Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman [books to read for 12 year olds txt] 📗

of life, for reasons, and that

they are mainly for you,

That you beyond them come forth to remain, the real reality,

That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long,

That you will one day perhaps take control of all,

That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,

That may-be you are what it is all for, but it does not last so very long,

But you will last very long.

 

} Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand

 

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,

Without one thing all will be useless,

I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,

I am not what you supposed, but far different.

 

Who is he that would become my follower?

Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

 

The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive,

You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your

sole and exclusive standard,

Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,

The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives

around you would have to be abandon’d,

Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let

go your hand from my shoulders,

Put me down and depart on your way.

 

Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,

Or back of a rock in the open air,

(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company,

And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)

But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any

person for miles around approach unawares,

Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or

some quiet island,

Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,

For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

 

Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,

Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip,

Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;

For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,

And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.

 

But these leaves conning you con at peril,

For these leaves and me you will not understand,

They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will

certainly elude you.

Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!

Already you see I have escaped from you.

 

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,

Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,

Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me,

Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few)

prove victorious,

Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil,

perhaps more,

For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times

and not hit, that which I hinted at;

Therefore release me and depart on your way.

 

} For You, O Democracy

 

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,

I will make divine magnetic lands,

With the love of comrades,

With the life-long love of comrades.

 

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,

and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,

I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,

By the love of comrades,

By the manly love of comrades.

 

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

 

} These I Singing in Spring

 

These I singing in spring collect for lovers,

(For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates,

Now along the pondside, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,

Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there,

pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,

(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and

partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)

Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I

think where I go,

Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,

Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,

Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,

They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a

great crowd, and I in the middle,

Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,

Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,

Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,

Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in

Florida as it hung trailing down,

Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,

And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,

(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again

never to separate from me,

And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this

calamus-root shall,

Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)

And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,

And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,

These I compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,

Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,

Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each;

But what I drew from the water by the pondside, that I reserve,

I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable

of loving.

 

} Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only

 

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only,

Not in sighs at night in rage dissatisfied with myself,

Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs,

Not in many an oath and promise broken,

Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition,

Not in the subtle nourishment of the air,

Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists,

Not in the curious systole and diastole within which will one day cease,

Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only,

Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far in

the wilds,

Not in husky pantings through clinch’d teeth,

Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words,

Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,

Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day,

Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you

continually—not there,

Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!

Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.

 

} Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

 

Of the terrible doubt of appearances,

Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,

That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,

That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,

May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills,

shining and flowing waters,

The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be these

are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real

something has yet to be known,

(How often they dart out of themselves as if to confound me and mock me!

How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them,)

May-be seeming to me what they are (as doubtless they indeed but seem)

as from my present point of view, and might prove (as of course they

would) nought of what they appear, or nought anyhow, from entirely

changed points of view;

To me these and the like of these are curiously answer’d by my

lovers, my dear friends,

When he whom I love travels with me or sits a long while holding me

by the hand,

When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason

hold not, surround us and pervade us,

Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am silent, I

require nothing further,

I cannot answer the question of appearances or that of identity

beyond the grave,

But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied,

He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me.

 

} The Base of All Metaphysics

 

And now gentlemen,

A word I give to remain in your memories and minds,

As base and finale too for all metaphysics.

 

(So to the students the old professor,

At the close of his crowded course.)

 

Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems,

Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel,

Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato,

And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine having

studied long,

I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and Germanic systems,

See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see,

Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the divine I see,

The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend,

Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents,

Of city for city and land for land.

 

} Recorders Ages Hence

 

Recorders ages hence,

Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior, I

will tell you what to say of me,

Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,

The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest,

Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless ocean of love

within him, and freely pour’d it forth,

Who often walk’d lonesome walks thinking of his dear friends, his lovers,

Who pensive away from one he lov’d often lay sleepless and

dissatisfied at night,

Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov’d might

secretly be indifferent to him,

Whose happiest days were far away through fields, in woods, on hills,

he and another wandering hand in hand, they twain apart from other men,

Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder

of his friend, while the arm of his friend rested upon him also.

 

} When I Heard at the Close of the Day

 

When I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d

with plaudits in the capitol, still it was not a happy night for

me that follow’d,

And else when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still

I was not happy,

But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health,

refresh’d, singing, inhaling the ripe breath of autumn,

When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the

morning light,

When I wander’d alone over the beach, and undressing bathed,

laughing with the cool waters, and saw the sun rise,

And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way

coming, O then I was happy,

O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food

nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,

And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came

my friend,

And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly

continually up the