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

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 conceiv’d 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 loos’d 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,

The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

 

I am larger, better than I thought,

I did not know I held so much goodness.

 

All seems beautiful to me,

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 appear’d it would not

astonish me.

 

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 pass’d 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 fashion’d, 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 eye-balls?

 

7

Here is the efflux of the soul,

The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d 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?

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 them 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 fluid 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 distill’d 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 envelop’d,

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 shelter’d 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.

 

10

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 determin’d bodies,

No diseas’d 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.)

 

11

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 call’d riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,

You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly

settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d 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 reach’d hands

toward you.

 

12

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,

Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,

Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,

Habitues of many distant countries, habitues 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

children, 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-grain’d manhood,

Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,

Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,

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,

however 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

labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting 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,

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,

dissatisfied,

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 wash’d and trimm’d 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 wordless 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 bedroom,

everywhere,

Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the

breast-bones, hell under the