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

fierce and terrible in me eligible

to burst forth,

I dare not tell it in words, not even in these songs.

 

} I Dream’d in a Dream

 

I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the

whole of the rest of the earth,

I dream’d that was the new city of Friends,

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,

And in all their looks and words.

 

} What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?

 

What think you I take my pen in hand to record?

The battle-ship, perfect-model’d, majestic, that I saw pass the

offing to-day under full sail?

The splendors of the past day? or the splendor of the night that

envelops me?

Or the vaunted glory and growth of the great city spread around me? —no;

But merely of two simple men I saw to-day on the pier in the midst

of the crowd, parting the parting of dear friends,

The one to remain hung on the other’s neck and passionately kiss’d him,

While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.

 

} To the East and to the West

 

To the East and to the West,

To the man of the Seaside State and of Pennsylvania,

To the Kanadian of the north, to the Southerner I love,

These with perfect trust to depict you as myself, the germs are in all men,

I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb

friendship, exalte, previously unknown,

Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men.

 

} Sometimes with One I Love

 

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse

unreturn’d love,

But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one

way or another,

(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return’d,

Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

 

} To a Western Boy

 

Many things to absorb I teach to help you become eleve of mine;

Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins,

If you be not silently selected by lovers and do not silently select lovers,

Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine?

 

} Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!

 

Fast-anchor’d eternal O love! O woman I love!

O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you!

Then separate, as disembodied or another born,

Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,

I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,

O sharer of my roving life.

 

} Among the Multitude

 

Among the men and women the multitude,

I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,

Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,

any nearer than I am,

Some are baffled, but that one is not—that one knows me.

 

Ah lover and perfect equal,

I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,

And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.

 

} O You Whom I Often and Silently Come

 

O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,

As I walk by your side or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,

Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is

playing within me.

 

} That Shadow My Likeness

 

That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood,

chattering, chaffering,

How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits,

How often I question and doubt whether that is really me;

But among my lovers and caroling these songs,

O I never doubt whether that is really me.

 

} Full of Life Now

 

Full of life now, compact, visible,

I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,

To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,

To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

 

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,

Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,

Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;

Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)

 

[BOOK VI]

 

} Salut au Monde!

 

1

O take my hand Walt Whitman!

Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!

Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next,

Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.

 

What widens within you Walt Whitman?

What waves and soils exuding?

What climes? what persons and cities are here?

Who are the infants, some playing, some slumbering?

Who are the girls? who are the married women?

Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about

each other’s necks?

What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?

What are the mountains call’d that rise so high in the mists?

What myriads of dwellings are they fill’d with dwellers?

 

2

Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens,

Asia, Africa, Europe, are to the east—America is provided for in the west,

Banding the bulge of the earth winds the hot equator,

Curiously north and south turn the axis-ends,

Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it

does not set for months,

Stretch’d in due time within me the midnight sun just rises above

the horizon and sinks again,

Within me zones, seas, cataracts, forests, volcanoes, groups,

Malaysia, Polynesia, and the great West Indian islands.

 

3

What do you hear Walt Whitman?

 

I hear the workman singing and the farmer’s wife singing,

I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early

in the day,

I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse,

I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to

the rebeck and guitar,

I hear continual echoes from the Thames,

I hear fierce French liberty songs,

I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems,

I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with

the showers of their terrible clouds,

I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the

breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile,

I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule,

I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque,

I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear

the responsive base and soprano,

I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor’s voice putting to sea

at Okotsk,

I hear the wheeze of the slave-coffle as the slaves march on, as the

husky gangs pass on by twos and threes, fasten’d together

with wrist-chains and ankle-chains,

I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms,

I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of

the Romans,

I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful

God the Christ,

I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars,

adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who wrote three

thousand years ago.

 

4

What do you see Walt Whitman?

Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you?

I see a great round wonder rolling through space,

I see diminute farms, hamlets, ruins, graveyards, jails, factories,

palaces, hovels, huts of barbarians, tents of nomads upon the surface,

I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,

and the sunlit part on the other side,

I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade,

I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as

my land is to me.

 

I see plenteous waters,

I see mountain peaks, I see the sierras of Andes where they range,

I see plainly the Himalayas, Chian Shahs, Altays, Ghauts,

I see the giant pinnacles of Elbruz, Kazbek, Bazardjusi,

I see the Styrian Alps, and the Karnac Alps,

I see the Pyrenees, Balks, Carpathians, and to the north the

Dofrafields, and off at sea mount Hecla,

I see Vesuvius and Etna, the mountains of the Moon, and the Red

mountains of Madagascar,

I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts,

I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs,

I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones, the Atlantic and

Pacific, the sea of Mexico, the Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,

The waters of Hindustan, the China sea, and the gulf of Guinea,

The Japan waters, the beautiful bay of Nagasaki land-lock’d in its

mountains,

The spread of the Baltic, Caspian, Bothnia, the British shores, and

the bay of Biscay,

The clear-sunn’d Mediterranean, and from one to another of its islands,

The White sea, and the sea around Greenland.

 

I behold the mariners of the world,

Some are in storms, some in the night with the watch on the lookout,

Some drifting helplessly, some with contagious diseases.

 

I behold the sail and steamships of the world, some in clusters in

port, some on their voyages,

Some double the cape of Storms, some cape Verde, others capes

Guardafui, Bon, or Bajadore,

Others Dondra head, others pass the straits of Sunda, others cape

Lopatka, others Behring’s straits,

Others cape Horn, others sail the gulf of Mexico or along Cuba or

Hayti, others Hudson’s bay or Baffin’s bay,

Others pass the straits of Dover, others enter the Wash, others the

firth of Solway, others round cape Clear, others the Land’s End,

Others traverse the Zuyder Zee or the Scheld,

Others as comers and goers at Gibraltar or the Dardanelles,

Others sternly push their way through the northern winter-packs,

Others descend or ascend the Obi or the Lena,

Others the Niger or the Congo, others the Indus, the Burampooter

and Cambodia,

Others wait steam’d up ready to start in the ports of Australia,

Wait at Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Marseilles, Lisbon, Naples,

Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, the Hague, Copenhagen,

Wait at Valparaiso, Rio Janeiro, Panama.

 

5

I see the tracks of the railroads of the earth,

I see them in Great Britain, I see them in Europe,

I see them in Asia and in Africa.

 

I see the electric telegraphs of the earth,

I see the filaments of the news of the wars, deaths, losses, gains,

passions, of my race.

 

I see the long river-stripes of the earth,

I see the Amazon and the Paraguay,

I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River,

the Yiang-tse, and the Pearl,

I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire, the

Rhone, and the Guadalquiver flow,

I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder,

I see the Tuscan going down the Arno, and the Venetian along the Po,

I see the Greek seaman sailing out of Egina bay.

 

6

I see the site of the old empire of Assyria, and that of Persia, and

that of India,

I see the falling of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara.

 

I see the place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in

human forms,

I see the spots of the successions of priests on the earth, oracles,

sacrificers, brahmins, sabians, llamas, monks, muftis, exhorters,

I see where druids walk’d the groves of Mona, I see the mistletoe

and vervain,

I see the temples of the deaths of the bodies of Gods, I see the old

signifiers.

 

I see