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

reckon’d them for, camerado?

Have you reckon’d them for your trade or farm-work? or for the

profits of your store?

Or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill a gentleman’s leisure,

or a lady’s leisure?

 

Have you reckon’d that the landscape took substance and form that it

might be painted in a picture?

Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?

Or the attraction of gravity, and the great laws and harmonious combinations

and the fluids of the air, as subjects for the savans?

Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?

Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?

Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables, or

agriculture itself?

 

Old institutions, these arts, libraries, legends, collections, and

the practice handed along in manufactures, will we rate them so high?

Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,

I rate them as high as the highest—then a child born of a woman and

man I rate beyond all rate.

 

We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,

I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,

I am this day just as much in love with them as you,

Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the earth.

 

We consider bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine,

I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,

It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,

Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth,

than they are shed out of you.

 

4

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you whoever you are,

The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who

are here for him,

The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,

The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you,

Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the

going and coming of commerce and malls, are all for you.

 

List close my scholars dear,

Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you,

Sculpture and monuments and any thing inscribed anywhere are tallied in you,

The gist of histories and statistics as far back as the records

reach is in you this hour, and myths and tales the same,

If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all be?

The most renown’d poems would be ashes, orations and plays would

be vacuums.

 

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it,

(Did you think it was in the white or gray stone? or the lines of

the arches and cornices?)

 

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments,

It is not the violins and the cornets, it is not the oboe nor the

beating drums, nor the score of the baritone singer singing his

sweet romanza, nor that of the men’s chorus, nor that of the

women’s chorus,

It is nearer and farther than they.

 

5

Will the whole come back then?

Can each see signs of the best by a look in the looking-glass? is

there nothing greater or more?

Does all sit there with you, with the mystic unseen soul?

 

Strange and hard that paradox true I give,

Objects gross and the unseen soul are one.

 

House-building, measuring, sawing the boards,

Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing,

shingle-dressing,

Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, flagging of sidewalks by flaggers,

The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brickkiln,

Coal-mines and all that is down there, the lamps in the darkness,

echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts

looking through smutch’d faces,

Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains or by river-banks, men

around feeling the melt with huge crowbars, lumps of ore, the

due combining of ore, limestone, coal,

The blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the

bottom of the melt at last, the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars

of pig-iron, the strong clean-shaped Trail for railroads,

Oil-works, silk-works, white-lead-works, the sugar-house,

steam-saws, the great mills and factories,

Stone-cutting, shapely trimmings for facades or window or door-lintels,

the mallet, the tooth-chisel, the jib to protect the thumb,

The calking-iron, the kettle of boiling vault-cement, and the fire

under the kettle,

The cotton-bale, the stevedore’s hook, the saw and buck of the

sawyer, the mould of the moulder, the working-knife of the

butcher, the ice-saw, and all the work with ice,

The work and tools of the rigger, grappler, sail-maker, block-maker,

Goods of gutta-percha, papier-mache, colors, brushes, brush-making,

glazier’s implements,

The veneer and glue-pot, the confectioner’s ornaments, the decanter

and glasses, the shears and flat-iron,

The awl and knee-strap, the pint measure and quart measure, the

counter and stool, the writing-pen of quill or metal, the making

of all sorts of edged tools,

The brewery, brewing, the malt, the vats, every thing that is done

by brewers, wine-makers, vinegar-makers,

Leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making, rope-twisting,

distilling, sign-painting, lime-burning, cotton-picking,

electroplating, electrotyping, stereotyping,

Stave-machines, planing-machines, reaping-machines,

ploughing-machines, thrashing-machines, steam wagons,

The cart of the carman, the omnibus, the ponderous dray,

Pyrotechny, letting off color’d fireworks at night, fancy figures and jets;

Beef on the butcher’s stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the

butcher in his killing-clothes,

The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the

scalder’s tub, gutting, the cutter’s cleaver, the packer’s maul,

and the plenteous winterwork of pork-packing,

Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice, the barrels and

the half and quarter barrels, the loaded barges, the high piles

on wharves and levees,

The men and the work of the men on ferries, railroads, coasters,

fish-boats, canals;

The hourly routine of your own or any man’s life, the shop, yard,

store, or factory,

These shows all near you by day and night—workman! whoever you

are, your daily life!

 

In that and them the heft of the heaviest—in that and them far more

than you estimated, (and far less also,)

In them realities for you and me, in them poems for you and me,

In them, not yourself-you and your soul enclose all things,

regardless of estimation,

In them the development good—in them all themes, hints, possibilities.

 

I do not affirm that what you see beyond is futile, I do not advise

you to stop,

I do not say leadings you thought great are not great,

But I say that none lead to greater than these lead to.

 

6

Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,

In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,

In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for

another hour but this hour,

Man in the first you see or touch, always in friend, brother,

nighest neighbor—woman in mother, sister, wife,

The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or anywhere,

You workwomen and workmen of these States having your own divine

and strong life,

And all else giving place to men and women like you.

When the psalm sings instead of the singer,

 

When the script preaches instead of the preacher,

When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved

the supporting desk,

When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when they

touch my body back again,

When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child

convince,

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman’s daughter,

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly

companions,

I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do

of men and women like you.

 

[BOOK XVI]

 

} A Song of the Rolling Earth

 

1

A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,

Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?

those curves, angles, dots?

No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground

and sea,

They are in the air, they are in you.

 

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds

out of your friends’ mouths?

No, the real words are more delicious than they.

 

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,

(In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s,

well-shaped, natural, gay,

Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

 

Air, soil, water, fire—those are words,

I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with

theirs—my name is nothing to them,

Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would

air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?

 

A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,

sayings, meanings,

The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,

are sayings and meanings also.

 

The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth,

The masters know the earth’s words and use them more than audible words.

 

Amelioration is one of the earth’s words,

The earth neither lags nor hastens,

It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump,

It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as

much as perfections show.

 

The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,

The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d either,

They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,

They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly,

Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,

I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you?

To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?

 

(Accouche! accouchez!

Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?

Will you squat and stifle there?)

 

The earth does not argue,

Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,

Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,

Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,

Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,

Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.

 

The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,

possesses still underneath,

Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the

wail of slaves,

Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young

people, accents of bargainers,

Underneath these possessing words that never fall.

 

To her children the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail,

The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail and reflection

does not fall,

Also the day and night do not fall, and the voyage we pursue does not fall.

 

Of the interminable sisters,

Of the ceaseless cotillons of sisters,

Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters,

The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest.

 

With her ample back towards every beholder,

With the fascinations of youth and the equal fascinations of age,

Sits she whom I too love like the rest, sits undisturb’d,

Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her

eyes glance back from it,

Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none,

Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.

 

Seen at hand or seen at a distance,

Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day,

Duly approach and pass with their companions or a companion,

Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances

of those who are with them,

From the countenances of children or women or the manly countenance,

From the open countenances of animals or from inanimate things,

From the landscape or waters or from the exquisite apparition of