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

in the

whole world.

 

5

The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d

wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely,

Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of new-comers or the

anchor-lifters of the departing,

Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops

selling goods from the rest of the earth,

Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place where

money is plentiest,

Nor the place of the most numerous population.

 

Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards,

Where the city stands that is belov’d by these, and loves them in

return and understands them,

Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds,

Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place,

Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,

Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases,

Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of

elected persons,

Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea to the whistle of

death pours its sweeping and unript waves,

Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside

authority,

Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President,

Mayor, Governor and what not, are agents for pay,

Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on

themselves,

Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs,

Where speculations on the soul are encouraged,

Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the men,

Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men;

Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands,

Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands,

Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands,

Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands,

There the great city stands.

 

6

How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a

man’s or woman’s look!

 

All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears;

A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe,

When he or she appears materials are overaw’d,

The dispute on the soul stops,

The old customs and phrases are confronted, turn’d back, or laid away.

 

What is your moneymaking now? what can it do now?

What is your respectability now?

What are your theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books, now?

Where are your jibes of being now?

Where are your cavils about the soul now?

 

7

A sterile landscape covers the ore, there is as good as the best for

all the forbidding appearance,

There is the mine, there are the miners,

The forge-furnace is there, the melt is accomplish’d, the hammersmen

are at hand with their tongs and hammers,

What always served and always serves is at hand.

 

Than this nothing has better served, it has served all,

Served the fluent-tongued and subtle-sensed Greek, and long ere the Greek,

Served in building the buildings that last longer than any,

Served the Hebrew, the Persian, the most ancient Hindustanee,

Served the mound-raiser on the Mississippi, served those whose

relics remain in Central America,

Served Albic temples in woods or on plains, with unhewn pillars and

the druids,

Served the artificial clefts, vast, high, silent, on the

snow-cover’d hills of Scandinavia,

Served those who time out of mind made on the granite walls rough

sketches of the sun, moon, stars, ships, ocean waves,

Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths, served the pastoral

tribes and nomads,

Served the long distant Kelt, served the hardy pirates of the Baltic,

Served before any of those the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,

Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure and the

making of those for war,

Served all great works on land and all great works on the sea,

For the mediaeval ages and before the mediaeval ages,

Served not the living only then as now, but served the dead.

 

8

I see the European headsman,

He stands mask’d, clothed in red, with huge legs and strong naked arms,

And leans on a ponderous axe.

 

(Whom have you slaughter’d lately European headsman?

Whose is that blood upon you so wet and sticky?)

 

I see the clear sunsets of the martyrs,

I see from the scaffolds the descending ghosts,

Ghosts of dead lords, uncrown’d ladies, impeach’d ministers, rejected kings,

Rivals, traitors, poisoners, disgraced chieftains and the rest.

 

I see those who in any land have died for the good cause,

The seed is spare, nevertheless the crop shall never run out,

(Mind you O foreign kings, O priests, the crop shall never run out.)

 

I see the blood wash’d entirely away from the axe,

Both blade and helve are clean,

They spirt no more the blood of European nobles, they clasp no more

the necks of queens.

 

I see the headsman withdraw and become useless,

I see the scaffold untrodden and mouldy, I see no longer any axe upon it,

 

I see the mighty and friendly emblem of the power of my own race,

the newest, largest race.

 

9

(America! I do not vaunt my love for you,

I have what I have.)

 

The axe leaps!

The solid forest gives fluid utterances,

They tumble forth, they rise and form,

Hut, tent, landing, survey,

Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,

Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable,

Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,

Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch,

Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet,

wedge, rounce,

Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,

Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not,

Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,

Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans or for the poor or sick,

Manhattan steamboats and clippers taking the measure of all seas.

 

The shapes arise!

Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users and all that

neighbors them,

Cutters down of wood and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kenebec,

Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains or by the little

lakes, or on the Columbia,

Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande, friendly

gatherings, the characters and fun,

Dwellers along the St. Lawrence, or north in Kanada, or down by the

Yellowstone, dwellers on coasts and off coasts,

Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.

 

The shapes arise!

Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,

Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,

Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,

Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft,

Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and in

many a bay and by-place,

The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the

hackmatack-roots for knees,

The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the

workmen busy outside and inside,

The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,

bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.

 

10

The shapes arise!

The shape measur’d, saw’d, jack’d, join’d, stain’d,

The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud,

The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of

the bride’s bed,

The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath,

the shape of the babe’s cradle,

The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers’ feet,

The shape of the planks of the family home, the home of the friendly

parents and children,

The shape of the roof of the home of the happy young man and

woman, the roof over the well-married young man and woman,

The roof over the supper joyously cook’d by the chaste wife, and joyously

eaten by the chaste husband, content after his day’s work.

 

The shapes arise!

The shape of the prisoner’s place in the court-room, and of him or

her seated in the place,

The shape of the liquor-bar lean’d against by the young rum-drinker

and the old rum-drinker,

The shape of the shamed and angry stairs trod by sneaking foot-steps,

The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple,

The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings,

The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced

murderer, the murderer with haggard face and pinion’d arms,

The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp’d

crowd, the dangling of the rope.

 

The shapes arise!

Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances,

The door passing the dissever’d friend flush’d and in haste,

The door that admits good news and bad news,

The door whence the son left home confident and puff’d up,

The door he enter’d again from a long and scandalous absence,

diseas’d, broken down, without innocence, without means.

 

11

Her shape arises,

She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,

The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d,

She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is conceal’d from her,

She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,

She is the best belov’d, it is without exception, she has no reason

to fear and she does not fear,

Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp’d songs, smutty expressions, are idle to

her as she passes,

She is silent, she is possess’d of herself, they do not offend her,

She receives them as the laws of Nature receive them, she is strong,

She too is a law of Nature—there is no law stronger than she is.

 

12

The main shapes arise!

Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries,

Shapes ever projecting other shapes,

Shapes of turbulent manly cities,

Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,

Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.

 

[BOOK XIII]

 

} Song of the Exposition

 

1

(Ah little recks the laborer,

How near his work is holding him to God,

The loving Laborer through space and time.)

 

After all not to create only, or found only,

But to bring perhaps from afar what is already founded,

To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free,

To fill the gross the torpid bulk with vital religious fire,

Not to repel or destroy so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate,

To obey as well as command, to follow more than to lead,

These also are the lessons of our New World;

While how little the New after all, how much the Old, Old World!

 

Long and long has the grass been growing,

Long and long has the rain been falling,

Long has the globe been rolling round.

 

2

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia,

Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts,

That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and AEneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings,

Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus,

Repeat at Jerusalem, place the notice high on jaffa’s gate and on

Mount Moriah,

The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles,

and Italian collections,

For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain

awaits, demands you.

 

3

Responsive to our summons,

Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,

Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation,

She comes! I hear the rustling of her gown,

I scent the odor of her breath’s delicious fragrance,

I mark her step divine, her curious eyes aturning, rolling,

Upon this very scene.

 

The dame of dames! can I believe then,

Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her?

Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old

associations, magnetize and hold on to her?

But that she’s left them all—and here?

 

Yes, if you will allow me to say so,

I, my friends, if you do