       The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning,

       or at noon intermission or at sundown,

       The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,

       or of the girl sewing or washing,

       Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

       The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young

       fellows, robust, friendly,

       Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

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      What place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege?

       Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal,

       And with him horse and foot, and parks of artillery,

       And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun.

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      Still though the one I sing,

       (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality,

       I leave in him revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O

       quenchless, indispensable fire!)

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      Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,

       For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet

       needed most, I bring,

       Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,

       The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,

       A book separate, not link’d with the rest nor felt by the intellect,

       But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

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      Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

       Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,

       But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than

       before known,

       Arouse! for you must justify me.

      I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

       I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

      I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a

       casual look upon you and then averts his face,

       Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

       Expecting the main things from you.

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      Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why

       should you not speak to me?

       And why should I not speak to you?

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      Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,

       Therefore for thee the following chants.

      BOOK II

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      1

       Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born,

       Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,

       After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,

       Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas,

       Or a soldier camp’d or carrying my knapsack and gun, or a miner

       in California,

       Or rude in my home in Dakota’s woods, my diet meat, my drink from

       the spring,

       Or withdrawn to muse and meditate in some deep recess,

       Far from the clank of crowds intervals passing rapt and happy,

       Aware of the fresh free giver the flowing Missouri, aware of

       mighty Niagara,

       Aware of the buffalo herds grazing the plains, the hirsute and

       strong-breasted bull,

       Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers experienced, stars, rain, snow,

       my amaze,

       Having studied the mocking-bird’s tones and the flight of the

       mountain-hawk,

       And heard at dawn the unrivall’d one, the hermit thrush from the

       swamp-cedars,

       Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.

      2

       Victory, union, faith, identity, time,

       The indissoluble compacts, riches, mystery,

       Eternal progress, the kosmos, and the modern reports.

       This then is life,

       Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

      How curious! how real!

       Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

      See revolving the globe,

       The ancestor-continents away group’d together,

       The present and future continents north and south, with the isthmus

       between.

      See, vast trackless spaces,

       As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,

       Countless masses debouch upon them,

       They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.

      See,

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